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The Saskatoon Exhibition is back with more rides than ever for fair goers to enjoy.
North American Midway Entertainment, which is responsible for the 41 rides at the site, said there are 11 new rides this year.
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Scooter Korek, vice-president of client services, said a lot of the rides were also featured at the Calgary Stampede this year.
“The most notable ones are the Crazy Mouse roller coaster … and the Polar Express, which is the music ride,” he said.
“We also brought five new family rides, which are good for the young and the young at heart.”
“We brought some new foods this year,” said Korek. “We’re going to give away probably 15 tractor-trailer loads worth of stuffed animals.”
The Ex runs until Aug. 7, and is open from noon until midnight each day.
Korek starts planning for the Exhibition in November, before he travels to Saskatoon in February to see Prairieland Park. He said it takes a massive team to run the Midway operation.
“Five hundred people travel with our show from start to finish,” Korek said.
“They’re the unsung heroes of our operation, the ones that set up the rides, keep them running smoothly.”
Midway entertainment season starts in Miami in May and ends in Alabama at the beginning of November, making stops in Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto along with the Saskatoon Exhibition this year.
This year is also the 140th anniversary of the Saskatoon Exhibition, but that wasn’t the reason more rides were added.
“It just worked out that way, it was kind of nice timing that we could put the Saskatoon Exhibition on to our itinerary,” said Korek.
Another new exhibit at the Ex this year is a slideshow, which shows people the history of fairs and carnivals.
“Jim Conklin, who was the owner of Conklin Shows… collected stuff from his family which dates back to the early 1920s,” he said.
“He passed away a couple years ago and I became in possession of some of those artifacts.”
Included in the slideshow are photographs from the early days of fairs, some of which date back to the 1860s.
“It’s been great, because there’s a really vast and colourful, romantic history of the carnival at fairs,” said Korek.
“There’d be 20 rides, there’d be a bunch of games, there’d be some gambling booths, and the rest would be filled up with sideshows, which were human oddities and illusion shows.”
Patrick Barbar is head of security at the Saskatoon Ex. (Will Mandzuk/650CKOM)
This is the third year that the Saskatoon Ex has used metal detectors at the entrances to Prairleand Park, and Patrick Barbar, head of security operations, said the move has been very successful.
“It’s been a very positive change from the years where we did not have the metal detectors in place,” he said. “They are finding things that are being brought in with nefarious intent.”
The detectors have been put to good use already at this year’s event.
“We have deterred a few things, for sure,” Barbar said.
A few new security measures were added this year.
“There are some measures that we’re not making public because we don’t want to assist people in defeating them,” he said.
“It makes complete sense when you think about having a wide-open entrance where people can bring in anything without any scrutiny, to where we have airport-style security in place.”
Barbar also said they’ve heard positive feedback from families attending the Ex.
“There are people who had avoided the Ex and now, being year three of having this programing in place, we are starting to get out now that it’s a safe environment.”
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