How not to be lost at the PA Farm Show
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – There’s no doubt the Pennsylvania Farm Show is a lot of fun, but getting to something you want to see can be challenging, frustrating, and tiring.
There are two simple reasons for this. Number one, the Farm Show is big; it has almost one million square feet (about 23 acres) of indoor exhibit space, stretching about five city blocks.
Number two, those five city blocks of space are split up into 11 halls and three arenas, plus assorted connecting corridors. This can make it very easy to lose your way,
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If you’re the sort of person who’s perfectly happy to wander into the Farm Show at no particular entrance, with no particular plan, stroll around with no particular destination, and just see what you may see, then go for it. With all the things the Farm Show has to offer, you won’t be disappointed.
If, on the other hand, you want to see a specific exhibit or event, you’ll want to know where it is, when it is, and the best way to get there. So how do you plan your journey?
History of the Pennsylvania Farm Show
A good way to start is with a map. Here’s the map of the complex that appears on the Farm Show website. It’s a .pdf file, which you can download and/or print here. (If you’re traveling in a group, you might want to print out copies for everybody!)
THIS LINK will take you to the 2024 Farm Show Visitors Guide. (Be warned, it’s 100 pages long, though much of it is advertising.)
THIS LINK will take you to an alphabetical list of exhibitors.
THIS LINK will take you to a day-by-day schedule of events.
You can use these links to help figure out what you want to see, and on what day. You might also want to check out the link below to find out about parking:
2024 Pennsylvania Farm Show: Where should you park?
When you look at the lists of exhibitors and events, you’ll notice everything has a two or three-letter code. Those are abbreviations for the Farm Show buildings and locations within the buildings. (They exist to save space in the lists and schedules.) In alphabetical order, they are:
BH – PA Preferred® Banquet Hall
CCC – Crossroads Conference Center
CCS – PA Preferred® Culinary Connection Stage
CL – Cameron Street Lobby
EH – East Hall
EL – East Maclay St. Lobby
GEX – Giant Expo Hall
KCC – Keystone Conference Center
LFS – Lancaster Farming Stage
LS – Lower Spine
MH – Main Hall
MHS – Main Hall Stage
NE – Northeast Hall
NH – North Hall
NHA – New Holland Arena
NW – North West Hall
US – Upper Spine
If you look at the Exhibitor listing, you will see each entry has a location code and a booth number. If you want to check out, say, the Keystone Oliver Collectors Club, a look at the list will show you can find it in the Giant Exhibition Hall (GEX) at Booth 2308.
2024 Pennsylvania Farm Show: Times for each day
The Farm Show Schedule of Events lists the halls and stages where the events take place. It also shows you when events will start.
Would more detailed maps help? The Farm Show website had links to maps of the Main Hall, The North and Northeast Halls, and the New Holland Arena and Giant Expo Center. These show the layout of the booths and event areas.
So you have your maps, and you’ve planned your route through the Farm Show, but there’s one variable you can’t control – crowds. Crowd sizes vary from light in the morning (usually) to heavier in the evening (usually) to human gridlock on the weekends (usually). There’s really no way to predict this or plan for this. About the only thing you can do is assume the worst, and allow lots of extra time for threading your way through the bottlenecks. This also applies to driving – the safest plan is to expect traffic to back up on roads and parking lots.
And if you’re traveling in a group, and members of the group want to split up and go to different parts of the Farm Show, it’s a really good idea to set a time and place to all get back together.
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