The Maui County Fair is back, returning in October after 6-year absence

The Maui County Fair was a highlight of Josiah Nishita’s childhood, especially “eating all the amazing food.” Now, he wants his three kids, ages 5, 8 and 10, to also have their own experiences and memories from the festive community event.

But they were too little to remember the fair the last time it was held, six years ago in 2019.

So Nishita has been part of Maui County’s effort to revive the fair that began in 1916, but stopped in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and had not resumed due to financial and other reasons.

“It’d be really great to continue on those traditions, not just for my own family, but for many other families around our community,” Nishita said.

So the county stepped up with $1.5 million to bring back the fair. The 98th version will take place Oct. 2 to 5 at the War Memorial Complex in Wailuku, with Daryl Fujiwara, executive director of Festivals of Hawaiʻi, coordinating the event.

“It was such a fun event and tradition — attending the parade or being in the parade, it just creates lifelong memories for our kids growing up,” Nishita said Monday, standing near the Coach Soichi Sakamoto Pool in the War Memorial Complex as a large canopy tent for the event was being erected in the adjacent parking lot. 

The county said via email that the budget breakdown for the $1.5 million in county funds allocated for the fair includes estimates of $1.22 million for operations, $240,000 for personnel and $40,000 for marketing. Sponsorships and admission fees will provide additional funding for the fair.

A traditional parade down Kaʻahumanu Avenue will open the festivities before the gates open.

Bringing back the fair has been an effort of community members and county officials, past and present. Former Mayor Michael Victorino tried to revive the fair before he left office in 2022 and health issues hampered his more recent efforts.

But a few months ago, current Mayor Richard Bissen put $1.5 million in his fiscal year 2025 budget for the nonprofit Festivals of Aloha to revive the event. The Maui County Council approved the funds unanimously in February.

“This is going to be the first time that the County of Maui really has played such a huge role in it, as well as Festivals of Aloha,” Nishita said. “So we’re going to have a better assessment following the fair as to sponsorships and ticket revenues and things like that to determine how much might be needed to support the fair into the future.”

Nishita is hopeful that this year’s county-funded event leads to it happening annually. It certainly was popular in the past, with more than 90,000 people attending the last fair.

Nishita said the large attendance showed “how much people are looking forward to these types of events.” He also said the county sees the fair as a critical community gathering event.

The COVID-19 pandemic stopped the fair from happening in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, the Maui Fair Alliance said securing commitments from service providers, volunteers and vendors proved too challenging to put on the fair. 

At the same time, Joy Zone operator E.K. Fernandez stopped shipping its rides to Neighbor Islands due to rising shipping costs, another blow to the fair revival efforts. 

In 2023, soaring shipping costs again contributed to the cancellation of the fair. Last year, the Maui Fair Alliance announced it was dissolving, leaving few other options other than the county stepping up to fund things if the Maui County Fair was ever to come back.

Now, things are coming into focus. Mayor Bissen announced Monday that the event will have E.K. Fernandez rides in October.

“One of the priorities for Mayor Bissen is really keeping our community together and keeping our community at home,” Nishita said. ”And a big piece of that is having events like this that can help to continue to build and foster those relationships amongst all our community members, which is what makes Maui so special.”

Nishita said the Lahaina and Kula wildfires two years ago heightened the need for community interaction and reconnection that the fair provides.

“What we learned after the August 2023 wildfires is that our community was really, really yearning for activities, events, social things, just to bring people together,” Nishita said. ”And so, even more so, it became that much more important to get an event like this back up and running.”

Fujiwara said his favorite memory of the fair was waiting for his mom to finish her day as a volunteer at the admission area.

“So she would have to go in her booth and then come back and count her till,” Fujiwara said. “I would just wait there patiently with my cotton candy or whatever. And then we would go and enjoy the rest of the festivities.”

Fujiwara said there will be 44 food booths for nonprofit organizations to raise money for their missions, the same number that were available in 2019. There also are plans to pay for transportation to bring people from Lānaʻi and Molokaʻi, most likely families, though details are still being worked out, Fujiwara said.

“We want to make sure it’s a true county fair,” he said.

Scott Fernandez, president of E.K. Fernandez, a family-owned company that’s been providing the rides and games for Hawaiʻi fairs and carnivals for more than a century, said that the company misses Maui. The 98th Maui County Fair will be the first Neighbor Island venture for E.K. Fernandez since 2019.

Fernandez was on site Monday in the War Memorial Gym parking lot, helping to put up the large canopy tent that will house several exhibits, food booths, entertainment and exhibitions.

“It’s part of tradition,” Fernandez said. “I grew up with the fair. I remember what it was down at the old fairgrounds, the racetrack. I remember the steeplechase races, so it’s been part of our history for a long, long time.”

Fernandez said the cost to transport the 45 containers of rides and equipment for the four-day run is “not north of a half million (dollars), but it’s approaching it.”

Fernandez added, “It’s great to be back, very excited about it, happy to be bringing the joy and the fun and all the stuff the people of Maui have been missing for … over a half decade.”

The rides will be familiar with a couple new additions, Fernandez said.

“We’ll bring the Wave Swinger, Super Scissor, Big Ferris Fury, Seven Seas, and Zero Gravity, my new coaster, my big family coaster … and some of the old favorites,” Fernandez said. “So then we’ll have the games and we’ll have a couple of food trailers, funnel cakes and cotton candy and all that stuff.”

With the War Memorial Gym under construction, the plans have to be altered a bit, according to Fujiwara, to make the fair as close to what it has been in the past.  

“The footprint is pretty much going to be the same, just moving some of those components to other places,” Fujiwara said. “We really wanted to try to maintain the traditional things. So, almost everything is pretty much the same in terms of the blueprint.”

Traditions like the Healthy Baby Contest will be part of the fair and there will be daily entertainment that is set to be announced at a later date, Fujiwara said. 

Victorino was the fair director from 1997 to 2006. He is overjoyed to see the event return, crediting Fujiwara and the Festivals of Aloha for coordinating the event.

“Six years is a long time to wait to bring it back,” Victorino said. “I tried my best before I left office (in 2022) and it took three more years to get it done. But it’s done and we’re going to have it on October. I’m wishing everybody the best. I want everybody to attend. This is going to be fun, food and family.”

The 2019 event cost $740,000 to put on, according to Avery Chumbley, the longtime fair director who first got involved with the fair as an exhibitor in 1985. He went on to manage the horticultural and agricultural exhibits the next two years and took over as fair director in 1988. 

Now 40 years later, many of those years spent as the fair director, he is encouraged to see the effort to revive the fair coming to fruition.

“No one wants to see the fair return and be successful more than I do,” Chumbley said. “It takes a large community of people and people with commitment and time to be able to do something like that.”

Yuki Lei Sugimura, the Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee chair for the County Council, said the much-beloved annual community event has not been forgotten. Sugimura, who holds the Upcountry residency seat on the council, said approving $1.5 million for the fair was not a hard decision for her committee.

“It’s lifetime memories,” Sugimura said. “Because all of us, our children grew up there and had that county fair to look forward to every year. They remember candy apple — St. Anthony School did the candy apple booth, Wailuku Hongwanji did chow fun. … Everybody remembers their days at the Maui County Fair.”

Bissen encouraged potential food vendors (nonprofits only), product and service vendors, parade participants, volunteers and sponsors to sign up to receive information on this year’s event. Nonprofit food vendor applications are being accepted now, with a deadline of Aug. 8. Application and interest forms are available at themauifair.com.