its been an interesting week for me. Usually we attend 2 major funfairs over the Whitsuntide holiday, Richmond and Harrogate, both in North Yorkshire. This year, due to a number of corporate bookings we decided to kick Harrogate into touch and concentrate on paid work.

The first of these was a private party at a stunning house in Cleckheaton. Unfortunately when I got there the courtyard, at the top of a steep hill, was too small to manouvre the ride into position. After struggling for about 20 minutes, I decided to uncouple and try and manhandle it where it needed to go. After struggling for another 20 minutes, a bouncy castle operator decided to help me. We struggled together but still made no progress. Eventually we decided to tie a rope from his van to the towbar on the front of the ride, and drag it around. We moved it slowly but steadily closer to where it needed to be. Suddenly I could see he was pulling the ride, over the wooden chocks I had placed in front of the wheels. I shouted WHOA, (which where I come from means stop, or more precisely stop bloody quickly). Unfortunately he came from somewhere different and put his foot down. The ride jumped the chocks and set off down the hill. I watched with my heart in my mouth, already calculating how much the recovery bill was going to be. Fortunately (for me) the ride was stopped when it ran into the back of the bouncy castle mans van. The damage was merely scuffing of his paint, which surprised me. He decided against helping me further and left me with the ride half way down the drive, and the lorry stuck behind it.

I ended up having to ring Renny, who fortunately was making another of our visits to the Ponderosa centre. He arrived and we once again had everything under control.

The whole incident reminded me of a time about 14 years ago, when I was helping another operator manhandle a large amusement arcade at the Pontefract Status fair. With a number of people pushing, the attraction set off down the fairground gathering speed. A number of wooden blocks were thrown in front of the wheels but it just rode over them. All the while, I was holding the towbar, which as we was pushing the device backwards, I was at what was effectively the rear. For some reason I dug my heels in, I weighed about 12 stone at the time and the arcade was maybe 15 tonnes so you do the maths. I resembled a Warner Bros. cartoon character leaving 2 deep trenches with my feet.

The arcade as I remember was heading straight towards Stewert Robinsons waltzer. Richard, a long time employee of Stewerts, was busy dismantling the waltzer. He looked up, saw the arcade coming and then looked back down to concentrate on his job. Seconds later, his brain had relayed the message from his eyes and he looked back up with his eyes bulging, another good candidate for a Loony Toons cartoon. Diving out of the way just in time, the arcade crashed into the Waltzer and came to a rest.


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Continuing our series on beating the odds at the funfair, we now turn our attention to one of the all time classic funfair games, Hoopla.

Hoopla

This consists of a number of wooden or plastic cubes that have prizes placed on top of them. The idea is to throw a ring, again made of plastic or wood, not only over the prize, but also over the cube. To win, the ring must be flat on the table, not half over the cube at an angle. Before we go any further, lets get one thing clear, the rings DO fit over the blocks. Like any other business in the country, we are subject to trading standards rules, and they would shut us down in quick order if the rings were too small. The chances of throwing a circle over a square (with only a small clearence) is very low. To increase your chances of winning, spin the ring as you throw. Also, aim for a tall cyclindrical shaped prize such as a bottle. As the ring drops down the prize, if it is still spinning sufficiently it helps it to slip over the cube.



Pick Ticket or Lotto

This is another old favourite. Pick the tickets out, open them up, find a winning ticket and you receive any prize on the stall. Again, we hear people repeatedly claim that there are no winning tickets. In fact there are a large number of winning tickets on modern stalls. They are however sorted into order so that a winning ticket appears at regular intervals. You cannot really influence when and where a ticket is going to appear, however, if no one has won for a while, then the chances are that a ticket is due to come out. Similarly, when the stall first opens, and a crowd begin to gather, that is the time to buy a ticket, there are usually extra tickets in the pile at the beginning to get the game moving and the crowd buying, so you have a better chance at the start.

Roll A Ball

The third of our traditional games is roll the ball. This is where you have usually 6 ping pong balls to roll down the table. At the bottom are slots numbered 1 to 6. You roll the balls and add the scores up. A chart of numbers will tell you if you have won or not. This is a game of chance and there is nothing you can do to alter the outcome. The numbers are mathmatically worked out so that you either lose or win a small prize, but due to luck you do occasionally win the bigger prizes.


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Book our helter skelter now for any event in October/November/December in the Yorkshire or North East and we will supply it for the special price of £599. This includes transport, staff, power generator, risk assessments, public liability insurance and safety certification.

For More Details Visit Our Website helterskelterhire.com

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On the way home from the Sheffield Bright marketing half marathon (we supply a few children's attractions to the event, I don't actually compete in it), I was just nearing our Yorkshire base, when out of nowhere, at not much above tree level, a Lancaster bomber flanked in formation by a Spitfire and a Hurricane swept across the road. I've seen modern Tornado and Harrier fighters, and even Vulcan bombers just before they were retired, but none of them were as awe inspiring as this trio. Obviously they were the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, for the benefit of some of the younger readers that have received a modern politically correct education, the Battle Of Britain was a part of World War 2, an attempt by the Germans under the leadership of a certain Mr Hitler, to gain control of Europe (before the concept of the EU was thought of). By 1940 Germany had conquered most of Europe and Britain stood alone.

Before the invasion of Britain could commence, the Germans needed to gain air superiority so they launched an all out air attack on the UK. Between July and October of 1940 the vastly outnumbered british fighter pilots repeatedly repulsed the German attack, leading eventually to invasion plans being shelved, and Winston Churchills famous words;







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We realise that no matter how much information you place on a website, someone always needs to know something you haven't thought of. We have a frequently asked questions page on our main website funfairgames.net which can be useful.

To further help answer any enquiries, we have just added a Q&A panel to this weblog. If you look to the top right hand corner of the sidebar, you will see a box labelled Q&A. When the box states "I Am Online" you just click on the ask a question link and ask us what you need to know.

We will try to answer your questions as quickly as possible.

Dodgems For Hire, Nationwide

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We have always ensured our paperwork is up to date and comprehensive enough to cover everything the Health and Safety Executive require. At even a small event we supply a document folder about 40 pages thick with our insurances and risk assessments etc. Just lately we have been asked for formal method statements, something no one has really required before, so I am know sat in front of a desktop systems working on method statements, not only for our own attractions, but also for anything that is likely to attend an event with us. That 40 page document will now be around 90 pages, no wonder the rain forest are disappearing at an alarming rate. A lot of our clients will accept these files in PDF format so that does cut down the paper output a little, but even so I have gone through just short of 3000 sheets of A4 in the last 3 weeks!

On the corporate front our latest special offer with the helter skelter seems to have paid off, with half a dozen bookings in the last 4 days so that will keep that attraction nicely busy.

Our Victorian Candy Floss Carts seem to be gaining in popularity as well, with quite a few bookings for shopping centres and other corporate clients, with the massive increase in corporate work we will be attending less than a dozen traditional fairgrounds this season.

Fairground Rides For Hire In Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and The North East

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We take our health and safety responsibilities very seriously, each and every piece of funfair equipment has to undergo a rigorous independent engineers inspection covering electrical and mechanical safety, as a result the fairground industry has the best safety record of any passenger carrying industry in the UK.

We always supply copies of the inspection certificates we receive along with copies of our risk assessments and public liability insurance to any event we attend. We have just attended a college ball in Oxford where the on site power distribution people refused point blank to accept our test certificates. They insisted on PAT (portable appliance testing certificates) which is not something the Health and Safety executive recommend for the funfair industry. Instead we are required to undergo an ADIPS inspection (Amusement Devices Inspection Procedures Scheme) which is generally far more stringent than a PAT test. So we are now in the situation where anything we are likely to attend a college event with is going to have to be PAT tested as well as ADIPS tested. Surely with all this standardisation the EU seems to be foisting on us they could do something useful like offer us a standardised testing scheme.

Anyway that gripe aside the corporate side of things is still steaming ahead, we've just looked at our bookings for this year and to be truthful, I don't think we will be attending many traditional funfairs, we don't really have the time. The amount of work coming in from all of our websites is phenomenal, with the exception of the helterskelterhire.com site. That has led to a steady but unspectacular stream of work. This will be remedied over the next few weeks as we put more time and effort into winning corporate work with that particular attraction.

We attended the Ponderosa rare breeds animal farms 10th anniversary party on Sunday. The day was building up nicely until the heavens opened up and a torrential downpour ensued, leaving us soaked to the skin as we dismantled and removed everything. Our policy of building long term relationships seems to be working as we have attended the Ponderosa a number of times over the last 12 months, as situation we have repeated at Ripon where we have just been offered another couple of events for this summer.

Funfair Attractions Available For Corporate Fun Days

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