Dakota County Fair

We love going here for our yearly fair experience! We can get our fried food fix, animal barn enjoyment, rides, and commercial barns perusing while still being in a smaller, quieter environment than the state fair.We arrived early this year, at about 8:30, and I loved it! It was cooler and less crowded. The only food vendor that was open was the Farmington bakery, but the food was good! In the future, I believe I will come early again. For a reference point, I'm one of the few crazy people that don't like the state fair. (Shhh!) It's far too many people for me.

Our family has been to this fair about 5 times over a 20 year period. One thing thats unique is the old Dakota Village. When my son was one, I had an old time photo taken here. I think the studio is gone. The old village includes an old bank, church, general store, barber shop, train depot, etc. The fair had some food trucks and newer is the craft beer garden. This included local beer from Spiral in Hastings and Bald Man in Eagan. Good job on that. Other buildings are open class and 4H exhibits and commercial vendors. A little letdown was Johny Holm was to start at 830 and started at 9. The regular beer garden also had Budweiser products. Monday and Sunday were free admission nights but it rained Monday. Admission $5 each and parking $5. Grandstand shows extra. Its a cool fair but could be so much better.

Being the second largest fair in Minnesota in the shadow of the MN State Fair can be daunting but the Dakota County Fair does a good job at keeping its silver status.You will find everything you could find at the state fair like fried food, carnival rides and farm animals plus a little extra small town pizazz like a museum dedicated to the early settlers of Southern Minnesota and a small village complete with a real working general store, newspaper press, ice cream parlor and even a jail! And don't forget the exotic animal petting zoo.Plenty of cheese curds and corn dogs to go around too, you never want to wander a fair on an empty stomach.

So I went to the fair on a day I could have died. We were an hour late to the "Bulls and Barrels" show held at the grand stand. Shortly after arriving a 1500 lb. bull got loose out of his pen and for 3-4 minutes wrecked havoc in the parking lot injuring 9 people. There was ambulances, police and even a medivac all in the area and they quarantined us inside the gated stadium. I grabbed my iPhone as it happened and captured the entire melee. All the major local news channels including some national news aired my video of the episode which was cool and I got credited for it. Rabbit agility is a total fail, but its so bad that its quite funny watching the rabbit drop poop pellets down the ramp and bite at the harness it wears. A couple times its human master even dragged it up or down the ramps to try and get it to start hopping again. I can't believe I have come 5 years to the fair now and each year I wanted to see this, and it turns to be a complete letdown. Has some unique fair food that you won't find at the State Fair including deep fried grilled cheese, deep fried PB&J on a stick, and cream cheese banana bread. See my photos for ratings of each of these, and then some. Classic carnie rides, but beware of the games. Rides are with tickets only and games are cash only so don't buy tickets for the games like I do every year and never remember. All the games are the worst ones to play and no one ever wins such as: shoot out the star, ring the bottle, knock down the bottles, etc.

Good place to beAnd the people there are cool and the people showing are cool and I recommend the demo derby

Me and my friends went to the fair to hang out. Afterwards we went to the parking lot and decided to take some pictures of our trucks in the back of the lot. There were some other trucks back there with the same idea. A Polaris side by side full of sassy fair employees pulled up as we started taking pictures. They claimed we were doing burn outs in the grass and said that we have been loitering for an hour+. They said the cops were on their way. They were threatening us so I had to pull up my dash cam footage for the cop of us sitting there for 2 min taking a few pictures. I am leaving a one star review because these employees at the fair are extremely childish and unprofessional.

Went to the fair specifically for the derby with some friends. went to the entrance to park and paid $25 just to park. we SPECIFICALLY told the woman working the entrance that we were there for the fair and asked if it was still open. she said yes and proceeded to take our money and let us in. we go to the derby entrance to pay to get in less than 5 minutes later and they tell us it's been sold out for an hour. we asked for a refund at the entrance we came in so we could go home. they directed us to the office (that was about a mile walking distance away). we went in and were treated like children and were laughed at and turned away for "not knowing how the fair works" what kind of customer service is this place providing? do not waste your time or money on this joke. we will never return. scott county fair here we come.

The people that are in the front office are pathetic. We went to the fairgrounds just for the demo derby and we came into the entrance off of county 3. At the entrance it says no refunds. We paid $25 at the entrance and asked the worker if we were able to drive to close parking to the demo derby. She then says yes and confirms our asking that the derby was in fact still going and we made it clear that we were only there for the derby. Once we got to the gates outside the derby they had told us that we were no longer able to get inside! We had planned to go the second half just to see a family friend that had gone in the derby show and then proceed to leave the grounds. But we were unable to attend for the one derby show. We then got directed to the front office where we calmly talked to the employees. They were very impatient with us. And I never get upset or angry about these small things and wanted to just get our $25 back and leave. But we paid $25 and wasn't able to get into the derby because of their poor communication with the people at the gates. No radios no phone calls. The people at the gate had no clue that they weren't accepting people into the derby.The women in the office literally kept giving each other looks and laughing like it was funny. Not okay. I will never be going back. They are extremely rude and do not deserve our money.