It’s time: Kiddie Carnival opens Thursday

Published 7:00 pm Tuesday, June 20, 2023

“We are ready for it to start. It’s time to kick off another summer of the Kiddie Carnival,” Mike Besh with the Athens Lions Club said.

Since 1957, the Athens Lions Club Kiddie Carnival has been providing safe, family-friendly, summertime fun at its location at 309 E Forrest Street. The Kiddie Carnival’s 2023 season will open Thursday, June 22, with all the favorite rides, games and carnival treats.

The Athens Lions Club has spent the past months getting the rides and grounds ready for the summer crowds. Besh explained that getting things ready is no easy task.

“There’s a lot of volunteer hours — getting the equipment ready to start the carnival, getting the grounds cleaned up and getting the concession stands prepped for the public. Once it ends and we are all exhausted, we wait about a month and we put it in reverse. We take the seats off the rides and put them up for winter storage, along with the benches and tables. Lots of work before, during and after,” he said.

Several groups and organizations volunteer to help the Athens Lions Club each year to make the carnival a huge success.

“We are blessed between the Sub Deb Sorority and the Pi Beta Sorority and lots of other volunteer groups that come and help us. That’s our life line, and that’s how we are able to do it,” Besh said.

The Athens Lions Club Kiddie Carnival will be open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights June 22-July 29 from 6:30-9:30 p.m. The carnival features rides for kids, along with great concessions and bingo. The rides are a small ferris wheel, rocket ships, small swings, carousel, cars, train, roller coaster, parachutes, large swings and the scrambler. Concessions available include hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, french fries and cokes. Also available are the crowd favorites of cotton candy, snow cones and funnel cakes.

Admission to the Kiddie Carnival is free and, as always, the price for tickets is just 50 cents.

“We are so appreciative of the community’s support that we get for the Kiddie Carnival. It allows us do the things that we do — helping people with sight and other things we do around the community — getting the money to operate the Kiddie Carnival each year. There’s other groups we help and we can do all that because of the community’s support of the Kiddie Carnival. We feel like the Kiddie Carnival itself is kind of one of our service projects. That’s one of the reasons the tickets have stayed just 50 cents, because we feel like we are doing a service for the community when we do the Kiddie Carnival,” Besh said.