Why is the Fair so expensive?

The Texas State Fair is a wonderful attraction that comes to town once a year for about a month. It’s an exciting place if you’re looking for thrilling rides, savor rare cuisine, and experience an overall taste of Texan culture. One problem though, it’s unreasonably expensive.

A person uses about 70 tickets on a typical day. The cost for a set of 20 tickets is $10. After doing the math, this means that each ticket is worth 50 cents. That’s a lot more than it should be. Tickets should be maybe 10 cents each, not 50 cents, so why are we paying so much more than we should? Students who go end up paying much more than they originally intended, and much more than they can afford.

“I always spend more than I need to, that’s the thing about the fair, you always spend way more,” sophomore Marina Rubealcaba said. “I always spend more than I want to when I go to the fair.”

When going to the fair, one must also spend their tickets on an essential compound necessary for survival: water. One water bottle cost seven tickets. Seven tickets for one water bottle! That’s $3.50 for a single water bottle that can be bought at a local convenience store for only 99 cents. Of course, there are cheaper water bottles available for only two tickets, but they purposely limit these to maybe four or five booths throughout the entire park, making it extremely difficult for people to buy reasonably priced water.

“Water bottles were seven tickets, I thought they’d be free or something, cause you know it’s just water,” sophomore Josue Prado said.

Students receive free fair tickets provided by the school. You might be thinking this is generous act of the school, but really it’s used to as a tool to persuade students to go to the fair and waste money. When students go to the fair, they don’t usually go alone. They might bring family members that don’t benefit from the free ticket given at schools, which means more money for the fair.

“I mean, I guess the tickets do help but not that much,” Rubealcaba said. “I still spent, like, a ton of money cause I went with family.”

The fair only comes once a year for three weeks, so students have to take advantage of it. The fair is a really big place and can’t be completely explored and enjoyed in one day. If people want to enjoy the full experience that the fair has to offer, then you’d have to go more than once, which wouldn’t be a problem if the fair wasn’t as expensive as it is.

“Of course I wanted to go again, who doesn’t,” sophomore Alexander Carrillo said. “I thought I’d be able to go again, but I spent so much the first time that by the time I had enough money to go again, the fair was over.”

The fair is obviously a fun place to be and all, but there’s no need to spend so much money just to get a taste of culture.