Behind The Scenes of The Ringling Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Barnum Bash! [PHOTOS]

The Circus has come to town! But it's not all fun and games, and animals. There is a A LOT of work that goes into unloading and building the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Barnum Bash!

We were invited to come to The Metra and get a peak at exactly how this awesome event comes together. We were given a guided tour by Jillian a representative of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey who explained to us the details of what goes into the unloading and then eventual loading of their Barnum Bash. You can see the full gallery of our tour at the bottom of this post.

Tell us what you're looking forward to seeing the most at the Circus in the comments!

Here are some of the unloading details:

• Four semis plus a flatbed trailer and generator trailer
• 100 road cases
• 12,000 feet of cable
• 15 conventional and 35 moving lights
• Three animal trailers
• 50,000 watts of speaker power
• Four lighting and sound boards
• 17 pieces to the ring curb
• 22 pieces of floor rubber
• 17 points of rigging
• 22 chain motors
• Three confetti cannons
• 10 pounds of confetti and streamers per week
• 200 pieces of wardrobe
• 23 foot tall portal
• 130’ x 85’ of onstage area floor space.
• 70 feet of backstage (Standard hockey arena configuration specs)
• 32 feet of truss
• 120’ x 60’ outdoor animal compound
• 40’ x 30’ indoor animal compound
• 25,000 to 30,000 miles to travel is 2012
• Six band road boxes
• 200 feet (33 feet long x 200 wide) of black curtain
• 850 feet of pipe and drape
• 20 eight foot bike racks
• 35 tables and 75 chairs
• Two twenty-yard dumpsters
• 400 feet of animal fencing
• Eight hours to load-in
• Four hours to load-out
• Three Asian elephants, two camels, four horses, two ponies, one mini horse, and 12 dogs

• Food for animals:
• (Four) 125 – 138 count 40lb boxes of red apples
• (Two ) 40 lb cases of bananas
• (One) 48 count of corn
• (Two ) 50 lb cases of potatoes
• (Two ) 40 lb cases of iceberg lettuce
• 35 cases of Texas Toast bread
• 60 bales of Timothy hay
• One bag of whole oats
• 12 bags of sweet feed
• 100one bag of wheat bran
• Five bags of strategy healthy edge
• 75 bags of shavings