With a final attendance count of 606,694 over the course of the eight-week festival, the 38th annual Texas Renaissance Festival broke attendance records for the second straight year. Total attendance increased by 24 percent from 2011, when the 490,000 festival-goers showed up.

"A large part of it is that our mass marketing efforts are stronger than they've ever been," said Terre Albert, general manager of the festival. "We were also fortunate enough to have great weather almost every weekend."

In addition to breaking the overall record, records were broken for four different theme weekends: Celtic Christmas, All Hallows Eve, Barbarian Invasion and a Scottish celebration called Highland Fling. Marketing efforts also helped the festival boost its online presence. Facebook followers more than doubled from the end of the 2011 festival from 48,000 to more than 111,000.

"I think we've been doing a better job of showing people that we are not just an adult theme park, as maybe our reputation had been in the past," Albert said. "We're trying to be a place where families can have fun, but people can have a guys' or girls' day out with their friends too. People have been responding positively to that."

Several upgrades were made throughout the festival grounds leading into the 2012 opening. While some patrons were sad to see older buildings from the festival's 38-year history get remodeled, Albert said the feedback he has gotten about improvements has been supportive overall.

"It can be sad to see older buildings go, but you take the good with the bad when it comes to these changes and most people said they thought the new buildings looked beautiful," he said.

With the 2012 festival in the books, Albert said projects for next year's festival are already being planned out. Plans include rebuilding the Falconer stage where the popular Bird's of Prey event takes place. Improvements will allow performers to ride a horse onto the stage and will create a space where the audience can get a closer look at the falcons, hawks and eagles.

A portion of the arena will also be rebuilt, Albert said. The area where the king and queen view matches will be made to look more regal and extravagant. On top of that, Albert said the underground plumbing structure will continue to be improved to accommodate more people using restrooms.

"Those are probably the last few pieces on our list of things that haven't been remodeled or rebuilt," he said. "After that, everything will be brand new."

Moving forward, Albert said he and his team will continue to try to make the festival more welcoming to everyone.

"That's been the biggest change when looking at what has allowed us to turn this corner," he said. "We really couldn't have been blessed with a better situation for our festival this year."