ren fest returns

Texas Renaissance Festival calls Houston lords and ladies to mead up for ale, performances, and more

Barbarian Bombshells Texas Renaissance Festival

The Barbarian Bombshells perform four times each day.

Photo by Caleb Pickens via The Barbarian Bombshells/Facebook

Lords and ladies — and fans of mead: guess what’s back?

The Texas Renaissance Festival has officially opened its doors for the 49th season, welcoming people of all ages to come experience the magic of the nation’s largest and most acclaimed festival of food, fun, and immersive Renaissance experiences. Located one hour north of Houston, the festival takes place over eight themed weekends, running now through Sunday, November 26.

More than 51,000 people attended last week’s opening weekend celebration of The Queen’s Birthday — that’s 33 percent higher attendance than last year’s opening weekend and 43 percent higher than 2021. TRF expects to welcome more than half a million visitors to this year’s event.

The festival’s 55-acre Renaissance village transports visitors to a fantasy world of jugglers, bards, acrobats, games, rides, restaurants, pub crawls, and more than 400 shoppes and artisans. With 21 stages, The King’s Feast, contests and themed celebrations each weekend, there is something for everyone. Parents get free admission for children five and under every Saturday and kids 12 and under every Sunday.

This year’s festival will also host two Deaf Awareness Weekends: this Saturday and Sunday (aka the Weekend of 1001 Dreams) and November 18-19 (for Highland Fling Weekend). These weekends will feature American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters at dozens of shows and events taking place.

“It has been our honor to host Deaf Awareness events every year since 2015, to celebrate diversity and create more inclusive and accessible festival experiences for our deaf, deafblind and hard of hearing patrons,” said Todd Wold, marketing director for the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Here is a full list of Ren Fest's themed weekends, per the lords at Ren Fest.

Oct. 14-15: 1001 Dreams
This weekend is devoted to fairies, elves, and other fanciful. Attendees may participate in the fantasy costume contest or show off their skills in the fiery dragon-wing eating contest. As noted above, this weekend is also a Deaf Awareness weekend featuring American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters for Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing patrons.

Oct. 21-22: Pirate Adventure
This weekend features a Best Dressed Pirate costume contest and a Fish-N-Chips eating contest.

Oct. 28-29: All Hallows Eve
Extra ghouls and ghosts will appear throughout the grounds. Attendees may participate in a Halloween costume contest and Kettle Korn eating contest — both for “spook-tacular” prizes.

Nov. 4-5: Heroes and Villains
Indulge in creative anachronisms at this weekend devoted to heroes and villains both real and fictional from across time. Does that mean Hercules versus Thanos in this weekend's costume content? Maybe. Or they'll square off in the gyro eating contest.

Nov. 11-12: Barbarian Invasion
Feasting and plundering will be featured as attendees compete in the worst dressed barbarian and a turkey leg eating contest.

Nov. 18-19: Highland Fling
If it's not Scottish, it's crap at this weekend that features Highland games, a Bonnie Knees costume contest, and a haggis eating contest (recitation of Robert Burns strongly encouraged). This is also a Deaf Awareness weekend featuring American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters for Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing patrons.

Nov. 24-26: Celtic Christmas
As always, the event wraps up with a three-day celebration of the coming Yule-tide season. The entire village is decorated for the holiday with festive music, a costume contest, a pumpkin pie eating contest, and a chance to shop the vendors at a discount.

Stay and Play:
More than 200 acres of camping facilities offer a great value for patrons and families who spend the weekend. New Stay and Play packages that offer a great value for patrons and families who stay for the weekend. They include:

Festival admission for both Saturday and Sunday
Weekend camping pass (Thursday to Monday) at the Fields of New Market
Access to special Fields of New Market events, including fun activities for kids at the Apprentice Gazebo
Excitement for adults with admission to The Knight’s Club after hours party (age 21+).

The Texas Renaissance Festival has established daily capacity limits to ensure that every patron experiences the festival at its best, so advance ticket purchases are advised.

For more info and tickets, go here.

Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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ren fest returns

Texas Renaissance Festival calls Houston lords and ladies to mead up for ale, performances, and more

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