Maui Fair fans already longing for 2023
Organizers mulled food trucks, fewer rides, but ultimately had to cancel
No chow fun. No marching band. No fair. Again.
Nonprofit organizations, youth groups and schools who rely on the Maui Fair to showcase their groups, fundraise and educate the community will miss Maui’s largest event and festivities for the third straight year as officials this week cancelled this year’s fair. Organizers said they mulled food trucks or fewer rides but ultimately faced too many issues over shipping rides, getting a work crew from the jail and contracting suppliers with limited time.
While those who would usually participate understand the reasons for the latest cancellation, they still long for the gathering — which draws about 90,000 annually — once again at the War Memorial complex.
“Our students really do look forward to the parade, as it is a great way to participate in a huge community event,” said Maui High Band Director Kerry Wasano on Friday. “Many people come to see the parade and in many instances, it is the one and only chance for them to see our band perform.”
Wasano said the last group of students that marched in a parade are currently juniors. They would be seniors in the fair parade this year.
“It has also been such a tradition for years. I remember the excitement as a student to be able to march in the parade,” said Wasano, a graduate of Maui High.
COVID-19 was the driving factor behind the cancellation of the fair in 2020 and 2021. But this year, organizers had hoped the event could go through. Restrictions on travel, gathering and masking have been lifted, and major in-person events like concerts have started making a comeback.
“We felt that the COVID-19 situation had changed enough that from a COVID potential exposure risk (standpoint), that we would be able to do it,” Maui Fair Alliance Board President Avery Chumbley said Friday. “It was all the other logistics that became the problem.”
Fair organizers said earlier this week that E.K. Fernandez, the operator of the popular Joy Zone that offers rides, told the Maui Fair Alliance Board that it would not be doing Neighbor Island fairs in 2022 as it faced high shipping costs and staff shortages.
The company is also the supplier of the massive tents that span the food, entertainment and commercial exhibit areas, Chumbley said.
Another challenge was the lack of a Maui Community Correctional Center workline crew. Chumbley said that in the past, the jail has provided a work crew to help with the setup and breakdown but is no longer doing so.
“It’s not a community-accessible opportunity like it had been in the past,” Chumbley said. “So even without the workline crew it made it nearly impossible to put up all these food booths and take them back down.”
The dozens of food booths are among the most popular attraction, drawing longtime fairgoers for favorite dishes prepared by local clubs, schools and churches.
The Rev. Shinkai Murakami of Wailuku Hongwanji Mission said Friday that he misses the fair, during which the church sold chow fun. But he was quick to add that the church will hold a mini chow fun sale this summer.
Murakami said that every year before the fair started, he would bless the fair’s office workers. Maybe they will call him in 2023, he joked.
Michael Munekiyo, chairman of the Wailuku Hongwanji Mission Board said, that pre-COVID they had several fundraising events throughout the calendar year and that the Maui Fair was a major one.
“It accounts for more than 60 percent of our budgeted income from
fundraisers,” he said Friday afternoon.
Munekiyo added that the church is “trying to kickstart and be creative with fundraising now that things are getting back to ‘almost normal.’ ”
Brian McCafferty, who heads Teens On Call, a paid work skills training program for teenagers, said the youth in his program have been cleaning up the grounds for years and enjoy it.
“We have a good time,” he said, noting the highlight for the teens is that “they get to have anything they want to in the food court” for their meal break.
McCafferty said they would schedule various shifts for the teens since the fairgrounds at War Memorial are large, and the fair runs all day on Saturdays and Sundays, which requires more staff.
The shifts would run four hours each, and there would be six to 10 teens scheduled to work per shift.
“Nothing like the county fair,” McCafferty said, pointing out that the “whole community of all ages” gathers.
He said he was not surprised about the fair announcement, as he said he has been keeping in touch with people on the fair board and understood the hurdles the fair organizers needed to go through to make it happen.
Chumbley said organizers had weighed alternatives, such as food trucks, instead of food booths run by different organizations. But he pointed out that 20 food trucks wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand that the 40 or so food booths often face, and that the purpose of the food sales is to help nonprofits make money.
They also considered a downsized Joy Zone — E.K. Fernandez had said it could possibly bring six to eight rides, compared to the 21 the fair normally has, and a game tent half its usual size. But the shipping still would’ve cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the Joy Zone would’ve been roughly the size of a fair in the 1960s or 70s, Chumbley said.
Ultimately, there just wasn’t enough time to ink contracts and secure commitments. Fair organizers typically have agreements signed in December and January, when the state was still under COVID-19 restrictions and uncertainty.
“While others are still having the opportunity to do events, three months worth of preparation and planning isn’t enough to do a four-day event for 90,000 people,” Chumbley said.
He said he couldn’t speculate on what attractions might return for the 98th Maui Fair.
“I am optimistic that in 2023 we’ll be able to do something,” he said. “What that may look like — today, May the 6th, I can’t predict, and I wouldn’t try to. I don’t want to speculate on what it might look like because we want the fair to be like it’s always been. We want 90,000 people to come.”