The show

Going to the Royal Adelaide show has never really been something that’s been  high on my to-do list and then when I had a child I knew that some day I should take him so he could see what it’s all about.

His school closes for one day during the show and for the last two years that he’s been at school I’ve put him into out of school hours care but this year they didn’t have it. This year I’d also been thinking that this would be the year I would take him as he’s that bit older and able to handle walking around for the day.

As I also hadn’t been to the show for a long time I wanted to have a good look around too, and not just be stuck in sideshow alley, or rideshow alley. I’m sure there are more rides now than there used to be. They are certainly much more expensive at around $10 per ride. We went on the Wednesday which is a cheaper day than normal for adults and I’m glad I bought our tickets online. Just a quick word about the user experience when buying these tickets though. On my printout after buying them I was told they would be posted to me. A week after I booked them I rang up to find out why they hadn’t been sent and I was told to pick them up at the show. Surely that wouldn’t have been too hard to put on the website?

I’m glad I’d pre-booked our tickets though as the lines were huge and we saved ourselves a good 30 minutes. The first thing we did was the wearable blooms fashion parade which I’ve already written about.

We moved on from there to the animals section of the show and I think you could spend a whole day just doing that.

I would have liked to spend more time in the dog section but it was so crowded in there that it was almost impossible to move around.

Who knew they had pig racing at the show? I certainly didn’t. They were very cute and very well trained.

We sat down for a snack while watching the wood cutting and bumped into some friends.

After some lunch we moved into the rides area where I’d promised JJ two rides of his choice. His aunt had also given him $10 for a ride so he had three in total. Luckily he’s now tall enough to go on rides by himself. He’s on the second carriage from the front and for a kid who’s naturally cautious he loves this sort of stuff. I think I created a daredevil when we went to the various worlds up at the Gold Coast.

I went on this ride – below – with him (the only one) and when it started going around I felt a bit sick and wondered how the heck I would manage it for the next couple of minutes but manage it I did.

It was onto more sedate things inside the pavilions after that and it somehow became a theme of armed forces with JJ sitting in the back of the army truck and having a go on the Air Force cadet’s flight simulator. I’m glad I wasn’t flying in a real plane with him as it would have involved lots of dives and spiral rolls.

And he became a bike-riding paramedic for a minute.

The showbag pavilion was next and JJ was lucky to get the K-Zone showbag as they had nearly run out but it was really good value for money at $10. I bought the Cleo one and got a magazine fix.

Overall I enjoyed the show and will go again. I don’t think we’ll go every year but every couple of years will be just fine with me but before I know it JJ will want to go just with his friends and stick around in that noisy ride area.