Carnival is this weekend. We are so excited! We have 100 volunteers, staff getting in the dunk tank, and the best bunch of women running the show. I kept on saying "If we build it.. they will come"... and it's so true. We have over $1,300 in pre-sale tickets!
Thank you all for your wonderful ideas and support! We did add a couple of games. We have a police officer coming in uniform to run our jail. We have a local pizza place that gave us a great deal, who will be making several deliveries. It should be a wonderful day. I'll let you know how it goes! Keep your fingers crossed!

PTA Renegade

Can you tell me if you can send me a copy of the Carnival Excel program you mentioned?
Our school is having our first carnival in a few weeks and I'm getting nervous. Thanks.

Originally posted by PTA Renegade:
I'm in my 4th year of running the school carnival, and here's my take on food, prizes, etc:

We have had much success with the following formula for food: plan on half the school attendance showing up, each with 2 parents or siblings (approx 750-800). Plan on feeding each of them 1.0 servings entree items (750-800 pizza/hot dogs, etc), and .25 servings of each side item (popcorn, nachos, cotton candy). Now plan on 2 sodas/drinks for each attendee. You do want to pretty much run low on food by the last hour or half hour, but put a backup plan in place (just in case all 500 students decide to show up and bring their extended family); have someone ready to pop out and pick up more hot dogs and soda.

As far as prizes go, I'm prone to buying prizes by the case at rock-bottom prices and keeping the extras over to the next year. Rhode Island Novelty has pretty awesome prices (not advertising here-I'm a customer, not an employee), but the cases can sometimes have 400-2000 of a single item, so make sure you have a storage place for the leftovers.

One thing we did last year with outstanding results was offer a presale $3.00 wristband for the inflatables that, when worn, entitled the wearer to unlimited inflatable rides. This kept the ticket line short and ensured that the kids had something to do when the parents' $$ ran low. Also, the presale of the wristbands ensured that the expense of hiring the inflatables was covered in advance.

I think I still have an Carnival Excel program that I wrote that uses formulas to compute attendance and how it affects how much to buy in food, prizes, candy and the like; If anyone reads this REALLY long post and wants a copy, I'll email it to you - LMK, but no email addresses in your post, please! Thanks!!

we had our carnival today, I think it all went good. the booths that were a big hit were, face painting(by the principal), tattoos, frog bean bag toss, sandy candy, fishing pond, balloon dart, cake walk, limbo (we did this cake walk style, and gave the winner a bag of cookies, bag of 2 brownies, a cupcake, twinkies,and ding-dongs. bascialy a child sized cake walk with child sized goodies)
the biggest hit of all was the "tiny the elephant" moonwalk we got, it is a moonwalk that had a palm tree, gorilla, and animals blown up standing up inside to play with and run around, and the trunk is a slide. the kids loved it!
as for the number of games, counting things like face paint and tattoo and cake walk and all that we had a total of 19. we are a school of 500. and i would guess had aoubt 400-600 people show up. there were lines at the more popular games but they werent to long and we had a few games that didnt do so well. so i would say that 15-18 is a good number for a school our size if you dont want lines that last forever.
the other thing is that if you put lil kiddie games in one area so that 2 are close enough together you can make do with one volunteer for 2 games. like we had the looipop tree and a frog toss together, and even had high school students from a local high school come and do their community service and the students were able to run two less busy lil kiddie games by themselves.
sorry this is a lil long and possibly confusing...lol like i said it was today, and i am the co- chair and coordinated 2 areas too. so whew. it is time to breathe again now!

I don't think 10 games will be enough either. Here are some ideas of easy carnival games. Cake Walk, Face Painting, Colored Hair Spray Station and a Sucker Tree. If you're having it in the gym, have a basketball contest. 3 chances to make a basket. Also our biggest hit at all our carnivals is the "Local Jail" Lots of fun, and it makes good money too. This boothe needs to have at least 4 people working at it. 3 to chase prisoners, and 1 to sit at the jail to release prisoners. It costs 2 tickets to have someone arrested. Once the prisoner is identified, the 3 officers chase them down, arrest them and take them back to the jail. They are jailed for 5 minutes. If they wish, they can pay an early fee and get out of jail in 2 minutes for 2 tickets. Have chairs in the jail for the prisoners to sit down on. Also, have the jail located right in the middle of all the action, it's so much fun to watch a teacher or a pricipal being chased by officers. The kids love it. Good luck!

Hi Liza,

If you have a SAMS CLUB or a COSTCO near you, then go in and ask to talk to the events person. I went into our local SAMS CLUB and spoke to a woman there and she was able to tell me EXACTLY how much to order (merchandise wise) and what not to order and also how much to sell stuff for! We made almost $7,000 at our carnival in March and that was after paying our Carnival company $5200! So we had a great time! Hope this helps!
Cathy