Tall Ships Erie – My Thoughts
Tall Ships Erie will be September 8 – 11, 2016. On this weekend, visitors will be able to view and tour several tall ships docked in Erie, Pennsylvania.
I don’t have any additional information about this year’s festival than what I see on this official website.
However, Jonathan and I spent several hours at Tall Ships Erie in 2013. I share our personal experience here in case it helps anybody who plans to attend this year’s festival.
Let me start by saying that I don’t like large crowds of people. I haven’t even been to Kennywood in years. This swayed my reaction to the festival.
Now, to be fair, I agreed to attend the festival, knowing full well that the tall ships festivals only come to the Great Lakes once every three years. And only in certain cities.
These tall ships don’t stop for any festivals in Cleveland, and Pittsburgh isn’t on a giant lake. So, the Cleveand and Pittsburgh tall ships fans came to . . . Erie!
Just like us.
Also, to be fair, we showed up at this festival in the middle of that weekend’s Saturday afternoon.
I bet that Saturday afternoon was the absolute peak time of the whole shindig.
So, it goes without saying: the festival was horrendously packed when we got there.
Now, Jonathan read the official website / blog prior to 2013 Tall Ships Erie. He felt that this website, and its accompanying blog, started out strong, but as we got closer to festival time, the website stopped being updated as much and lacked some information. For instance, we couldn’t tell from the website where exactly we needed to go in order to enter the festival.
When we got to Erie, we were still confused about where exactly we needed to go in order to actually get into the festival. Therefore, we drove past all of the signs for paid parking lots and shuttle buses. Somehow, we lucked into finding a FREE (and legal!) parking spot next to the water, near where some of the tall ships docked.
A fence separated us from the ships, though. Were was the festival entrance? Or any signs for the festival entrance?
We found no festival staff to offer guidance. (Nor any signs.) We got directions to the ticket booth from a random person.
After we found the ticket booth and paid our admission, we realized that the lines to actually tour any of the tall ships were incredibly long.
For instance, see the below photo of the 2 ships that you needed to to enter Erie’s convention center in order to tour. However, the line coming out of the convention center on the opposite side of the building from these ships contained so many people that we were too intimidated to wait in said queue.
So, instead we just walked around the festival and looked at the outsides of the boats for two hours. By that time, we had about an hour left before the festival closed for the day. We noted that the lines to tour some of the boats were nonexistent. We were able to tour 2 ships and ask questions of the crew in that final hour before the festival closed.
We have plans to attend this again in 2016, but I am nervous about the large crowds.
Here’s a final note: The photos from this blog entry come from 3 places:
1.) 2013 Tall Ships Erie
2.) In September 2015, Jonathan and I sat at the North Pier at Presque Isle State Park in Erie when the U.S. Brig Niagara passed us under full sail.
3.) Earlier this month, the Niagara sailed past the house that we rented in St. Ignace, Michigan. The Niagara then docked in St. Ignace, a short walk from our accommodations. (The Niagara was on its way to a tall ships festival in Chicago.)
Here are my other blog entries about the Niagara:
