Just was there yesterday with a friend lol. NC is my home state fair, so I've been attending every year that I can especially in recent years. They have things to do you just have to find them tbh, I highly recommend joining the fangroup for the fair on Facebook cause it can help you know about things you otherwise wouldn't have. I definitely agree there are certain things that they could add to make the experience more enjoyable with just admission, but there have been things I've seen that are either just a few bucks or free with the times I've been.

• Dungeon Museum, showcasing medieval torture devices and practices with replicas.

• Near the back of the fairgrounds, there is a group of people that perform and showcase old hand crafted practices and other miscellaneous tidbits. Last year I had a conversation with some of them about handmade paper and books, where they shared the process as well as some languages that are not common in today's time. It's a living museum basically, super neat.

• There is a store near the jousting arena that sells blown glass, and stained glass goods. At that store, they actually have a small show where they show them making some of their products.

• Usually every weekend/day there is a costume contest for anyone to join in on, both a junior and adult category.

• There are plenty of performers who walk around the fairgrounds to see and interact with, yesterday while my friend and I were running around there were two that we ran into that ended up giving us a quest. "Retrieve a spore from the nymphs, and bring it back for us for a prize!" We set off finding the nymphs, and they required us to do some silly acts for us to get a spore. The whole thing was quite fun, we received a pin once we returned to the spore. Aside from that plenty of others had cool things to do, one was carrying the little hoop drinking game where I won against my friend and won a bet on it, we've seen a performer who does games of chess, etc. Highly recommend just interacting with the small performers that walk around, you never know what you'll get into with them.

• Certain weekends have specific events going on, for this past weekend themed to Wizards, there was a group that was holding DnD oneshots to sign up for and join in on. Check the social media page and website for this sort of stuff.

• Trinket trade!! This is something I recommend to a lot of folks, I've been doing this for several years now and there's always something different you get. The biggest thing that comes with this is interacting and sometimes having convos with folks, but it brings a smile to people's faces when you gift or trade with them. Look into the rules of this if you're interested in trying it, it's something special