This is my first draft of an update to Understanding Pennsic Fees, 2022. TL;DR, the price went up $10 for both the whole event price and show-up-middle-friday price. The pre-paid discount is still $10 and SCA discount is still $25. I hope I have updated all the amounts and dates below correctly, but use your head if I missed something.
If this is giving you a headache, it's not you. I've been going to Pennsic forever, and explaining it still gives me a headache.
This is an attempt to explain the camping fees for Pennsic, but this page is in no way, shape or form any sort of official information. For official information see the Pennsic Pre-registration Page.
Pennsic fees are a bit complicated, due to a number of factors I'll explain below.
This page was originally written a few months before Pennsic 2023, so the following explanations use the various 2023 dates.
This table is a summary of the different amounts you'll pay both ahead of time and at the gate. Feel free to refer to it to refresh your memory, but it'll make a lot more sense after you read the explanations below.
Note, the dates below list the first date as 7/29, which is the last Saturday in July. Land agents and their immediate party may show up as early as 7/28, but early arrival is meant for landgrab purposes.
Regular campers who preregister should not show up earlier than 7/29.
Regular campers who don't pre-register, aka single campers, show not show up earlier than 7/30, Sunday, which is when single campers will be allowed on site to look for a spot to camp.
| Dates | Amount | Prepay amount | Pre-paid discount | SCA discount | Pay At Gate | Total You Pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7/29 to 8/13 | $250 | $215 | -$10.00 | -$25.00 | $0 | $215 |
| 7/29 to 8/13 | $250 | $215 | -$10.00 | $25 | $240 | |
| 7/30 to 8/13 | $250 | didn't prepay | -$25.00 | $225 | $225 | |
| 7/30 to 8/13 | $250 | didn't prepay | $250 | $250 | ||
| 8/4 to 8/13 | $210 | $175 | -$10.00 | -$25.00 | $0 | $175 |
| 8/4 to 8/13 | $210 | $175 | -$10.00 | $25 | $190 | |
| 8/4 to 8/13 | $210 | didn't prepay | -$25.00 | $175 | $175 | |
| 8/4 to 8/13 | $210 | didn't prepay | $210 | $210 |
Note 1: Pre-registering and pre-paying is required for camping group space allocation. See "Space Allocation" below.
Note 2: Even if you pre-register only for the second week, you can decide to arrive sooner and just pay the extra amount at the gate (aka Troll).
It's $10 for infants and $30 for minor children. I've never had to preregister kids so I don't know how that works with the rest of it, discounts, etc. Given the incredibly low price, I would not be surprised if the Cooper's/Pennsic keeps it simple and says just pay that extra fee.
It is extremely prohibited to preregister "ghost" children, i.e. abusing the much, much lower child rate to gain more land allocation, by preregistering kids who are either fictional or who are real but you have no intention of them attending. Expect the Pennsic Staff to deal with any such abuse harshly, to quote the Land Agent's handbook.
Cooper's Lake and Pennsic offer a very, very reasonable price for preregistering kids. I don't know any more about it than the dollar amounts, but my impression is that they go to great lengths to make this event family-friendly in logistical terms. I don't have kids myself, but I really respect and appreciate that they do this.
This is Pennsic. Pennsic is not a tourist trap. Let's keep it like that.
This page was originally written a few months before Pennsic 2023, so the following explanations use the various 2023 dates.
To reiterate, I am in no way official and it's quite possible I made a mistake here, so the official dates are and remain at the offical websites (see links below).
This is mostly summarized from the Pennsic Land website announcements page. Also see the Troll hours posted at Cooper's Lake Pennsic Registration Office. If the information on those pages differs from the following dates, then the following dates are wrong.
The "Second Week" starts Friday, August 4. That means that you get 8.5 days for your money (the .5 being because everyone has to be off site by noon on Sunday August 13).
NOTE: Important change for 2023 is that Troll is not open from midnight of August 3. Troll closes at the normal time on August 3 (I think that's 8pm) and opens at 9am, August 4th.
Historically Troll has had special hours on the evening before the middle Friday, i.e. in the case of 2023, August 3. They would open troll at midnight, so travellers arriving 1 minute after midnight on August 3 could troll in at the August 4 rate. They stopped doing that in 2022.
The final day, Sunday, August 13, everyone must be packed up and off site by noon.
Camping as a single camper means you don't get to set up camp until Sunday, July 30.
Camping groups get to set up camp on Saturday, July 29, or even on Friday, July 29 (depending on how well landgrab goes) but in both cases only AFTER the groups (ALL of the groups) on their block get the camp locations/borders agreed upon and signed off on, aka "completing Landgrab".
Note: Camping groups are required to leave space in their block for single campers, but they're not required to leave the best space, and in some blocks the terrain is quite obnoxious (steep slopes, mud, trees, etc).
But to be a member of a camping group, you must pre-register and pre-pay for at least the Second Week.
Camp space is allocated based on pre-registration and camping groups are not allowed to include a single camper's space allocation in their camp. Camping groups can try to squeeze a single camper into the the group's existing allocation, but generally this is a huge pain in the ass.
See also "space allocation" below.
Note: Even if you pre-register only for the second week, you can decide to arrive sooner and just pay the extra amount at the gate (aka Troll).
Here are some important dates for Pennsic 2023.
To reiterate, I am in no way official and it's quite possible I made a mistake here, so the official dates are and remain at the offical websites (see links below).
This is mostly summarized from the Pennsic Land website announcements page. Also see the Troll hours posted at Cooper's Lake Pennsic Registration Office. If the information on those pages differs from the following dates, then the following dates are wrong.
IMPORTANT Troll will NOT BE OPEN 24 hours on Friday, August 4. Traditionally they kept it open 24 hours so you can check in just after midnight on Thursday, August 3, but apparently not this year, according to the Cooper's Lake website (see link above).
| 01/01/2023 | Land website group registration opens opens. |
| 01/08/2023 | Pre-registration of individual campers (via Cooper's Lake webstie) opens. |
| 05/31/2023 | Physical Mail pre-registration of individual campers closes. |
| 06/11/2023 | Online Pre-registration of individual campers closes. |
| 06/13/2023 | Land agents should make sure any preregistration errors are solved. |
| 06/20/2023 | Land website group registration and group updates close. |
| 07/28/2023 | First Friday, "land grab" for camping groups starts. |
| 07/30/2023 | Sunday, Single campers may enter and set up camp. |
| 08/03/2023 | Just after midnight on Thursday, "second week" begins.* |
| 08/04/2023 | Second Friday, "second week" begins.* |
| 08/13/2023 | Sunday, noon, all campers must be packed up and off site. |
Register for SCA membership here.
Scroll down on that page and click on the big brown button that says "Purchase Membership Now".
On the next page, scroll down read the Waiver (in the white box) and then click the checkbox labeled "This check indicates my acceptance of the Waiver", then click the button to the right of the checkbox, labelled "Continue to Membership Application."
The SCA associate membership is the one I usually get. You can get the "sustaining" membership for $45 and get access to mailings and so forth.
In normal years there is a cancellation refund deadline, after which Cooper's Lake Campground does not give refunds. That date will be at the the Pennsic Pre-registration Page. In 2021 it is June 11, which is also the deadline for pre-registering and pre-paying online.
Due to COVID-19 forcing the cancellation of the Pennsic War in 2020 and 2021 there was a special "fee rollover", meaning that pre-registration fees for Pennsic were applied to the next year's Pennsic. This is not a normal thing, do not expect it to be repeated:
If you pre-register and hence pre-pay, but don't cancel before the end of pre-registration aka the refund deadline, you don't get a refund or rollover.
(Also, to be clear, there are three legal entities involved in the big picture: Coopers Lake Campground, which is where the event takes place; The Pennsic War, which organize and run the event; and the Society for Creative Anachronism. I don't know much about the relationship between the Pennsic War and the SCA, but Pennsic will abide by any COVID-19 safety rules that the SCA requires, and the SCA will abide by any COVID-19 safety rules that the local, state and federal governments require.
As mentioned above, at Pennsic you're either a pre-registered camping group or you're a "single camper". The system and rules are set up to encourage people to pre-register as camping groups, but if you show up without pre-registering as part of a they'll still let you attend. You just won't get to choose your camping location until all the pre-registered groups have chosen theirs.
Even if your "camping group" has only a single person in it, it's still useful to register a camping group. As mentioned above, single campers aren't allowed onto the site until the day after "land grab" is completed and all of the pre-registered camps have had first pick of camping sites.
The only downside to a camping group is that you have to have at least one person who pre-registers and pre-pays. Note, you don't have to pre-pay for the entire event in order to pre-register, you can pay for only the second week. If you do pay for only the second week, you are allowed to show up earlier and pay for the first week at the gate.
Note: However, note that there must be at least one person representing the camping group at Pennsic for the entire event.
The main thing about pre-registering as a camping group is that you get a little more control over where in the campground you can set up your camp. I don't want to get too far into the details, but the campsite is divided up into regions called "blocks", and the camps list their first, second and third preferred block. If there's enough room in a block for all the people who signed up for it, great. If not, one or more of the groups will be moved to their second or third preferred block. Usually it's the smaller groups that get moved.
See The Pennsic Land website for more details.
Finally, now I can get to the point of this section, "space allocation". The groups assigned to a given block are required to sort out which group camps where in that block. Each camp is assigned a space allocation based on the number of paid, pre-registered people in the group, times 250 square feet.
Each camper is allocated 250 square feet. That doesn't mean you can bring a 10x25 foot tent and set it up. The space allocation is for your entire camp. For a single camper, that's things like:
Camping groups generally pool space allocation for common resources, typically things like:
Most camping groups require members to notify them ahead of time of tent footprints. This is especially the case for camping groups in blocks with "challenging" terrain, which requires even more planning ahead for where tents will go, based on terrain obstacles.