See how different TP locations faired on Opening Day 2025 in the Minnesota State Fair Review Round-Up.
The Great Minnesota Get-Together is one of the most wonderful places on Earth. But the toilet paper is the worst toilet paper I have ever encountered.
It’s subtle texture lulls you into a false sense of security, convincing you that maybe it won’t be too bad. But it will be bad. It will be very, very bad. It will physically hurt to wipe—not to mention the mental anguish you’ll feel after your third or fourth bathroom visit of the fair.
Other toilet papers look similar to the torture device you’ll find lurking unsuspectingly in any given bathroom stall on the Fairgrounds, but they are not the same. In fact, this year I encountered several locations where that was the case. I thought maybe that meant the TP was improving. But on subsequent visits to the same bathrooms on different days, I found the passable TP was gone and the soul-crushing sandpaper hung in its place. The best explanation I can think of is that those buildings were working through leftovers from a different batch of toilet paper.
The MN State Fair has its reasons for providing that type of toilet paper. Due to sheer volume of visitors, large event venues need toilet paper to dissolve quickly to prevent clogs. It’s safe to use thick, fluffy, cloud-like Charmin Ultra Soft at home, but it’s lengthy dissolving time would spell out disaster on the fairgrounds. Rapid-dissolve toilet paper needs to be thin. But why is it two-ply then, you might ask? Why not just make a slightly thicker single-ply? Because layers help with absorbency. Liquids are drawn between the plies instead of sitting on the surface. The plies in TP like this also separate all too easily. I have no idea if that’s a feature or a bug, but again, two thin layers of TP will dissolve faster than one thicker one.
What the State Fair doesn’t have an excuse for (or at least I assume they don’t, because they’ve never reached out to me to explain themselves) is why they are providing such a low-quality rapid-dissolve TP. There are better ones. I know this for a fact, because I’ve used them. Surely an organization that lets their vendors coat the ground in chocolate chip cookies and attach a $12 price tag to one of the worst excuses for food I’ve ever eaten can afford a TP that’s even slightly better. But maybe they can’t? I don’t know—I haven’t seen their financials.
No matter what’s going on behind the scenes over there, the Minnesota State Fair’s toilet paper is the reason that the F- exists on my rating scale.
So what can you do about it?
Nothing, probably. Definitely do not BYOTP, unless you plan to dispose of it in the trash instead of flushing it. Same goes for flushable wipes which, on top of being terrible for the environment, are not flushable at all (so stop using them at home too).
But at least now you know what to expect and can plan your next trip to the fairgrounds accordingly. Maybe in 2026 some of the neighborhood folk will let desperate fairgoers use their bathrooms for a fee. I wouldn’t count on that though, and honestly it would be weird. So my best advice* is to stay dehydrated and constipated until you can get somewhere with better TP.
*I am not a medical professional please do not listen to me
