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The Gold Coast Show is more or less the Gold Coast’s version of Brisbane’s Ekka.  Gold Coast residents get a public holiday to go to the show, similar to Brisbane’s People’s Day show holiday.  There are games, rides, showbags, animals and food similar to the Ekka, but at a much lesser scale.  However, unlike the Ekka, the Gold Coast Show has free entry.  That’s awesome considering it costs $35 for an adult ticket and $20 for a child ticket to enter the Ekka.

Sideshow Alley was of course smaller at the Gold Coast Show than the Ekka.  However, there were still plenty of games and rides to please all ages.  Most of the shooting, throwing and fishing games were present at the same cost per game as the Ekka.  There were a lot of rides for young children, but many of the big rides from the Ekka were missing.

Showbags were more disappointing.  There was only a small tent for showbags shared with other stalls.  The line up was so bad you couldn’t even walk closer to see what was in the showbags.  From what we could see, there wasn’t many different showbags to choose from and they looked like the same ones from the Ekka.

Food was even worse.  We thought we would have lunch early before 12pm to beat the line up.  However, many items at 3 different stalls were already sold out.  There were no shakes available at the shakes and dessert caravan, which was a quarter of their menu.   The soft serve stall shut their serving counter at around 12.30pm after running out of ice cream.  No pork or beef skewers were left from the BBQ skewers stall and we had to wait 30 minutes for our order of chicken skewers, mixed grill skewers and loaded fries.  Some customers got fed up waiting for their food and asked for a refund.

More organization regarding the showbags and food would have been nice.  Luckily, the games and rides made up for them.  You can’t complain about the free entry.  Overall, still a fun day out.