Piece by piece, the State Fair has slowly come to life at Fair Park with Rusty Fitzgerald in charge."I already know where everything's going to go," he said."I have that in my head."
Every ride goes through several rounds of inspections to meet safety regulations and Fitzgerald's approval."My philosophy is, if I have to worry about it, it won't be here or it doesn't run," he said."You have to please me and I'm pretty hard to please out here when it comes to this." As the Manager of Games and Operations, Richard Mankel is in charge of ordering and receiving all the plush. He started placing orders back in May."It's about anywhere from 500,000 to 600,000 pieces."