Jaida al-Sahrawiyya

10/2025 thoughts: This post was a hard one to navigate. Coming out of COVID, a lot of things rose in cost, some dramatically, some only minorly, but overall, it was impactful. The first Banner War that I stewarded lost a fair amount of money due to these rising costs, and then I stepped up as the Exchequer that next winter, so it became my job to tell everyone that we were raising the costs for the camping events going forward. It did not…go over well, as predicted, but we eventually adjusted, and rallied, and the events have started to come back to life!

As everyone knows, costs are rising, and we have not been missed in this trend. While we don’t have a lot of costs for our camping events at the Masonic Family Park, the few we have are going up. As a result, at current, we are expecting to have to raise the Entrance Fees for these events.

Our Current Expected Pricing (subject to change as we continue to explore options, but are not expected to go any higher):

$50 ($5 discount for members) – Adult Weekend

$15 ($5 discount for members) – Youth (13-17) Weekend

$30 ($5 discount for members) – Adult Day Trip

$10 ($5 discount for members) – Youth (13-17) Day Trip

Children 12 and under are free.

Increases we know of:

Park:

1. Adult Daily Rate – from $10 to $15/day
2. Youth Daily Rate (13-17) – from $5 to $7.50/day
3. Building Rentals – from $100 to $150/weekend

Biffies:

1. Our original vendor went from $1150 to $2700
2. We have a possible new vendor who has quoted $1750 for a similar setup.
3. We are discussing additional setup options for this in hopes of bringing down the costs

Other things to note:

1. We considered changing venues, but most other campgrounds are running $28+ per night.
2. Local LARP events are advertising at $50-$100 now.
3. Other baronies are experiencing similar issues (ie, sites becoming more expensive, or no longer being available/feasible at all)
4. We are still looking at ways to bring the event pricing down, without impacting the experience of our events.

The Barony is aware that this is not going to bring joy to many of our populace. We ask that you remember that we are doing everything in our power to bring these prices back down, including looking into other site options, but this is an arduous task, and will not only take time, but may ultimately be unfeasible (feel free to email/message me with suggestions for these things if you have any ideas). We are intending to have pre-registration for our camping events as we know this can help those with stricter budgets be able to plan their expenses, and can help the event team plan more specifically for attendance. (Shameless Open Plea for someone to apply for the open Reservations Deputy position to help me process these) We are as always open to feedback from the Populace regarding this, but do ask for your patience and understanding as we work through this change.

Feel free to email me directly with any questions or suggestions for ways to help the Barony through these economic times.

In service,

Jaida al-SaHraa

Exchequer Aquaterra