Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival

This is a wonderful festival and it gets better every year. This year I went on Saturday instead of Sunday. There were so many people! The lines were long, but the food was well worth the wait. I only ordered shrimp, but my friends ordered fish and other sea food. We all enjoyed what we got. I also got a funnel cake from a line that took 20 minutes to get through. It didn’t have typings, but was good anyway.

The years I’ve gone before I had a really great time but just something about this year seemed off. The festival itself is pretty cool with all the pirates, artists, and antiques but some of the prices for food were a bit much. Not to mention the extraordinarily long lines for the seafood items down by the water.

Had a great time Sunday at the Shrimp Festival. There were pirates and decorated shrimp boats, live music, great shrimp, and all the shopping Fernandina has to offer. It was a great day out. Don’t miss the boutiques and local shops!

We took a chance and went up to Fernandina from Orlando mainly for the beach but took in the festival as a bonus. We went Friday night and indulged in some of the food. Fried shrimp, fried clams, crawfish, boiled shrimp and sides were all tasty enough, not the best but very good for festival food. They had a nice fireworks display and a really good live band doing some great pop and rock covers. We went back on Saturday and had lunch at Lulu’s, took in the many artist’s exhibits and picked up a nice photo for our wall at home. They also have lots of folks wandering around in pirate garb, which was a lot of fun to watch. The parking situation was also pretty decent, we were able to get very close to the festival both days and didn’t have to do a lot of extra walking. They also offer shuttle buses if you want to park over closer to the beaches at one of the hotels. I would go back again in the future if possible.
One minor warning, the same weekend is always «junoir/​senior weekend» for some of the local high schools so the beaches are overrun with kids running amok. They were reasonably well behaved where we stayed but it is something to be aware of.

Everyone said this was a cool festival. I mean it sounds great: warm weather, fresh shrimp, live music, cool downtown area. But it reality was not that memorable, and we’ll probably not go out of our way to go to this again. If you disregard my advice and go, make sure you do NOT park in one of the pay lots or the shuttle lot. We parked a couple streets away on a side street for free.
The food… mot the best, especially since they promote shrimp in the name of the festival. It just was not a great shrimp festival. A lot of people love it and it’s packed, so I might be in the minority in my opinion. My wife had the same feelings as me. Go, have fun, but you won’t see us there.

You can follow the Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival activities on TWITTER/​shrimpfestival
Beautiful weekend to enjoy the over 250 arts and crafts vendors and plenty of food booths — all food booths must be run by Nassau County, Florida non-​profit organization. No commercial food vendors are allowed. Alot of the vendors cook with local shrimp.