[Ad- gifted experience] The Essex Summer Fest is a weekend festival, aimed at families, where you can enjoy music, fairground rides, a selection of different booths selling items, food stands, and several different stages full of activities and music! To make things even better, the Essex Summer Fest is organised by the local charity Mind in Havering, Barking and Dagenham – which is a charity all around mental health, and the money raised by this fest goes towards helping locals who are struggling with their mental health. It’s a very fun time for a very good cause.
We went to the Essex Summer Fest during a very warm weekend, and were excited! This festival was quite big – the Rock stage was by the entrance, then tons of different fairground rides, then food stalls and shop stalls, before seeing the massive main stage at the other end of the festival grounds. We did our normal huge walk around to get the lay of the land, before I grabbed some food and Kai, Amelia and Robin got some slushies from a slushie tent. This was just needed for the heat.
Then, we started in with rides! Robin absolutely loves the maze fun houses, which they had several different ones of. One of them was pumping out bubbles, which is exactly what attracted Robin. Her and Amelia did a big go at this multistore house, and then we went to hook-a-duck (of which there were several) and found the one that had the coolest prizes. After that, Kai wanted to go on the bumper cars, so we went there next and all of them went on! At this point, it was time for a drinks break, so we got some refreshments and started listening to music.
On the Rock Stage, there were bands more towards Kai, Dann and myself, with smaller tribute acts covering a lot of different rock songs throughout the ages. This was very good and quite a vibe! We spent some time here before heading towards the main stage. On the way over, we took a look at some of the other booths, including a petting zoo where Robin made faces at the goats, and a birds of prey stand where we got to look at some beautiful creatures. We then got to the big main stage.
The two tribute acts that Robin was most looking forward to was Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. We have previously been to a different Taylor Swift tribute act and were excited to see how this one compared as it was a different person. Both of these singers came on at the same time, singing together and dancing, which brought a lot of energy to the stage. This one was full of different kids jumping about too. There was other acts on, like interactive signing, and it was a lot of fun to see the energy there. The Essex Summer Fest was just a fantastic, family-friendly day out that had something for everyone!
You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!