Peanut Festival comes to close after attendance jump

This year’s National Peanut Festival has come and gone, and now the festival’s president can look back on the ups and downs of the previous week.

According to President George Jeffcoat, the festival saw an increase in attendance over last year’s, a fact he attributes to a combination of value deals and new attractions.

“It’s been a successful year, slightly up from last year,” Jeffcoat said shortly after the midway opened for the final time Sunday. “I think one thing that helped us is it’s reasonable entertainment close to home, which we tried to stress early in the season. We had lot of specials this year, like $10 Tuesday and several armband specials. We also had the Peanut Pavilion, an educational sampling area where we had peanut-related products to sample every night. That was a hit for a lot of people.”

Another aspect that separated this year’s festival came as a result of the carnival company, Reithoffer Shows.

“I think the rides were the biggest difference,” Jeffcoat said. “We’ve got some bigger rides, some of the faster rides, (and) the young people have been commenting on those. Sometimes (in the past) we’ve had two or three of the same rides, but this year, we didn’t have as many duplicate rides as we’ve had in the past. The ferris wheel had an LED light package on it this year, which put on a light show, and that aspect was real popular.”

One of the biggest attractions at the festival every year is the amount of arts and crafts exhibits, and this year wa sno different.

“A lot of folks just came out for the food and to see the exhibits,” Jeffcoat said. “We’ve always had a lot of community support with the arts and crafts as well as the livestock exhibits.”

Of course, the entire festival didn’t go off without a hitch.

According to Jeffcoat, parking and pedestrian traffic issues need to be addressed next year.

“We’ve had some problems with our parking lots, and our arts and crafts people have had some problems getting in through the crowd,” he said. “We’re gonna make some improvements on that for people trying to get their stuff in and out of here. We’ve had a lot of ideas going on about how we can improve, and we’re gonna sit down the first of the year with each committee and try to figure out what we can do to make the whole thing better.”