Attractions and Activities
Major attractions include the thrice-daily jousting tournament, which for the past several years has featured the Hanlon-Lees Action Theater. Other attractions include nationally traveling professional live entertainment acts on 11 stages. Stage shows feature live music, dance, comedy shows, and performers with circus variety skills such as juggling, sword swallowing, acrobatics, and side-show antics. Musicians perform play traditional instruments such as the harp or bagpipes, or other more obscure "period" instruments. Roaming the "lanes" of the festival are a variety of nationally traveling professional street performers who engage visitors to help create an interactive performance experience. Tipping performers is always optional.
The Carolina Renaissance Festival also operates an in-house performance company featuring over 100 costumed characters who also interact directly with visitors at the fair, in an attempt to create a more authentic feel of a renaissance-era town and to help bring the "village" to life. Individuals in the company develop characters such as "The Village Baker", "Tavern Keeper", etc. A "Singing Milkmaid" trio, a Town Mayor, and the fictional Royal Family that has come to visit the shire are other examples. Other notable characters are the Greenman (a large walking tree) and Twig (a faerie). The company is primarily composed of people from surrounding communities, including Concord, Greensboro, and Charlotte. Auditions are held June of each year and details are posted on the Festival's website at Official website.
There are numerous shopping opportunities, with many vendors selling a variety of handmade arts and craft goods. Such items include handmade jewelry, artisan leather goods, blown glass made at live demonstrations, candles, and custom chain mail. The fair vends an assortment of vaguely medieval foods, including giant turkey legs, various soups, stews, and chowders served in "bread bowls", "Steak on a Stake", fish and chips, corn on the cob, and Scotch eggs.
Alongside the shops one can find games such as archery target-shooting, crossbow shooting, axe throwing, frog catapults and a gold coin hunt.
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