State Fair of Texas attendance slightly up for 2026

We're taking another live look at Fair Park. Can you believe it, guys? The State Fair of Texas is over. It's hard to believe. It's like, came and went. Joining me to talk about this fair season, our friend Carissa Condigliano. Carissa, first tell me about the food drive that's happening. Well, howdy. Well, you know, the state, 2026 State Fair of Texas closed last night. We welcomed nearly 2.1 million people to the state fair but we are back on the fairgrounds this morning collecting leftover ingredients of some of your favorite fair food and we are actually our vendors are donating those so that we can get them directly into the south dallas fair park community to feed people in need possibly as early as tonight carissa you mentioned it right off the top a big concern this year was attendance and cost you mentioned the attendance how is that is that better than last year that is we we finished above last year um so we're we're really pleased to have welcomed nearly 2.1 million fairgoers and finished ahead of last year you know we recognize that attendance varies from year to year we continually look at how to deliver the best possible experience and value for our guests. We're also proud of the impact this year's fair will help support throughout the year as well. And the weather was more pleasing. It wasn't extremely hot. It was warm, but it wasn't extremely hot. Didn't have a bunch of rain out days. Cost was another concern. What's been the early feedback that you guys heard from fairgoers in reference to cost? Yeah, you know, providing more value was an important priority for us this year. We lowered admission prices and parking prices and made children's admission $10 every day. We're pleased to have welcomed more guests than last year. And we recognize attendance is influenced by many factors. And we wanted to make sure we started with what we could control because we only are able to set the admission and parking. All of our vendors out here are small business owners and families that are operating these booths. And so they set their own prices but we felt by going and showing them what we are doing to make a difference then we were able to ask them to you know hey join us in these efforts to create more value and more access for families at the fair as you mentioned we did face some weather challenges early in the run of the fair including some extreme heat for this time of year than we usually have and then we had some severe storms that delayed our opening on at least one of the days and and impacted that since we're largely an outdoor event, but we can't quantify really how much impact that had. We're just grateful for who came out and the experience they had out here at the fair. And having the event for basically a month, there's going to be some minor incidents, but correct me if I'm wrong, no major incidents when it came to public safety at the fair. Yeah, we had a really safe state fair this year. You know, when you bring more than 2 million people together across 24 days, you know, Little things can pop up. We did have the incident on the midway early one morning where one of our game booths caught on fire and watching the community within the fairgrounds come together to help those owners and operators operating the two booths that were impacted by that was incredibly moving to witness. I got pretty emotional watching it that day to see that we were able to all come together pool our resources to get those small business owners back up and running before we'd even closed that same day man it's hard to believe that it's over i'm i'm not gonna lie i was only able to get out to Fair Park once more than two million people visited the fair this year more than last year which i know we reported a lot about the attendance and the cost Karissa Kondyannis with the State Fair of Texas, thank you for your time. Thank you all.