The Texas State Fair rises from the ashes every fall like a shining city on a hill, carving out a haven of greenery and endless enjoyment within Dallas’ concrete jungle — for those who can afford it. With tickets starting around $20 and shrinkflation gradually affecting even famously hearty fair foods, the fair is an all-day paradise that requires financial forethought lest the unprepared fall into its money-guzzling maw.
A Day in the Dominion
We started the morning off by wasting two hours navigating the DART system and attempting to secure our press passes, no thanks to the confusing directions offered by Google Maps and DART’s own journey planner tool on its website. Future fairgoers should skip the trip-planning hassle and take the Green Line to Fair Park, which is within spitting distance of the front gate.
Before entering the fairgrounds through the gate, fair employees will check any bags or purses visitors bring in. Despite reports of the fair debuting a clear bag-only policy, we brought a black fabric shoulder bag into the fair without issue.
Our first stop in the fairgrounds was a grassy, tent-filled spot close by the front gate where Savannah Bee Company was offering free honey tastings. We tried the “hot honey,” which was velvety sweet with a powerfully throaty, almost pepper-like kick of spice at the very end — an ideal topping for vanilla ice cream. Like the honey sampling, most free attractions throughout the fair, such as the meat industry exhibit and petting zoo, were advertisements for brands or products. That included our next stop: the auto show.
While the state fair offers multiple fun automotive activities, the looming building emblazoned with “auto show” is a glorified car dealership of little interest to the average college student whose car budget is largely non-existent. Visiting the building for the sweet relief of air conditioning is highly recommended; as is stopping by the Alto Bar & Grill nestled inside to grab cookie butter nachos, our first bite of fair food for the day.
Paying for attractions at the fair, from rides to event entry to purchasing food, is done via coupons disbursed through the kiosks located across the fairgrounds. One coupon is worth one U.S. dollar, and serves as a sneaky abstraction system to encourage visitors to make bigger purchases than they would otherwise. The nachos cost 12 coupons, an expensive but ultimately understandable price, and were more like effervescently sweet churros than the savory tones typically expected of a nacho dish.
The chips themselves were piping hot and airy with a delightful softness, and appealingly salty butter swirls, a cold dollop of ice cream-like cookie butter and a cinnamon-brown sugar-nutmeg topping were piled onto the sugary, starchy bed to create a decadent dessert that, impressively, avoided being too sweet. Unlike a traditionally heavy fair food, these nachos were so light you almost couldn’t feel them going down, and we demolished the entire basket like animals.
Food rating: 4 out of 5 stars
After dessert for breakfast, we reached the heart of the State Fair — Lone Star Boulevard — where Big Tex loomed like Christ the Redeemer over the milling crowd and rows of food stalls. An armadillo on a float playing Chappell Roan’s “The Giver” serenaded us as we queued for highly regrettable 14-coupon cheese curds. While the footlong mozzarella cheese pulls satisfied our Midwestern sensibilities, the curds themselves were pitifully unseasoned, practically begging for black pepper and paprika. The only flavor came from a single-serve container of ranch dressing, but drowning the curds in ranch could not drown our sorrows. They were not worth even half that coupon-price.
Food rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
The fair itself was captivating in its beauty, from the iconically Southern art and architecture throughout to the charming merchandise stalls to the endless expanses of green spaces, large waterways and calm, scenic spots. Despite being located centrally in Dallas, the city’s bustle was nearly imperceptible across most of the grounds.
As first-time attendees, we imagined the State Fair would lean heavily into Texas’ rural, conservative reputation, but everything from the food to the attractions was designed for a multiethnic, urban and suburban visitorship — such as the Fiesta de Marionettes, an adorable free-to-view marionette performance, and a laid-back beer garden offering plentiful larger-than-life games. The rural-oriented activities, such as animal showcases and rodeos, were marketed as novelties and generally handheld their audiences. However, the eyesore UT Austin and Oklahoma University banners plastered around the grounds did make the fair feel like an extended tailgate for the football game that weekend.
On our way to Discovery Gardens, we passed by a sponsored exhibit about raising animals for meat. The exhibit featured pens of cows, goats, sheep and pigs as well as informational plaques detailing the animal agriculture process from farm to table — or, in some cases like the euphemistic use of “processing” in place of “slaughter,” sidestepping rather than accurately describing it.
Arriving at the gardens plunged us into a secluded, lovestruck paradise. Wandering the winding trails, we passed by mesmerizing pools, shaded nooks and colorful flowers swarmed by butterflies. No noise besides bubbling water could reach us, calling Central Park to mind — a natural getaway almost inconceivable in such a massive metropolis. Just as lovely was the gardens’ indoor section, where fascinating creatures from axolotls to isopods were on display. The gardens charged an entry fee in cash, not coupons, despite being located on the fairgrounds.
Finally, we made it to Midway, home to rides ranging from ferris wheels to stomach-churning rollercoasters. Queasy off fried food and low on coupons, we opted not to try any of the rides, each of which cost around 10 coupons each. The grandiose ferris wheel, tempting though it was, sported an unjustifiable 16-coupon per rider cover charge — over 2 hours of minimum-wage work in Texas.
Instead, we sat down with some 12-coupon peaches and cream funnel cake to round out our fair food experience and begrudgingly succumbed to purchasing 3-coupon bottled waters as well, having emptied the water bottle we’d brought to the fair with us.
The funnel cake was syrup-softened and insistently sweet, with the peaches resembling candy as much as they did fruit. Its best feature was its generous whipped cream swirls, lighter than air and impossibly smooth on the tongue. But by this point, we were sick of oily eats and unable to eat most of the more substantial fair grub because of our dietary restrictions around meat, so getting through the cake was a struggle more than a pleasure.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
We rounded out the day by visiting the free-to-enter petting zoo, which featured animals from baby goats to kangaroos to ostriches — and allowed visitors to feed most of them by paying in cash for a cup of animal feed. Some of the animals present were clearly stressed, and since we had come to the fair on a weekday, at this point in the afternoon children were exiting school and families were filling up the fairgrounds en masse, so we decided to call it there. We forsook taking the hour-plus length DART back to campus for a more hassle-free Uber ride at $45 and promptly fell into three-hour fried food-induced comas, where we dreamed of cauliflower the whole time.
Takeaways
Our biggest recommendation is to arrive on a weekday morning to beat the rush; the date we went was Friday, Oct. 10, where the morning crowd was half the size of the afternoon one.
The fair offers a decent amount of indoor or shaded spaces, which are ideal to wait out the day’s hottest hours in, and you can never bring enough water, even during chillier weather.
Fair food is every bit as exhilarating and delicious as it’s said to be, but exercise restraint — for the good of both your wallet and your arteries — when planning out a menu. Arrive at the fair well-fed to avoid spending excess money, and choose one or two eats to try by splitting each item among friends. For those who can’t eat meat, desserts are your best option, and for the gluten intolerant, most fair foods will unfortunately be off the table. Eating at a local shop outside the fairgrounds will save you the most money.
When you arrive at the fair, buy yourself a batch of coupons — we purchased 45 — and commit to that amount. Do not top up to squeeze in just one more ride, toy or snack, because you will inevitably end up spending more than you intended. Before committing to any of the amusement park rides, tour the entirety of Midway first to analyze which rides offer the best combinations of fun, price and time spent waiting in line. With how expensive even basic attractions are, optimizing your money is the only way to get any bang for your buck out of the state fair.
But despite the exorbitant costs and imperfections throughout the fair, the overall experience was undeniably worth it. A $20 ticket to access the wonders and serenity of the fairgrounds for a full day, especially if you can spend the evening, is a justifiable purchase even if you don’t go on to buy food, rides or attempts at winning carnival games. The much-needed break from life’s monotony is a gift, and as college students, the fair is only made better by dragging a friend group along.
And as we bade the fair farewell with the sun in our eyes and Big Tex’s pearly smile at our backs, in a subtle way, we felt more Texan than ever.
