O.C. Fair visitors wolf down 20,000 fried Oreos, raise over $240,000 for agriculture students

Ticket holders to the 2022 Orange County Fair chowed down on a combined 20,000 deep-fried Oreos and raised over $240,000 for local agriculture students amid a dizzying offering of rides and attractions.

A total of 1,055,173 tickets were sold for this year’s event in Costa Mesa by the time it ended on Aug. 14, OC Fair & Event Center officials said in a news release. That’s about 600 shy of the number of visits in 2021. But that’s roughly 338,000 short of attendance figures from 2019, the year before the fair was canceled due in part to the emergent spread of the coronavirus.

This year is the second time admission was restricted to a set number of people, with about 45,000 tickets made available for each day of the 40-day-long event, OC Fair & Event Center spokeswoman Terry Moore said.

Guests managed to pack tons of festivities, and food, into their time in the sun, including:

• 70,600 fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies
  
• 9,000 Canadian lobster tails
  
• 5,000 bacon-wrapped pickles
  
• 3,000 fried avocados
  
• 16,682 hot dogs
  
• 2.5 million carnival rides and games

In addition, 153 animals were sold at the fair’s Junior Livestock Auction, raising $242,967.76 for participants from local 4-H and Future Farmers of America programs. Meanwhile, 20 piglets, five goats and four peachicks were born during the course of the 23-day-long event at Centennial Farm.

In the past, as many as 80,000 visitors would be on the grounds at a time, Moore said. She added that attendance figures that high typically led to overcrowding and long lines, as well as parking and traffic issues that were affecting adjacent neighborhoods.

“That was just too much,” Moore said. “And we actually do make more money this way (with preordered tickets), because we’re not overstaffing it and overproducing.”

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