Easter Show 2012 – Planning

The Royal Easter Show is held every year at the Sydney Olympic Park. It’s an event where we show and celebrate anything Australian—the bush life and city life. This year, it started on 5th of April and ends on 18th of April. Each day, is a long event and great family outing. There are a lot of activities happening everyday, some events overlaps with another. It’s Australia’s most largest annual event—bringing in thousands of visitors each year.

An event like this for a family outing you’d need to have some sort of planning, so that your day would at least go a little smoothly and enjoy time with family. You need to set a budget. It is quite expensive to go to these shows. Once you got some of those pre-requisites done, enjoy your day, because you are in for a treat and a load of fun! There are so much shows, stores, carnival rides, carnival games and much more to do. All packed in one day. Unless of course you are planning to go again on a different day. Each day brings you different shows!

Planning

There’s no doubt about it. You need to plan your day in events like these. Don’t plan and you might get some nasty unwanted surprises. Our trip to the Royal Easter Show at the Sydney Olympic Park this year was more of a surprise. Thanks my mum who initiated this trip and paid for all of it. It’s a long day. So, we needed to have some little organisation and a bit of planning. This is what we did.

Dress up for the occasion

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I made sure my kids and I were comfortable. My kids wore clothes that was suitable for the day. Shirt and pants was fine in our case, but we did pack with us jackets. I also made sure the kids wore comfortable shoes. One of my kids wanted to wear sandals but I said no. She did protest a little bit but I held my ground. We’re parents, right? There are few things we know better than they do. I’m glad I made my kids wore rubber shoes with good soles on them because we did walked around for 8 hours!

Transportation

To drive or to take a public transportation. Big events in Australia, it is usually recommended that we take public transportation instead. Parking can be a nightmare and it can easily be avoided by taking public transportation.

Public transport The intervals between each won’t waste your time anyway. The most easiest way to get to the Sydney Olympic Park is via a train. That’s the only way I know how to get there. Take a train to a station called Lidcombe and from there transit to another platform which is specifically for the Easter show. Don’t worry you won’t get lost. Signs are everywhere directing you to which platform to go.

Parking. But if you decided to drive and park instead. The show website says, that parking is available but you need to pre-book it via ticketek on 132 849. All vehicles will need to have a valid sticker displayed.

Food. We have learned in the past, that tourism spots, events and public holiday destinations, the food are often doubled or perhaps tripled. The alternate is the pricing remains similar on normal outlets but the quantity of food is minimal. Least to say, food is very expensive. Make your choice to bring your own food or spend a bit of money and buy.

Budget. Lastly, how much are you willing to pay? Easter show is really really expensive to a point that there’s no point going there because it is that expensive. The last time we went to the show was a good five years ago. Mum paid for this trip and I did stress out to her that it is very very expensive. I said to mum that my kids alone will cost about $500. She was still OK with this so she made a budget for $1,000.00—we were day for 8 hours. So our 8 hour day cost mum $1,000.00! That’s $200 per hour! Mum not made of money OK? But we rarely go to Easter show as well.

At least bring a water bottle with you unless you are willing to pay for it’s steep price as well. We thought we buy everything that day. A bottle of water cost us $4.50! It’s usually under $3.

Costs and Budgets

We took the public transport so I don’t know how much it is for parking. It costed me $106 for 3 kids and 1 adult ticket. This ticket was for our train fare and entry to the Easter show only. Once you get to the Easter Show. There are costs involved. Rides, games, show bags, food all incur additional costs. Some are free too, such as shows, displays, competitions.

Show bags. Costs varies, but you are looking at prices from $10 – $25 or so. Some show bags gets cheaper if you buy the item more than one. For instance, two of our girls wanted the High School Musical bag. It was $10 each or $15 for two—which worked out to be $7.5 each.

Stay cool and calm

Any event you go to where there are a lot of people, and is a big day and kids involved and weather are bound for some clashes with other folks attending events like the Easter Show. Be mindful that there are other people there just wants to have fun as well with their families and want their day to go smoothly as well. So be respectful and don’t get in each others way. Try to anyway. We can get excited and may forget there are other people there as well.

The fun starts

OK, we got those boring bits out of the way. The fun starts. But it will have to wait until the next week’s blog post. Meanwhile if you are intending on going this year, you have today, tomorrow and Wednesday 18th of April 2012.

Next blog post will be the continuation of our Easter Show 2012 – Day of Fun

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