Texas Renaissance Festival an entertaining trek to take

It’s become a Southern family tradition to attend the Texas Renaissance Festival each year and to do it on Pirate Adventure weekend if possible.

We landlubbers treasure the opportunity to dress in costumes and steal away for a weekend to step back in time for merriment and excitement.

What you actually get is a lot of weirdness. I’m no expert but I heartily believe that the Renaissance Period did not look anything like what we saw at the festival held weekends each October and November in the greater Todd Mission metropolitan area.

I’m willing to bet there were no fairies, cross-dressers, spiked Mohawk naives, half-naked barbarians, freakish monsters, zombies or Star Wars clone troopers to grace the English countryside those many centuries ago. Yet that concoction of costumes is part of what makes the Texas Renaissance Festival so much fun.

The staff, for the most part, stays true to character. The king (Greg Taylor) and the queen (Rosella Gonzales) and their court are gracious hosts and great ambassadors of frivolity and cosplay coolness.

The people who dress in costumes tend to fall in one of three categories. There are those who dress in period costumes; those who dress in period-looking costumes with modifications; and those who just dress in costumes regardless of the period or genre.

My wife makes costumes on the side and prides herself on her Victorian era dresses. She made a pirate costume for our youngest son, Colton, but the affect was tainted by the tennis shoes he wore for lack of appropriate footwear. I came dressed as a reporter, complete with company polo shirt and Canon camera. (I heard more than one comment about lugging a heavy cannon around my neck and shooting people with it.)

My middle son, Luke, didn’t want to wear a costume until he found a fez for sale. All of sudden he was Doctor Who (and not the only one, I might add).

Costumes aside, there is a lot more to see and do than one can take in on a weekend. We camped out Saturday night and made a full weekend of it for the first time. We never did get bored, nor did we see everything we wanted to. The jousts and the costume contests were a high priority and did not disappoint.

The shops are unique and the food outstanding but be prepared to part with your shillings and pounds, as they have a captive audience and everything there is an impulse buy, so it’s not cheap. Even if you’re not in a buying mood, just watching the artisans make and hawk their wares is entertaining.

We were able to take in a couple of shows, including a hilarious take on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and an awesome birds of prey program.

The fireworks on Saturday night were unlike any I had seen before, complete with images burned on the ground in the jousting arena.

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of the Texas Renaissance Festival. Special commemorative coins were made for the occasion and tossed to the masses by the king and queen during the noontime parade. I managed to snag a pair while fighting off some rather aggressive fairies and some yet-to-be-identified creatures who were trailing the royals and hoarding the booty.

If you’ve never been to the Ren Fest, or if it’s been a while, you might want to consider making a trek this year. It runs weekends through November, including Black Friday.

If you happen to go that weekend, you will enjoy Christmas festivities mixed with the usual weirdness of wardrobe. It will resemble the doorbusters at certain big box stores but with a much friendlier and hospitable attitude. And it makes for a great family tradition.