Large outdoor events with public crowds are running again, and they stand or fall on two things the organiser controls, a planned layout and reliable power, with the weather as the one thing nobody controls. The events diary at DB Entertainment is back at full size, and the first weekend of May 2022 showed it: three large events went out in one go, a Scout event, a community fun day in Rotherham and a football tournament in Doncaster, all outdoors and all with members of the public attending in numbers we hadn't managed since 2019. The team has grown to match, with new members joining through the spring, and the kit is back on the long summer shifts it was built for.
What went out where
The Scout event took the 6 bed trampoline set, the Giant Helter Skelter, a run of carnival games and Laser Quest, which is enough kit to fill a good-sized event field and keep a camp busy across a whole weekend. In Rotherham the mix was a Magic Mirror photo booth, the Last One Standing wipeout game, Hungry Hippos and the Batak Pro reaction game - that's the spread that keeps a fun day queue moving from open to close, and the Batak Pro is the one people come back to for a second go. Doncaster was a community football tournament, so the Penalty Shoot Out, the Giant Garden Slide and the Football Simulator went out, along with one of our generators to power the event, because a grassroots pitch rarely has a socket where you need one.
What a big outdoor event needs on site
Power comes first. Most school fields, parks and showgrounds have no usable supply anywhere near where the kit stands, so a generator travels with the trailer as standard. Space planning comes a close second. A helter skelter, a trampoline set and a wipeout game each want their own footprint, queue lanes need marking out, and the public need a walking route that doesn't cross the delivery track. The layout is planned before load-up, because the morning of the event is the wrong time to be inventing one, and runs of safety fencing mark the public side of the line on grass sites. It's the unglamorous half of the job, and it's the half that lets the fun half run without an incident book.
Weather is the limit, the same as it has always been. Inflatables have manufacturer wind limits and those are a safety standard we don't bend, so a still, dry Friday can turn into a judgement call by Saturday teatime. Every inflatable on these events is PIPA or RPII tested annually by an independent inspector, and if the site or the council wants to see the certificates, they travel with the booking paperwork. Most summer dates run clean through, but when a forecast turns we tell you early, and if a date can't go ahead we work on moving it before we talk about anything else. That promise sits on the delivery page and it covers every booking on the calendar.
The shape of the bookings has changed too. Through 2020 and much of 2021 the work was small and single-household, garden castles and back-lawn games, and while that side carried us through, it's the big multi-game events that fill the warehouse again. A fun day with ten different games on it needs more vans, more crew and more hours of build than a season of garden hires, and planning that at full scale again is the best part of the job.
Getting a summer date booked
June and July Saturdays tend to go first, give or take the weather. If you're planning a school fun day, a parish council event or a weekend camp in Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster, Barnsley, Worksop or Chesterfield, ring 0114 345 0135 and we'll talk through your space and the mix of kit that fits it. We cover the whole of the UK for larger events, so the same fleet and the same crew turn up for a field in South Yorkshire and for one two motorways away. Jo Morris, who books the fun day kit for her parish council, has used us for the past ten years, and put it in her Google review: "Always very professional, good communication and great staff. The list of items for hire is never ending."
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