If the Cooper County Fair is on your calendar for next week, there’s a wrinkle worth knowing about before you load up the car: the company that was supposed to run the carnival rides just went out of business.
Amusement Associates LLC, the contractor hired to run the fair’s midway, shut down operations on Monday, July 14 — one week before the fair opens July 21. The company said it simply couldn’t afford to keep its rides insured. “Amusement Associates LLC has ceased operations effective immediately as we are unable to insure our rental amusements and rides,” the company said in a statement reported by KOMU 8. Liability coverage alone was running the company $6,000 to $7,000 per event, and rising labor costs on top of that pushed it into the red.
That leaves the Cooper County Fair Board scrambling with a week to spare. The board says it’s “looking into every possibility and option” to salvage carnival rides for this year’s fair, according to KOMU’s reporting. The most promising lead so far: an Oklahoma-based ride operator is expected to contact the board about picking up the contracts Amusement Associates left unfilled.
What that means for fairgoers is still up in the air. The fair itself is still set to run July 21 through 25 — it’s specifically the carnival contract that’s now the open question, not the rest of the schedule. Whether the midway looks like it normally does, Ferris wheel and all, depends on whether a replacement operator signs on in time. If a trip to the fair is built around the rides for your kids, it’s worth a call to the fair board before you go, rather than assuming the carnival will be there as usual.
It’s also a small window into a pressure a lot of traveling-carnival operators are under these days: insurance costs that can make or break a season, sometimes with only days’ notice to the fairs counting on them. For Cooper County, that pressure landed about as inconveniently as it could — a week before the gates open, with the fair still short a midway and the board working the phones to fill it.