Playtime has returned to Napa’s downtown fairground.
On Wednesday, the Napa Valley Expo reintroduced visitors to the familiar sights, sounds, and scents of merry-go-rounds, funnel cakes, and midway games — the carnival experience that was canceled along with so much else when the coronavirus pandemic struck more than a year ago.
Billed by its organizer as the Greatest Portable Theme Park, the five-day fun and food fair marks an early step back toward everyday summertime entertainment, barely a week after California relaxed most of the remaining rules on home sheltering and social distancing it had imposed to beat back COVID-19. And for the first two guests to pass through the Expo gate on a pleasantly sun-touched afternoon, the fun fair was an experience long-awaited and appreciated.
“I’m excited — I missed being able to hang with friends and ride the rides,” 14-year-old Sasha Mufich of Napa said as she and her 13-year-old friend Aliya Bueno headed toward a collection of rides last seen at the Expo in August 2019.
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“How’re you doing today? It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood!” a man selling handheld fans, bubble-blowing guns, and other knickknacks from his booth shouted toward the teens, his mood bright even as Bueno and Mufich passed him without buying his wares.
The vendor, Joseph Leach — a Big Bear Lake man who bills himself the Toy Guy — was grateful for carnivals like this one for perhaps more important reasons than those spending an afternoon on the Insomniac, the Fender Bender bumper cars, and the pendulum-like Avenger.
“I’m saving for a house, so I’m doing all I can to buy that house,” said Leach, who drew on funds stashed for a future home to get through the months of social distancing with no fairs at which to ply his trade. “Oh man, it was horrible, it wasn’t good at all. I’m just glad things are starting to come together, thank heaven; it can only get better from here.”
In place of a traditional Town & Country Fair, the Expo will host a separate carnival and an in-person livestock auction this summer.
Amid the laughter and the stuffed-animal prizes, however, signs of continued vigilance against a virus outbreak were evident on a closer glance at the fairground — starting with the state-owned Expo’s board deciding to effectively split its annual Town & Country Fair into two smaller and separate ones, this week’s carnival and the Junior Livestock Auction scheduled for next month.
In the interest of increased distancing, Helm and Sons Amusements, the Town & Country Fair’s amusement park provider, has doubled the usual spacing between rides and them from 30 and 50 feet apart, CEO Davey Helm said Tuesday evening during a preview tour of the carnival — a lingering trait of group gatherings earlier in the year that resumed with attendance limits and enforced distancing as the state gradually relaxed its COVID-19 regulations.
Other elements of the normal Town & Country Fair have been dropped or scaled back this year with the same goal of avoiding crowding and massing.
In place of the music concerts that are a mainstay of the fair, Helm & Sons has opted for a disc jockey spinning tunes from the Dreamland attraction, placed beside a lawn that has been covered with a fabric canopy to serve as an open-air dance floor. Other attractions like a nine-hole miniature golf course and a small walk-through dinosaur museum have been chosen to disperse guests more widely rather than bunch them together, Helm said.
The Expo has allowed this week’s event to host up to 5,000 people at a time each day, according to Helm. To woo visitors, the company is lowering ticket prices from past Napa fairs - $40 for adults and $30 for children — and shifting to a nearly all-inclusive model in which the cost of admission also covers all rides, although food and midway games are charged separately. (To minimize the handling of cash, tickets must be purchased in advance.)
Yountville's annual celebration of fine arts and wine produced one of the county's largest gatherings in more than a year.
Safety plans for the Portable Theme Park include sanitizing ride equipment, games, and other touch points before each day’s session and then every two hours, as well as providing a hand sanitizer station outside every ride and game, Helm said. No food or drink will be allowed on rides.
Changes to spacing and cleanliness largely reflect the state of safety rules in place when Helm finalized this year’s 14-stop carnival tour — down from 65 in a typical year — about four months ago, rather than the recent loosening of rules that has lifted many curbs on crowd size and mask-wearing requirements.
“If we were 30 or 45 days later on, we might have pulled the trigger on more live entertainment,” Helm said during the Tuesday preview for invited guests. “But I have a responsibility to the community to make sure this doesn’t get shut down, so we have to do it right. This has taken nothing short of 13 months of planning to get the gates open; this has been really, really hard. But we’re happy and proud to be here.”
All of the estimated 75 employees working the Helm & Sons carnival tour have been vaccinated against COVID-19, according to Colleen Helm, Davey’s wife and the company’s concessions manager. In addition, Helm & Sons is in contact with Napa County Health and Human Services to ensure not only COVID-19 safety but also food safety, she said.
While Napa’s first fun fair in nearly two years has had to accommodate the lingering concerns about the pandemic, Colleen Helm remained confident that enough visitors will relish a break from months of telework, sheltering at home, and separation from friends. “People’s spirits have been really down, and this just brings back a little life and normalcy,” she said Tuesday.
This year’s Expo entertainments effectively split the traditional fair into two separate events attracting smaller crowds, part of the state-owned fair authority’s plan to gradually transition back to larger audiences after COVID-19 triggered curbs on gatherings that California lifted only on June 15.
The Junior Livestock Auction, normally set for Saturday during the five-day fair, has been spun off into a freestanding event on July 10, with animal weigh-ins and showmanship contests scheduled for July 8-9. Unlike the 2020 auction that was moved online during the pandemic, this year’s event will take place at the fairground.
An even larger step toward a return to full-scale mass entertainment also is set to take place at the Expo at summer’s end, when BottleRock returns Sept. 3-5 after its cancellation in 2020. All passes have sold out for the music festival, which has announced more than 80 acts including Guns N’ Roses, Miley Cyrus, Foo Fighters, and Stevie Nicks.
Photos: Visitors return to Napa Valley Expo for opening of the Greatest Portable Theme Park
Portable Theme Park at the Napa Valley Expo
Portable Theme Park at the Napa Valley Expo
Portable Theme Park at the Napa Valley Expo
Portable Theme Park at the Napa Valley Expo
Portable Theme Park at the Napa Valley Expo
Portable Theme Park at the Napa Valley Expo
Portable Theme Park at the Napa Valley Expo
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You can reach Howard Yune at 530-763-2266 or hyune@napanews.com