Once again in the interest of time, I'll be mostly adapting today's post from the last photos and captions from the "Christmastime in the Northwest (PART TWO)" travelogue email I just sent out . . .

Between the two of us, Tracy and I took a lot of selfies of ourselves together at Holiday Magic at the Fair last night—seven of them, in fact. We even took one in front of an even better Holiday Magic sign backdrop, but I thought this one was a better photo of the two of us.

I went to a holiday event at the Washington State Fairgrounds once before, with Alexia back in 2021, and that was "A Victorian Country Christmas." Here I was just thinking "Holiday Magic" was the same event, just expanded and renamed, because like an idiot I had taken Google AI Overview's word for it, because when I Googled "difference between victorian country christmas and holiday magic at the fair," it said this: Victorian Country Christmas was the for the holiday event at the Puyallup Fairgrounds, which is now called Holiday Magic at the Fair, essentially the same event with a fresh, broader name focusing on lights, Santa, ice skating, and a holiday market, while retaining Victorian-themed vendor booths and festive cheer, offering a more expansive modern winter wonderland feel.

Turns out, this was largely correct, except for a key element: the "original name" part. AI Overview is dumb. I said something to Tracy to the effect of it being the same event renamed, and she was like: "I just went to Country Christmas a couple of weeks ago." She went with her sister and cousin and aunt. As it happens, what is now called the Victorian Christmas Festival (they've just removed the "Country" part) still lives—it's just a shorter event at the Fairgrounds earlier in the season (December 4-7), followed by Holiday Magic (December 5-23, so they do have three days of overlap; I should have gone then!). The earlier event is just a Christmas Market, and Holiday Magic focuses much more on light displays, with some market elements.

What delighted me most about Holiday Magic was that, unlike during the Washington State Fair in September, rides are free with admission. This meant we spent more than the first hour just waiting in line for two rides, the first of which was the carousel. This one, thankfully, we got on almost immediately—and then we waited several minutes sitting on the horses, way longer than the duration of the ride itself, before it even started.

I should note that not all the rides run during Holiday Magic; the only ones I noticed, in fact, were the carousel and the Ferris wheel.

The Ferris wheel was by far the longest time commitment, both because by the time we got off the carousel the Ferris wheel line was relatively long, and because they were only filling four of the gondolas at a time. We were very mystified by this, and as we inched closer to the front of the line, at least two groups ahead of us bailed because of sounds the Ferris wheel was making. People were convinced the wheel was not working or was skipping the track somehow.

None of this was correct, and staff eventually assured us the wheel was working properly. The issue was the rain, which made the tracks too wet against the smaller wheels that roll against it to make it spin around. This made them slip, and the filling of only four gondolas at a time was about weight: the wheel simply would not lift people to spin all the way around if more than four gondolas were weighted down. They even loaded Tracy and me into a gondola briefly, then had us get out for a few minutes so they could unload another one first. After that, we re-loaded and the wheel then spun around.

Much more quickly than Ferris wheels usually do, in fact. Or maybe it just felt that way at night, I don't know. You can watch the above video clip and judge for yourself, I guess. In it you can also hear some of the clanging noises the wheel was making that was making some of the people in line nervous. I was just glad to finally get on it; we felt we had gotten way too close to bail. And I wanted my photo of the Fairgrounds from the top, goddammit!

When we got off and headed for some food, the line was at least three times as long as when we first got in it. I was like: these people have no idea. Side note: we entered the Fairgrounds at about 4:50, and we got off the Ferris wheel, having merely gone to two rides by that point, at about 6:15. Totally worth it! Well, this year, anyway. Holiday Magic was . . . fine. But it's another thing I won't be doing every year.

Here's Tracy at what they called The Yeti Bar. We snagged these seats just as another group was leaving; shortly after, while Tracy left to get us food and I saved our seats, still another group came and filled up the other seats around this warm fire. Tracy doesn't drink but I had brought my own hot buttered rum; when she came back with our pizza and soft pretzel ("Bread and cheese!" she said, more than once), she also brought me back a hot chocolate. Tracy doesn't drink, but she had thought I merely brought a flask that I I could pour into the hot chocolate. Instead, I drank down the hot buttered rum a bit, which was already fairly watered down (it was just two shots of rum and a spoonful of buttered rum batter; the rest was merely hot water), and I poured the hot chocolate in there. I never did that before, but it actually worked out relatively well—it cut down the richness of the hot chocolate but slightly added richness to the buttered rum. Also I couldn't easily walk around with that hot chocolate on its own after leaving it next to the fire started to melt the lid.

Anyway, I had initially made plans to take the Sound Transit Express 578 bus that arrived in Puyallup at around 1:00, but then Tracy got her ticket reminder email, which also reminded her that the doors did not open until 4:30. So then I pivoted to the bus that was scheduled to arrive at 4:11, which was just as well as it gave me time to get my laundry done. That bus, by the way, left 9th & Stewart at 2:47 (actually 2:49; it was two minutes delayed), which means it's a bus ride that takes 74 minutes, at least when it runs on schedule. The bus took longer getting back for some reason; I caught the 8:01 bus back from Puyallup Station and it left on time, but was 10 minutes delayed by the time it got back to 9th and Howell. I walked home from there, and I spent the rest of the evening uploading my photos and watching Elf on my computer in the bedroom, as Shobhit was already watching something else in the living room,

Just one more thing I want to mention about the Fair: while we were in line for the Ferris wheel, a middle-aged woman in line ahead of us asked how our Saturday had been. I said I did laundry. She told us she'd had a great day, volunteering at a place right by the Fairgrounds, called the transparent closet, which accepts donations for clothing to give to trans people looking for a safe place for clothing needs. Given the even more heinous news than usual over the past week, it was pretty heartwarming to encounter that. She told us she had a trans daughter; she and a few of her friends were riding the carousel while she held the line for the Ferris wheel. The kids eventually came back, and they were the first of the two groups to bail because they didn't like the sound it was making. That just got us closer to the front of the line! Anyway, it's always nice to see parents that cool, especially out in places like Puyallup.