Georgia Renaissance Festival celebrates 30 years | PHOTO GALLERY

FAIRBURN — Every spring the small northern Georgia community of Fairburn passes through a sort of time portal as it transformed into the site of the Georgia Renaissance Festival, where visitors can mingle with fairies, drink mead with Norse warriors, watch combat on horseback, wander through dozens of different shops that sell things like breeches, greaves and dragon eggs, or simply kick back on a grassy knoll with a flagon of ale and watch children dance around the maypole.

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Set in a 32-acre recreation of a 16th Century English village, the festival is an art and entertainment extravaganza that combines outdoor theater, circus-style entertainment, and a wide variety of arts and crafts markets.

Started in 1986, the Georgia Renaissance Festival is celebrating its 30th year and over that time has become the largest such event in the southeastern United States and has earned a reputation as one of the top tourism events in the region.

Featuring more than 150 master artisans and craft-makers, 300 street performers and 10 stages with more than 150 daily music, comedy, dance and circus-style entertainment performances, the festival has earned a loyal following.

“My wife and started coming about 12 years ago, when we were first dating and now we bring our kids with us, so they can enjoy all the fun too,” said Garrett Thompson of Augusta, who enjoyed a sunny Saturday on the grounds last weekend. “When I first attended I came with some buddies and didn’t really know what to expect, but I fell in love with it. Now we plan a trip over every year.”

One of the things Thompson and other attendees love about the festival is the mixture of different activities and cultures. Even though it is rooted in the prevailing culture of 16th Century Europe, the festival allows for more than just a celebration of lords and ladies, knights and damsels in distress, and seafaring pirates.

On any of the eight weekends from mid-April to early June, visitors strolling the grounds will encounter elaborately costumed fairies, gargoyles, satyrs, and other magical creatures seemingly conjured out of dream.

“There’s a little bit of everything,” said Sheri Landrum, who popped over for a day from LaGrange with a few of her girlfriends. “I personally like the gargoyles, they are so ornate. I can’t imagine how long it takes for them to get into costume. I mean they even have little bits of moss in between their painted toes. My favorite thing, though is shopping for cool jewelry and clothing. Last year I got a leather bag and this year I think I might leave with an old-fashioned corset.”

Indeed the festival features dozens of different shops, selling much more than period clothing. Shoppers can find everything from glass ornaments, paintings, posters, jewelry, leather goods, garden ornaments, puppets, wooden, foam and metal swords, and much, much more. There’s also different artisans demonstrating things like glass blowing and weaving scattered throughout the festival grounds, so visitors can get a glimpse into how things were made in yesteryear.

In addition to the various shops and artisans, the festival also features countless different demonstrations and performances ranging from minstrel shows, to jugglers, to acrobats, to a full on joust show in the festival’s Royal Tournament Field.

Some of the more popular performances include The Tortuga Twins, which perform an interactive comedy show; the Birds of Prey Falconry Exhibition, featuring hawks, eagles, owls and vultures demonstrating free-flight skills directly above the crowd; and Cirque Du Todd, a juggling, ladder balancing, rope trick performance from the festival’s longest-running performer Todd Key, who has been featured at the festival for the past 29 years.

“I love Cirque Du Todd,” said Mary Hampstead of Atlanta. “It’s wickedly funny the way he weaves comedy into his juggling and stuff.”

Another highlight of each year’s festival is the joust show which takes place in the Royal Tournament Field. Running at various times throughout each day, the joust brings 16th Century English battle to life as costumed royals cheer from the grandstands.

In celebration of this year’s 30th anniversary, the Renaissance festival is presenting the only United States appearance of “Equus Maximus,” a show complete with stunts, trick horse riding, acrobatics, staged combat and chariot races.

Developed by DeBracey Productions, “Equus Maximus” features the talents and skills of professional equine performers who have toured throughout the world in productions of “Cavilia,” “Gladius the Show,” “Horse Power Live!,” and Ringling Brothers

Circus, according to a Georgia Renaissance Festival press release.

“I thought the jousting was awesome,” said 10 year old Madison Evans, who came to the festival with her parents for the first time this year. “The horses were really pretty too.”

While the “Equus Maximus” show has definitely been a crowd favorite so far this season, the festival is also featuring a handful of other new acts including The Wheel of Death, which is billed as a “30-foot-tall spinning monstrosity” where Icabod Wainwright performs “death-defying antics and skills that will thrill and amuse you as he performs inside and outside of this giant medieval ‘hamster wheel.’”

Also new this year is Friar Finnias Finnegan, a “fun-loving friar” that performs songs of drinking and merriment, and the Dream Hayven Farm, an educational “interactive animal discovery garden.”

The Dream Hayven Farm is located in a central knoll near a children’s playground, which is one of the more popular areas of the festival grounds, where children’s activities abound. Things like a giant barrel swing, a swinging Sea Dragon, a tower slide, a huge maze, a jousting rope slide atop a griffin are immensely popular with the children who attend the festival, proving once again the festival has plenty for visitors of all ages.

With so much going on throughout the grounds, visitors tend to work up healthy appetites, which can be satisfied at numerous food vendors serving myriad dishes, such as the every popular roasted turkey leg, steak on a stake, fried green tomato BLT’s, chicken sandwiches, King-sized hot dogs, hand cut “fryes,” and more, all of which can be washed down with “drynks” such as cold beer, mead, water, lemonade, Italian or French soda, coffee, and just about any other beverage a person can imagine.

“I basically spend the entire time I’m here eating,” said Mike Whitlock who brought his family up from McDonough for the day. “It’s like a county fair only better. I mean where else can you get steak on a stake and a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich served to you by a gypsy?”

This year’s festival season kicked off in April and will remain open every weekend until June 6-7. Each weekend features a different theme and will have special events and activities centered around that theme. Upcoming weekends include, the Time Warp Weekend May 16-17, where visitors shouldn’t be surprised if they see storm troopers and super heroes mingling on the grounds, Memorial Weekend May 23-25, where visitors get an extra day to enjoy the festivities; Pirates Invasion Weekend May 30-31 which will feature pirate-themed events including a Pirate Costume Contest, a Walk the Plank Trivia Contest and the Sea Legs Relay Race; and the the Last Huzzah Weekend June 6-7 where the annual festival will close out.

The Georgia Renaissance Festival is located at 6905 Virlyn B. Smith Road, Fairburn, Ga 30213. For directions, as well as full schedules, ticket prices and other important information visit www.garenfest.com.