NJ State Fair @ The Meadowlands

The Annual NJ State Fair @ Meadowlands is here again! It's the largest state fair in the whole of NJ, with over 150 rides and attractions! Kevin and I have been wanting to go since it started on June 25th but we never got around to it. At last, we managed to go last Friday (since the last day was July 12th) night. It's located at the Giant's Stadium Fairgrounds, about 15 - 20 minutes away from our apartment :D We arrived at around 8pm and parking was fairly easy. I guess it's because of the big car park or maybe it's still considered little bit early. Parking is $3 for the entire night.

We got our tickets at $9 ($7 for weekdays) a person at the door and was given the option to buy an unlimited ride stamp for an additional $19.90. We passed on that, I don't think we will be riding enough rides at the fair to make it worthwhile. I guess it's a good deal if you have kids with you.

Our first stop was to go take a ride on the Skyride. It's actually a ski lift that goes from one end of the fair to the other. We figured it's the best way to check out the fair, to see what we want to do and stuff. The view was amazing from up there, check out this little video clip that I took when we were on the Skyride.

After the Skyride, we just walked around to check out the many attractions at the fair. There were all kinds of weird attractions...things that you would expect to see at a travelling fair. For $1, you get to see the worlds tallest girl, woman with the face of a mule, the worlds smallest monkey or the baby with two heads! Of course we didn't waste our money to see all this nonsense :P We just needed to waste some time walking around before we head to watch something that we were looking forward to for the longest time.

Yup, that's right. It's time for the long awaited Pig Races!! Hahaha! I've never seen pig racing before and I was pretty excited to check it out. We made a point to get to the arena early, so that we will get front row seats. There were three heats, here is a video of the second heat. Aren't they just so cute? They look pretty fast here but you should see the third heats. It featured the Asian Pot Bellied Pigs. Boy were they fat! I mean, they were so hugeee..it wasn't even funny. They were just merrily strolling along the track, I think it took them about 3-4 minutes just to complete the race. It was funny!

After the pig races, we walked over to the petting zoo to look at the animals. There were quite a lot of animals there. They had llamas, goats, sheep, donkeys, kangaroos, rabbits, parrots...even monkeys and a big camel (of course you are not allowed to pet the monkeys and camel :P)!

Check out what's next to the petting zoo. Noooo, you are not allowed to pet those! Hahaha! They are actually part of the famous tiger show act. It's free and there are 4 performances per night. We didn't managed to catch the acts cos there were other shows that we wanted to see going on at the same time as the tiger show. However, it was cool that we got a chance to get up to close to real tigers...we were just a few feet away from them!

There were also elephant rides (the elephant is 41 years old!), camel rides and pony rides.

After all that walking around, it was time to get a snack! There are over a hundred food stalls at the fair, selling all kinds of yummy carnival food. From turkey legs to corn dogs to funnel cakes! We shared a funnel cake (of course!) and Kevin also had a large pretzel too! The funnel cake was hugeeeee and really good. It better be good, we paid a good $6 for it! Just imagine, $6 for some dough and sugar...tsk tsk tsk :P

Another good thing about this fair is that there are constantly live shows to watch. Apart from the pig races, we also managed to catch a mini concert by a local band as well as a magic show by the people from Festival of Magic. There were also other things going on like a show by hypnotist Steve Bayner, the Marcan tiger show and a bicycle tricks show.

Apart from live shows, there were also all kinds of rides and carnival games. I just love the whole atmosphere at the fair.

We ended the night by going for a midnight (well, more like nearing 1am) ride on the Giant Wheel. The view from the wheel was just amazing! We could see the whole Manhattan skyline, all lit up as well as a few bridges and of course, a birds eye view of the fair itself. With the nice cool breeze blowing in our faces and the beautiful view, it was definitely the best way to end our evening at the fair :D