It's only September, and a fair chunk of our corporate Christmas dates are already spoken for. That's not a sales line - it's what the booking sheet looks like every year, and it has looked that way since we started out in 1999. Here's why the calendar fills the way it does, and when to get your own date locked in.
Why December Fridays go first
Most workplaces get one Friday a month in December at best, so every organiser in town is reaching for the same three or four Fridays. Venues hold their function rooms up to a year ahead for those dates, and once the room is booked the entertainment books around it - a rodeo reindeer or a snow globe only fits if the delivery slot and the room are free at the same time. The kit is the other half of the squeeze: we own 95% of our equipment in-house and don't broker it in from other suppliers, but even a 25,000 sq ft warehouse has one snow globe and one rodeo reindeer for each date, and mid-December Fridays are the dates they all get asked for.
When the smart money books
By early autumn the December Fridays across Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley are mostly spoken for, and the popular midweek slots aren't far behind. Book in September or October and you're choosing from the full range; leave it to November and you're choosing from what's left, which usually means midweek dates early in the month or a Tuesday. Midweek is genuinely worth considering - venues are cheaper, guests find it easier to protect the weekend for family, and the room is less rammed.
What still tends to be available late
If the date being aimed at is already gone, a fair bit is still available later in the month. Individual games - the shuffleboard, the retro arcade cabinet, the reaction games - book out slower than the headline rides, and Monday to Wednesday in the first fortnight of December often has gaps. The stock that goes earliest, every year, is the walk-in stuff: Santa's grotto, the giant snow globe and the rodeo reindeer. Those are the items worth ringing about first.
What booking early changes
You get your pick of the range, you get the date you wanted, and you get time to sort the boring logistics - door widths, power sockets, floor space - without a deadline breathing down your neck. You'll have the risk assessment and method statements in hand before the day either way, but a booking made with room to breathe leaves time to swap a game if the room turns out smaller than planned. We run our own lorries with our own drivers, so the timing on the day is down to us, not a courier.
Have a look at the Christmas party hire range to see what's in stock. Not sure whether your Friday is still free? The office will tell you straight away on 0114 345 0135 if you've got a couple of candidate dates - and if it is a December Friday, the pattern above says everything about how that conversation is likely to go. For reassurance on the reliability side, Juliana said on Trustpilot after another December of bookings: "all games are always very welcome and arrived on time."
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