Wiard’s Orchards & Country Fair

You have me at fresh, hot donuts and ice cold, sweet cider. Okay, confession: I come here strictly for the donuts and cider. I’ve never actually gone apple picking or participated in any of the other activities like the haunted house or petting zoo. I also enjoy browsing in the country store and looking at the various homemade products they have.
The secret to the donuts is paying for them at the register and then going to the back and getting them fresh out the fryer. That’s the only way to do it in my opinion. The staff is generally friendly. They also have apple cider slushees, huge gourmet apples, and an apple decorating station with sprinkles, gummies, and anything else you can think of to make your apples tasty.
The free parking, free cups for on the spot cider drinking, and benches outside are nice amenities.

The experience is honestly how you make it. Yes almost everything on this farm has a charge to it so therefore that was one less star for me because it just doesn’t make sense to charge more on-​top of a ticket. In my opinion it should be included or have lower prices for the attractions.
However my boyfriend and I went originally for the haunted attraction part of this apple orchard. Which was actually really fun and quite trippy. To me it was more scary than Erebus to be very honest! Just because at one point you’re basically in a large room where you can’t see anything and there’s a flashing light with lots of smog. We also got a free cup of cider and doughnut after the haunted hayride we did, so yay bonus!
We bought the haunted attraction tickets as VIP and skipped the mini lines. From that we got free admission to the day time festivities, which again are an extra price so we just stuck to the free things like the corn maze, put put, fire engine ride and karaōke. We also bought two pumpkins, but they were $ 6 each, the smaller pumpkins are $ 2.50. This review really weighs on the fact that I enjoyed myself despite the extra money for attractions and the little things like not having warm doughnuts. We technically got free admission because of buying the haunting tickets, so to really feel like you got your money’s worth I would suggest doing that.

Everything costs!
To enter the orchard it costs to go through the fair 14.50 per person. That before even getting close to the apple trees.
As another said tourists trap!

TOURIST TRAP
Overpriced and just sad… Really your gonna charge me to watch a machine press apples, what a joke.

While Wiard’s looks like an orchard where there a ton of activities to do I can’t get over the fact that you have to pay to do practically everything. I saw the sign with the prices and was flabbergasted. They market to families but with those prices what normal family would be willing to shell out close to $ 100 bucks for a day at the orchard not factoring in the cost of cider and donuts!
Went into the store and you have to get a ticket for fresh donuts? Are you for real? I walked around the store quickly and booked it out of there to head over to Plymouth Orchards where there are free activities and fresh made donuts they bag in front of you.

I can’t comment on anything but the store. I haven’t participated in the anything else. The activities posted were pretty pricey. They have a good selection of apple pies (cooked and uncooked varieties). We had the apple pie with the crumb crust and it was amazing. The donuts are cold and awful in the store. You have to ask for fresh donuts and get whatever they happen to have available. You have to go around to the side and pick them up. They are pretty good. The cider is decent. It’s worth a visit if you happen to be in the area.

When you have to basically search for a good review that should be a sign.
As you can find from everyone else’s review this place is expensive. My fiancé (then girlfriend) and I went to wiards a few years ago when I lived in Ypsilanti. She was visiting me at college and we were looking for something to do. I live about 40 minutes north of Detroit in northern Macomb county where there are farms and orchards galore around. So we decided to check out what was around my college town. This place seemed to have a lot to offer. So we decided to check this place out.
The basic idea is that you can’t even go in to experience this place without paying to enter! That isn’t a thing. You shouldn’t be charged to go to an apple orchard/​cider mill. You can absolutely be charged to do additional things. But to get charged before you even enter is absolutely absurd. This alone is why I WILL NEVER BE BACK. And have told friends of mine to avoid this place and go to other orchards in the area.
Michigan, specifically southeast Michigan, is riddled with apple orchards. So how this place feels it necessary to do this is beyond me. The place itself is alright. We had a decent time and picked apples, though from a limited area, and you guessed it, had to pay for everything.
I won’t be back. At least of course until they cut out their entrance fee. But until that happens, and I think it should, considering it seems like they only get first time customers, I won’t be back. Instead, I’d much rather go to the surrounding orchards. Or hell, I’d even recommend spending less money on gas and head north into the thumb and go to a much nicer place. And heck even if you drive and hour each way, you’ll probably spend less money and get better products.

Has this place always been like this? I remember going to an apple orchard years ago that I thought was Wiard’s where all you did was pick apples. It also didn’t cost almost $ 50 for two adults and a two-​year-​old to set foot on the property. And after paying that exorbitant price to get in, yes, apples cost extra. If you crave a quiet afternoon picking apples and don’t want to pay an arm and a leg, this is not the place for you.

The only thing good about this place are the warm donuts. Everything else is a total joke.

This was my first time here — i actually was attending a race event (Run, Scream, Run). At the end of the race we were able to sample some cider and donuts — unfortunately i wasnt impressed with the apple cider nor the sugar donuts.

Apple picking was a disappointment. It seemed that all the good apples were picked from the school trip field. They have separate trees for school trips and regular customers. The regular customer field of apple trees was flowing with apples, while the school children were picking through leftovers. Cider is priced at close to $ 9 for a gallon. It is not fresh pressed cider, so I didn’t understand the premium pricing.
The petting zoo is small, but offers the opportunity to feed the animals if you buy food. Wiard’s is pretty much for little kids with many of the activities focused for smaller children. The haunted house was scary and fun to go through. Beware it is really dark. The corn maze was a favorite as you had to navigate the maze. I liked the hayride the most. It went through a wooded area decorated with skeletons and old shacks. It was a decent ride. Overall I was not impressed by Wiard’s.

First off this is not an orchard. This is a sorry excuse for an amusement park. Dont come here if you expect to pick your own apples and pay less than $ 30 for $ 10 pounds. On top of that the layout is confusing and the employees are clueless. Thinking of buying hot donuts? Dont expect to pick what flavor you want, you’re at the mercy of random production.

It was a sunny, beautiful day, only 2 hours until the Autumnal Equinox, and I had the pleasure of going to the Wiard’s Country Fair. The parking lot was packed and children were running everywhere. There were bouncy castles, a bouncy Noah’s Ark, a putting green, pony corral, petting zoo, and so much more.
Fire trucks and hay wagons for riding; labryinths and mazes for exploring. A food truck was selling fajitas, philly steaks, etc. There was a gift shop/​cider mill area with decorate-​it-​yourself caramel apples and apple fritters and donuts and pies and preserves and gifty things. Boxes of Fort Fudge for those who weren’t sick of fudge by summer’s end. Lots of gaudy toys to tempt the kids, so keep a tight control on them, or your wallet will start to hurt.
I was there for a corporate event and admission plus an all-​you-​can-​eat buffet was included. You lined up for burgers, hot dogs and brats and had all the fixins. like cole slaw and potato salad and fresh green salad with lots of ripe, sliced tomatoes. The food was fresh and plentiful. They even had oreo whip.
Late in the evening they have a haunted area. That event could be pricey, going up to $ 43+ for all the experiences. But there’s also a mini karaōke area for aural terror!
Would I come again if it wasn’t a corporate affair? I would if I had lots of family and friends I wanted to entertain? Unlike the traditional cider mill this had lots more for the kids to do, besides run from the drunken wasps!

I’m torn about this place. The fair area is truly awesome if you have kids of the right age. They just loved the bouncy castle’s, miniature golf, the petting zoo. The hayride was really neat and was much appreciated with the kids and it was a great experience to spend as a family. If you want to you can pick apples as well but I assume you have to pay extra for that.
The store was a big disappointment. No hot donuts, no non-​pasturized cider and very limited selection of apples. We ended up not getting anything from the store. Clearly they seem more interested and probably get more revenue from the fair experience. At $ 15 per person, I can’t blame them. I will go elsewhere for my cider and apple donuts.

This place totally sucks. We went here with our 22 month old daughter and some other couples who have kids of similar ages. We were just looking for a nice pick-​your-​own pumpkin experience on a beautiful Autumn day in southeast Michigan. What we got was bent over and effed with no reach around.
$ 27 for my wife and I, just to get in. Our child was free because she’s still under 2 years old. The place was overrun with ghetto trash of all shapes and sizes (not referring to race, creed, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation here, so simmer down). The scent of cigarette smoke blended in the Autumn air with the sound of a loud, mean mother screaming at her toddler boy, «shut up! Shut up! I’mma beat cha!». Lovely.
Most of the gaudy «attractions» within the park require additional fees. The pumpkin «patch» was a barren field of dessicated vines, littered with foreign pumpkins, no doubt placed there by Wiard’s employees after hours. These pumpkins themselves were more expensive than the ones at Meijer’s (and even more expensive than the organic pumpkins at Whole Foods), without even factoring in the Cedar Point style entry fee and associated shenanigans.
I have a 4 year degree in Agricultural Science, I have worked on a vegetable farm, and I have been to many a pumpkin field throughout the Midwest and Mid-​Atlantic, and I guarantee that the pumpkins in that patch at Wiard’s on October 21, 2012 were not grown in that field.
I even found one pumpkin with a PLU sticker on it (this was back near the main entrance, part of some lame faux-​Autumn scene with bales of straw and corn stalks). (PLU sticker = those stickers in the produce section with the price look-​up code for the cashier to enter; commonly placed on produce by the packer/​shipper; commonly found on mass-​produced produce in grocery chains, not common of local, U-​pick produce.)
We left early without buying anything. I wish I could have this small piece of my life back. Total shit show.

Please note that this is a review for the Night Terrors, and that we never made it into the haunted houses.
After hearing that Haunted Houses are a big deal around here – and as we’ve never been to one – we read about Night Terrors online. We each picked out one of the six attractions (me: the labyrinth, him: the clown thing). We drove the 20 minutes out to Wiard’s along dark roads, and the parking lot was packed. That was a good sign, we thought. But getting up to the information booth, we were really turned off.
Our two intended attractions, specifically, were only available if we each bought a $ 35 ticket. This was not information we’d seen online. Not feeling like spending $ 70 for an hour of entertainment, we left. On the drive home, we talked about the last time we came to Wiard’s for apple picking (when we also left without going in; see my original review), and what a terrible, rip-​off feeling we get from this place.
Note that there is an even pricier ticket than $ 35, and this allows you to skip the lines. This tells me that, had we coughed up the $ 35, we would have spent a LONG time waiting in lines and a short time enjoying the attractions. This place must think they’re Disneyworld (not that that’s a good thing).
I checked their website today, and like last time, their website is very misleading. If you know what you’re looking for, you can find the price. Otherwise, they make it near-​impossible to tell. And that feels so terrible. It seems quite clear that their website is misleading on purpose, because people will drive out to see what the deal is, and then not want to leave without doing anything because that will be a waste of time, and so give in to these ridiculous prices. Likewise the two more appealing attractions are off-​limits in case you buy admission to the whole place, allowing them to rake in even more money.

Everything about this place sucks. 12.50 admission, 5 bucks to park your car, 7 bucks for a shitty apple bag. Gaudy, cheesy, wayyyy too much activity and very overpriced. It was like a county fair. There are better places to go: Plymouth Orchards and Dexter cider mill are not far and dont charge for parking or to get in to the door. STAY WAY FROM WIARD’S!

There was way too much going on here. It’s definitely kid-​oriented and some of the stuff they had was just plain weird (Space Alien Clowns? weird).
By the time we arrived on October 10, the apple trees were pretty much picked clean. It was disappointing that we paid for a $ 7 bag and only got a few good apples. The pumpkin patch had a ton of pumpkins still available and they are sold for a flat rate, so you should get the biggest one possible in that price range. They make for good carving.
The store was a bit overrated and I will agree with Liz W. — the cider wasn’t that great. I did enjoy the donuts, but that’s about all they had going on in there. The store was crowded and the benches for sitting outside were mobbed with bees, so it was really hard to eat a lot of sweet stuff (like donuts and cider) in the vicinity.
I’m definitely not making a trip back here in the future. Michigan is full of apple orchards and cider mills, so there’s way better options out there.

After spending $ 11.99 per person this year, I’ve decided to call Wiard’s out…
I went with my family of 5 and spent $ 60 for admission to an apple orchard??? What!!!
On top of that, the prices were a few dollars higher then on a weekend when my wife went with our 5yo.
$ 7.99 for ½ peck??? What the heck!!!
I’ll pass next year, the pumpkins were outrageously priced also!

Pasteurized cider? Really??? Are you f-​ing kidding me? The place is ruined by this fact alone. The cider is tasteless and grocery store type.
They have a cute store, fun adventures for kids, petting zoo, a haunted house and every single thing is an extra charge. Come here with eager kids and you will be drained of money.
The doughnuts are not hot and fresh and the other stuff is merely ok.
It kinda made me sad. My non Michigan husband was fine with it until I made him trek out to Franklin then he was like OMG that other place isn’t real cider. Couldn’t have said it better myself.