Have you ever been to a State Fair? If you have never been, picture this: a huge miles-long area stuffed with food, fun, amazing things to see, show animals, acrobatic shows, amusement park rides and so much more. It is wild, overstimulating in every way, and absolutely electric!
Last week, the kids and I loaded up and drove the 1.5 hours to the Ohio State Fair!! This is one of our favorite summer traditions and it absolutely did not disappoint! This year it was exactly one million degrees. Ok, not quite…but it was 95 degrees with high humidity, so the weather app was telling us that the real feel was 110. There is not much shade in the open areas of the fair, but we were resourceful and found shady spots or air conditioned spots during the hottest part of the day.
The kids earned free tickets to the fair through our summer reading program at the library, and Thursday is half off admission tickets for adults, so we all got in for just $6.50. Unfortunately, that was about the only part of the fair that was cheap! The food is outrageously overpriced (think $6 for a slice of pizza and $9 for an ice cream cone- yikes!), but since it’s a one day thing we pack a lunch and then S.P.L.U.R.G.E on dinner!
Theo opted out this year- he has so much on his plate with work and was heading out of town for the weekend so he really needed a full day in his office. We really missed him and I will be glad when we have this new work routine down a little better and can all go as a family! Thankfully, my parents were able to come and they arrived about 2 hours after us and left about two hours before us. But it was SO great to have two extra adults for most of our time at the fair! My Dad even took one for the team and bought himself a wristband so he could go on some rides with Ori (who wasn’t tall enough to go on any rides alone).
We arrived around 11:30am and found parking pretty easily. There is a shuttle straight to the front gates, where we purchased tickets. Once we got into the fair, I snapped a picture of the map, and we stopped at the bathroom and then went straight to the COSI kids science building! This building is air conditioned and has tons of little stations for the kids to do scienc-y things. The kids could have spent hours in there, but I knew we had tons of ground to cover so I herded them on to the next thing!
Next, we walked all the way across the entire fairgrounds to get to the natural resources park. This is the hidden gem of the fair, and most people miss it entirely! It’s a shaded park that has lots of activities and fun spaces for the kids to explore. They even have kayaking, fishing, a lumberjack show, and a shaded Little Diggers sandbox (with lots of play construction equipment) for kids under age 5.
We ate lunch, watched the Lumberjack show, and Ezra went fishing. We wanted to do the kayaks, but they only ran every half hour and we had just missed the time slot and didn’t want to wait another half hour.
Since it was about 2:30 and hotter than blue blazes, we decided to hit up some animal barns and see the animals. We were unsure what was going on, but we could only find the chickens/ducks this year. The horses and sheep were already done and gone for the fair, and we couldn’t find the rabbits (maybe they hadn’t arrived yet?). We saw a couple cows, but only from a distance. I wish we could have seen more animals, but the chickens we did see were amazing! There are so many unique chickens out there!! We also found a huge, industrial fan to stand in front of. That was my favorite part of the day hahaha.
The kids were ready for some rides! I headed over to buy them the wristbands – we have decided it’s worth it at this age to just buy the unlimited ride wristbands. Tera and Kiah were tall enough for pretty much every ride at the fair, but Ezra still needed a few inches for most of them. Ori could ride approximately two rides. Meanwhile, the adults and Ori would stand in whatever little pocket of shade we could find. At one point, my Mom and I were standing in the shadow of that long, tall skinny slingshot ride. Once it started running we lost our shade haha. Ori was such a trooper sitting around all day in the heat just waiting for his siblings to ride rides!
This was our favorite ride because it was water bumper cars and the bumper cars could shoot water out. People were just standing outside of the ride yelling “GET ME WET!” because it was so hot and felt so good. I wish that the fire department would have come and opened a fire hydrant or sprayed a hose or something- it was truly SO HOT and being wet makes it so much better!
The kids were having a blast, but the rest of us were melting so I finally declared that we were going to the fine arts building. Actually, this is my favorite part of the fair! They have art work, cake decorating contests, tablescape contests, sewing, quilts, and dollhouse building/decorating. It’s so fascinating to see! I’m not sure how you get to the State Fair, but I think that many people win first place in their county fair to be featured at the State Fair. So these truly are the best of the best.
We filled up our water bottles, took a restroom break- and headed back out in the heat! We walked down the fairway and headed back towards more rides. We stopped to see the butter cow- a cow statue made entirely out of butter. And they have multiple other butter statues, too! They have a little section of the fair with pregnant Mama animals and often they have their babies right there at the fair! This baby alpaca was brand new and cute as a button!
Orion went on his first ride! It basically went around in a circle and blew bubbles haha. He LOVED it.
It was nearing 6:30 by that point, so we headed over to the food area to get some dinner. I got a slice of pizza for each kiddo and then we just sat right down on the incredibly dirty ground to eat. The tables were all taken or in the sun, and this spot was shady and slightly quiet. Listen…all the rules go out the window while at the fair!
After dinner my parents headed home and the kids spent the next two hours riding rides! Ori and I did a lot of hanging out. I did a lot of praying that none of the rides would break and none of my kids would fly out.
Around 8:30, I told the kids to pick their last rides and we called it a night. I was hot, exhausted and SO overstimulated. Ori hadn’t taken a nap and he was a total trooper the entire day, but he was also done.
We left sweaty, filthy, exhausted, slightly queasy and with hearts and heads full of fun and memories!
And that is a wrap on the Ohio State Fair 2025!
Price Breakdown:
Parking: $10
Admission: $6.50 (total)
Ride Wristbands: $131 (total for the four kids- 3 unlimited wristbands and one wristband with 20 credits)
Ice Cream: $15 (4 small cups)
Dinner: $18 (3 slices of pizza)
That sounds like a whole lot of fun though I give you all credit for going on such a hot day. It sounds like you managed real well though with lots of breaks from the sun.