County Fair Culminates a Yearlong Team Effort : Entertainment: The event, which opens Wednesday, involves 6,000 workers to plan the carnival rides, food, music and exhibits.

Suzanne Wilson asked Tom Jones sometime in March to bring his gold chains and polyester act to the Ventura County Fair.

A month later, Phyllis Kidd persuaded George A. Hormel & Co. to sponsor a cooking contest featuring Spam, the pink molded meat that, for some reason, is making a comeback.

And by the start of summer, Devlin Raley had put the finishing touches on this year’s beribboned fair poster and sent it to the printer.

Minor tasks, given the enormity of the organizational machine that is needed to create a Ventura County Fair. But Wilson, Kidd and Raley are just three of the 6,000 workers it takes each year to put on the county’s most popular and longest-running party.

With this year’s opening day just three days away, the bulk of the planning needed to bring together more than 100 carnival rides and games, 60 food trailers, dozens of musical acts and 6,000 exhibitors is already done, fair officials said.

“It really is an invisible process,” said the fair’s publicist, Teri Raley. “People say to us all the time, ‘Well, what do you do the rest of the year?’ They don’t realize that building a fair is a year-round operation.”

This year’s event, which begins Wednesday and continues daily through Aug. 27, is expected to draw about 250,000 people, officials said. Some will come from as far away as San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties, lured by a midweek fair package offered by Amtrak and tourism officials in Ventura and Oxnard.

Others will arrive on the popular weekend Metrolink runs that bring hordes of Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Moorpark residents west to the gates of Seaside Park for a day of enjoyment.

Many more will come from such cities as Ventura, Santa Paula, Oxnard and Port Hueneme, whose residents’ deep farming and ranching roots have had a large role in shaping the century-old extravaganza into what is is today.

What they will find, fair organizers say, is something for everybody, from dusty rodeos, hand-sewn quilts and racing pigs to strolling mariachis, rapper Queen Latifah and nightly fireworks.

For the first time, fair-goers will also be able to take advantage of the new Derby Club at Seaside Park. Admission to the $5.7-million mecca of off-track, televised horse racing is free with fair admission to visitors 18 and older. Returning for a third year are the Metrolink runs. The trains depart Simi Valley and make stops in Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard, transportation officials said. Round-trip fare from Simi Valley and Moorpark is $6; from Camarillo and Oxnard, $4.

Tickets may be purchased in advance at Simi Valley, Moorpark and Camarillo city halls or at the train stations on day of travel, officials said.

About 2,000 parking spaces are available at Seaside Park for $5 a day. Groundskeepers earlier this year repaved and re-striped Seaside Park’s vast parking lot, squeaking in a few more spaces, Teri Raley said.

But for the thousands who won’t get into the fair’s main parking lot, off-site parking is available at nearby San Buenaventura State Beach for $5 day.

Free parking is available at three Ventura locations: Lots E and F off Telephone Road at the Ventura County Government Center, the Buenaventura Mall and Ventura High School off Poli Street. Free shuttle service every half-hour will transport off-site parkers to the fair.

The cost of admission is the same as last year, $6 for adults, $3 for children 6 to 12 years old and seniors 55 or older, and free to children 5 and under.

Discounts on tickets for carnival rides are available, but only if purchased before the fair’s opening day, officials said. Early-bird tickets cost $20 for 20 tickets, one ticket per ride.

During the fair, tickets are 60 cents each and rides require from two to five tickets, officials said. Early-bird tickets can be purchased at the fair’s administrative offices in Seaside Park.

A Grandstand Arena appearance on the first day of the fair by Tom Jones is expected to draw a large audience, not just from adoring middle-aged fans but from a new crop of MTV-aged followers, Teri Raley said.

“Apparently he’s on some video that is getting play on MTV,” she said. “He’s had a resurgence of popularity and just has enormous drawing power.”

Lining up Jones and other acts for the 10,000-seat Grandstand Arena and 2,000-seat Miller Stage began in March, Raley said. That’s when Wilson of Wilson Productions, the fair’s booking company, delivered a list of possible acts to the fair’s board of directors, she said.

Other acts expected to lure large audiences include Latifah, country music star Boy Howdy and ballroom crooners Ed Ames and Kay Starr, she said. Stock car races, a demolition derby and three days of rodeos are also predicted to be top-drawing events, she said.

Entrance to the Grandstand Arena events is free with fair admission.

It took two years for Kidd to bring a Spam cook-off to the fair. But it apparently has been worth the wait, Kidd said.

Entries for the Aug. 22 cooking competition filled up faster than the fair’s traditional home arts draw, the lemon meringue pie contest, she said.

“Sales of Spam across the United States have just taken off and they can’t keep up with production,” Kidd said. “Its popularity is amazing.”

This year’s Spam winner will have to settle for taking home a blue ribbon, but starting with next year’s fair, the winner will get a slot in the national Spam Cook-off, Kidd said.

Although fair organizers are adding new contests, lining up sponsors and improving layout of booths and rides all year long, things really kick into high gear after the competition guide is published in early June, Teri Raley said.

That booklet details the fair’s 5,100 classes of competition, from table settings with a theme of “Celestial Evenings” to the showing and auction of livestock raised by 4-H youngsters, she said.

“People start calling immediately,” Raley said. “They say, ‘OK, I’ve got Aunt Alice’s tatting. Where does that go?’ ”

In July, fair administrators hold a clerk school for the hundreds of temporary paid staff who will perform the tedious job of logging more than 20,000 exhibit entries, including jars of pickled relish, stacks of amateur and professional photographs and bushels of vegetables and fruit.

All the work comes to a head this week, Raley said. All that is left now are last-minute details and putting the polish on the fair’s look, she said.

And when the first visitors stream through the gates Wednesday, many of the fair employees and volunteers who have helped put it together feel a sense of pride, Raley said.

“There is a collective pleasure,” she said. “The guests you’ve been waiting for are here.”