It’s that time of the year again, Hull fair returns to Walton Street for a vast array of travelling attractions. This will be the first year I’ve gone whilst writing this blog as we couldn’t attend last year.
The fair is the largest travelling fair in Europe, according to the advertisements, and is certainly the largest in the UK! It’s very similar to Nottingham Goose Fair but Hull has a bit more space. Hopefully we’ll get to Goose Fair next year.
The fair attracts a vast array of travelling attractions, ranging from small kids rides, to coasters, waltzers and sizzler rides, all the way up to massive booster attractions and Ferris wheels.
There’s definitely something for everyone and even if you’re not into rides all that much, there are some very crowd pleasing attractions to just watch. Atmosphere Creater and Exciter come to mind!
For 2022, prices start at £2 but go all the way up to £7 for the most expensive attractions. A lot of the rides also have a happy hour, where prices are slightly reduced, though what time happy hour was wasn’t advertised that I could see.
We went over 2 visits, one being Friday night and the other was Saturday afternoon so we got a good mix of day and night operations.
There were so many attractions here that even if I wanted to ride them all, I would need a small fortune to do so. I don’t tend to do well with spinning rides for the most part so that meant I could get away with only riding certain things.
We ended up trying out the following rides:
- Crash Test
- Ghost Train
- Ferris Wheel
- Atmosphere Creater
- Booster Maxx
- Spinning Coaster
- Dodgems
- Ghost Train cheap
- Miami Wave
I didn’t go on Atmosphere Creater or the Miami Wave, and Tracy didn’t go on Booster Maxxx and though we only had a go on 9 rides, we both had a great time!
Aside from the rides there are plenty of sideshows on offer. These ranged from hook-a-duck, to tin can alleys, ticket based games, archery and shooting games. As with the rides, there were plenty of options for everyone to have a go at and these also had happy hour specials too.
Food options were another side to talk about too. There were so many different things to try, ranging from gourmet burgers to hot dogs, Greek and Chinese food, pies, jacket potatoes and sweets. Everything you’d expect of the fair, with just multiple different vendors to pick from.
This was a blessing and a curse at times though as many places would charge the same, but then there would be 1 or 2 that were slightly more expensive or slightly cheaper, so shopping around is a must if you want to save a little money.
There are a few criticisms I have though. The first is with the price of some things. I know we’re all going through the cost of living crisis and the rides weren’t too bad, but the extras were. We rode Spinning Coaster and it has a camera, and I’m a sucker for onride photos so I really wanted one. The price was £8 and that was just for a photo. No bag, protective sleeving or anything. I did feel that was a bit steep for just a 6×4 photo!
Secondly, there was a lot of similar rides too. This is good when the fair is busy as it’ll mean that you probably won’t have to queue so much, but there were at least 4 Tagadas, 4 Twister rides and 4 different sized Ferris wheels. It feels a bit unfair to complain that there were so many duplicate rides, but it was something that Tracy mentioned during the drive home, and I agree!
Finally, parking is always an issue for the fair. I’ve been 3 different years and it’s always been the same. The fair is located next to the MKM stadium, so the stadiums car park is used, but this quickly fills up.
There are usually plenty of buses too, but strikes on this year limited the amount of Stagecoach operated services. Park and rides were still running, but in a reduced number. This is of course, not the fairs fault at all.
I usually park in nearby St Stephens and get a return bus ticket to the fair (which we did on Friday) but Saturday we parked in a local car park at the cost of £5. Locals will usually capitalise on the success of the fair and offer any land they can to people to park their cars, for a fee!
In conclusion
The event was still a good one and my criticisms are only minor. There was a very good police presence both times that we went and you felt safer because of this. Plenty of the sideshow operators were talkative and polite and would even give you freebies if you had a couple of goes with them.
I don’t think the prices, overall, were that bad, and some of the rides really did give you value for money, especially when compared to a stationary theme park variant.
All in all, we had a great time at Hull Fair and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who wants to try out a good variety of flat rides and travelling coasters!
I’ll definitely be attending next year, and hopefully visiting Nottingham Goose Fair too!
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