The 2022 Warren County A&L Fair will have a new carnival as it will no longer be partnering with Kissel Entertainment.
Warren Count A&L Fair president Regan Kelsey gave an update at the county’s Economic and Agricultural Development Committee meeting Monday night and announced they were going with a different carnival company.
“We will have a new carnival in 2022. This is a new outfit. Kissel has moved on to other things,” said Kelsey. “We spent a lot of time this winter interviewing people, researching, talking to people across the state and out of state and we have found a carnival. It is Crescent City Amusement out of Slidell, Louisiana. They have come highly recommended. We have a contract with them so we will be having a new carnival and having something different. Since 1954, it is only the third carnival that we have ever had. It was a big deal for us to go through that process and find somebody that will live up to the reputation that we have and will have the same level of performance and appearance that we are known for.”
Along with the announcement of a new carnival, Kelsey gave a report on the 2021 fair.
“Overall we had a very good fair considering the circumstances. September hit just about the same time that the delta variant came along. We estimate our attendance was down roughly 20%. We don’t have any way of really counting that accurately because we are a free fair and we don’t have a gate so it is just an estimation,” said Kelsey.
Kelsey said they monitored the spread of COVID-19 for two months after the fair and said there were not any spikes in COVID-19 due to the fair. He also told the committee the income from the carnival was down roughly 12%, mainly due to bad weather.
“We did have two rain outs that really accounted for the dip in funds from 2019 that we received from the carnival,” said Kelsey. “Saturday was just about a complete wash out, which really hurts because they run pretty much all day. That is a big day. One of the bigger days for us. If we would have had all day Saturday good weather we would have probably been up $7,000 over 2019. So that is how important the weather is with outside events. We are always one year away from being in trouble. We do the best we can and so far over the last several years we have been in pretty good financial shape.”
