Neighbors, guests fed up with ‘horrible’ traffic at Carolina Renaissance Festival

Residents near the longtime Carolina Renaissance Festival in northern Mecklenburg County say they are fed up with ongoing, hours-long traffic backups on their formerly country road each weekend of the popular fall event.

Neighborhood Facebook groups are full of complaints about the “horrible” backups on Poplar Tent Road, as one neighbor posted, according to a Charlotte Observer review of posts on the social network.

A homeowner about 1.5 miles from the festival entrance said it took him three hours to get to a nearby Harris Teeter grocery store on Saturday, Oct. 16, because of festival traffic. “3 hours!” he repeated.

Vowed a man on Facebook on Oct. 16: “I will never ever go back to the Carolina Ren Fest! 2 hours on Poplar Tent Road just to get to the entrance is absolutely ridiculous!!”

This year’s 28th annual festival and artisan marketplace opened on Oct. 2 and continues 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Nov. 21, except in extreme weather, according to its website, Carolina.Renfestinfo.com. That’s 16 total festival days.

The festival in Huntersville is about 20 miles north of uptown Charlotte, near the Mecklenburg-Cabarrus county line.

‘Traffic is horrendous’

Tens of thousands of visitors pack the festival’s 25 acres as hundreds of costumed characters re-create a 16th-century European marketplace. Visitors cheer knights jousting on horseback in an arena, and musicians, comedians and other entertainers on any of 16 stages. They watch falconry demonstrations and admire Queen Isabella and her court.

But neighbors say they’ve had enough of the ongoing traffic nightmare.

“If I didn’t already buy tickets I would have turned around a long time ago,” the man who posted his complaint on Facebook on Oct. 16 wrote.

“yeahhhh that traffic is horrendous during Ren Fest,” a woman replied. “For that reason I may never go.”

Festival officials agree the “pace of traffic flow needs to be greatly improved,” Jeff Siegel, the festival’s producer, told the Observer on Thursday.

COVID cabin fever?

More carloads than ever are packing into the festival this year, likely due to cabin fever from the COVID-19 pandemic, Siegel said. The pandemic canceled last year’s festival.

The traffic is worse this year even though “we do not slow down arriving traffic to collect parking fees,” Siegel said.

“This is the first year it’s been this bad,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officer Blake Page told the Observer on Thursday.

CMPD oversees security at the event, which is fully staffed this year with off-duty officers, Page said. Off-duty police mostly from neighboring agencies work traffic detail at the event, he said.

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Huntersville police also are aware of the concerns and took part in a Zoom meeting this week with nearby residents, Sgt. Odette Saglimbeni told the Observer. But CMPD coordinates the off-duty police presence at the festival, and “we simply assist in filling positions,” she said.

The Huntersville Fire Department also has “heard some grumbling from local residents,” spokesman Bill Suthard said. The department’s Station 3 responds to the festival as needed, he said, “and we have not experienced any delay in response. We typically take the other lane into oncoming traffic; which yields accordingly.”

The festival has hired EMT staff who are on duty there each day, “and we’re not summoned there as much, as they can handle the majority of the medical calls,” Suthard said.

More subdivisions nearby

CMPD’s Page also believes the traffic mess stems in part from people getting outdoors more after the worst of the pandemic.

And new Poplar Tent Road subdivisions may be compounding traffic on the road during the festival, Page and Siegel said.

“While many of the large subdivision communities near and adjacent to the fairgrounds were constructed in the last 2-10 years, our position is not about being here first, as a long-standing activity for near three decades,” Siegel wrote in his email. “Our desire is to (e)ffect any possible improvements and to be a good neighbor to all residents.”

“Poplar Tent Road and N.C. 73, like many metro area roads, are under capacity for daily use, even without the seasonal festival impact,” he said.

The festival has tried ways to get drivers into the parking field more quickly, but the effort “is not enough,” Siegel told the Observer. “More needs to be done after this year’s festival concludes to be better for next year.”

Siegel said he made those same admissions and points when he met with concerned neighbors.

“On event days, there is traffic disruption that we strive to control and mitigate,” he said. “Improving that going forward is our number one focus.”

Planned improvements

The festival plans to improve Poplar Tent Road turn lanes into the festival and the entry on N.C. 73 to the festival farm by next year’s event, Siegel said. Improvements to the festival’s parking field also are planned.

“We will create a revised traffic management plan coordinated with professional traffic planners to be reviewed by NCDOT and the Town of Huntersville,” he said.

The festival also is forming a neighborhood stakeholders group with a representative from each nearby subdivision “so we have a focused group to communicate and work with,” he said.

Siegel hopes news of the traffic woes won’t spook people away this weekend, the festival’s two-day Halloween Daze and Spooky Knights event with free admission for all children and trick-or-treating at 100 sites on the grounds.