Bouncy Castles should not be erected outdoors in strong winds, despite being pegged down they can be lifted off the ground by gusts in excess of Force 5 which is over 18mph.  If the conditions were this windy we would be cancelling your booking.  So far we have never had to do this, largely due to our policy of not doing outdoor hires between November and the end of March.

Rain is another issue – heavy rain makes the bouncy castles unusable as they become far too slippery for children to bounce on.  Light rain or showers are not a problem as our castles have shower covers.  We advise all of our customers to check the castles and dry off the steps if there has been a shower.  We do not charge if you cancel your booking due to the weather – if you think its going to be too rainy for the party to go ahead, we don’t charge.  We have had to cancel one booking in 3 years due to rain.  We have allowed a number of bookings to go ahead when rain was forecast as showers and customers have been very lucky to get a window of good weather to bounce in.  HOWEVER our wet weather guarantee means that if you do decide to go ahead with your party and the forecast for showers is wrong, giving you persistant rain we will give you a half price weekday hire in the next school holidays – a perfect way of cheering up disappointed children.  With our weekday hire prices starting at just £35 you could be hiring a castle for less than £20 for 2 days of fun (our school holiday policy is to let you have 2 days for the price of 1).  Again our policy of not doing outdoor hires between November and the end of March makes it less likely that you will have bad weather.

Snow – never a problem for us – we are only doing indoor hires at the time of year when snow is about so if we can get our bouncy castle to you and you and your guests can get to your venue, your party can go ahead.  Again we understand if you want to cancel your party and we will not charge but if you want to go ahead we will endeavour to get to you.

Last Sunday we had just such a situation – the castle hire was in a remote Essex village and whilst the main roads were clear the village road was a bit slippy – when we arrived at the hall we didn’t so much as park our van as stop where we got stuck!  But we did get there and we did deliver and collect our castle on time so the party went ahead.  Mind you when we arrived to collect we did see one family trying to get their car unstuck!

Bouncy Castle Dalmation Slide Combi - Little Waltham Village Hall

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Springfield, Melbourne, Boreham, Broomfield, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Hatfield Peveral, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!

Bouncy Party - New Drop Down menus

With the wedding season almost upon us and bookings for the summer coming in thick and fast I’ve added a Weddings page to give information, advice and a special offer for wedding bookings.

Wedding Bouncy Castle Hire & Special Offer

We’ve always had a gallery page but I was unhappy with it for a while, hence its removal from the main navigation bar.  Although it contained images and videos some of them were in Flash, which I no longer want due to its incompatibility with iPads and other devices.  I also wanted it to be more interactive.  I’ve updated it now so that it only contains the YouTube videos and has an interactive photobox gallery – which is easy to add to and change so I can update the pictures more often.  I love this now as its showing castles both inside and out and in loads of different places, including some very small gardens!

Bouncy Party - Gallery of Bouncy Castle Hires

I’ve also updated my Halls to Hire pages.  I’ve added a page for South Woodham Ferrers and as we visit halls we always take pictures so I’ve started adding pictures of our castles in the halls to help customers make their decisions.  I’m still working on this area of the site – gradually building up a list of halls in different areas.  Mind you I’m not quite sure how to split up Chelmsford.

Halls to Hire in South Woodham Ferrers

I’ve added a page about our staff – just to show the human side of our business.  Our unique selling point is that we are the only Bouncy Castle Company in Essex run by a Mum & her Mum.  We think this set us apart because we have a greater understanding of the importance of your kids parties.  95% of our bookings are made by Mums!  So on the staff page you find out a bit more about the kind of family business we are – most of our customers speak to my Mum (Eve) when she confirms their bookings and they see me (Kathryn) and James (son) when we do our deliveries – if I’m really lucky my partner Mark comes and helps me!  So all of this information has been included on our Staff page.

Bouncy Castle Hire - Staff Page

So there we have it – a minor revamp of the website for the summer.  With additional content and more interactivity – the site is growing along with our business – so heres hoping for a busy summer!

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Springfield, Melbourne, Boreham, Broomfield, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Hatfield Peveral, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!

Party Package

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Springfield, Melbourne, Boreham, Broomfield, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Hatfield Peveral, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!

I think you’ll agree its a stunning bouncy castle to hire for just £70 and it also needs less garden/hall width than our other slide combi which has the slide at the side.

Bouncy Castle Slide Combi - Dalmation Theme

All of the details are on our website for this stunner!  Its 16 x 12 and very bouncy and lots of fun (James’ description!).  So thats us ready for the 2012 season with our 2 new bouncy castles for hire.

New Castles for 2012

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Springfield, Melbourne, Boreham, Broomfield, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Hatfield Peveral, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!

Last year I didn’t market a lot in the winter as I was waiting to have surgery and the NHS were their usual reliable selves, cancelling me twice at the last minute.  The last thing I wanted to do was let customers down so I didn’t market and not one booking came through between October and April!  This year I have continued to heavily market for bouncy castle hire in Billericay, South Woodham Ferrers, Wickford, Rayleigh and beyond and the bookings have come in.  I’ve done a lot of work on the website – seriously improved my SEO, kept blogging and kept paying Google and promoting the business through Facebook and Netmums.  This has keep the bookings steady.

I’ve also been willing to travel a little further as most of my bookings have been for my £100 party package – or even my £125 party package so have been a bouncy castle hire, soft play hire and then even a swing car hire and mascot hire.  So I have travelled out to Grays and Braintree which are usually too far in the summer when I have loads of deliveries to make.  The way I see it is that I load up the van – deliver and set up then go shopping for a couple of hours, or have a nice lunch somewhere and then I head back to collect.  Its not often you get 2 jobs in one day in the winter season when you are our size and frankly the soft play pretty much fills the van so it would be hard to do multiple deliveries.

Even with all that marketing today was a bumper day.  I started by confirming a booking by email with a lady who called yesterday and I’d emailed a picture (sort of!) of our new castle the dalmation front slide combi (I still havn’t seen the actual castle yet – it goes out for the first time this weekend!).  Then I took 2 phone bookings (one on mobile and one on landline) and finally my first online booking came through.  As I say on the site – bookings are NOT confirmed until we call and we called this customer within about 1/2 hour of her filling in the online form.

Now for the surprising bit – the customer was very impressed with both being able to book a bouncy castle hire online and also with the speed at which we phoned her.  The booking was confirmed and she went on to say that she had originally phoned a company she used before and they said they don’t come out for just one castle!  FOOLS – that is no way to treat repeat business.  Frankly one castle isn’t going to make you rich but business is scarce in the winter and it will pay your food bill for the week, or buy a take away and a couple of bottles of wine for the night.

So in one day Ive taken a bouncy castle hire booking for Wickford, which is 5 miles from home.  I’ve taken a bouncy castle hire and soft play hire booking for Rayleigh which is 8 miles from home, I’ve taken a bouncy castle hire booking for Chelmsford which is 8 miles from home and finally I’ve taken a bouncy castle hire booking for South Woodham Ferrers which is only 6 miles from home AND its for the wonderful Champions Manor Hall which is a great venue for a party.  Oddly I haven’t booked the same castle twice, but I have got 2 bookings for one day – and the times even fit just right.

So a simple online booking system for bouncy castle hire is working.  Just a web form posts to a spreadsheet and sends me an email alert.  Its giving my customers another way of booking.  Customers can now book their bouncy castle hire online, via email or call either a mobile or landline number.  Later this year we are looking to add an 0800 number to this lineup.

Of course tomorrow I’ll be posting 4 confirmation postcards to give all of my customers peace of mind that their booking is confirmed & correct.  Then we will be calling each of them the day before to double confirm the details.  Us Mum’s at at Bouncy Party know just how important our customers parties are to them and make sure they have nothing to worry about when they book their bouncy castle hire through us.

Oh and I’d happily take a booking through the Facebook page.

Remember you can now book online through our website www.bouncy-party.co.uk

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Boreham, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!

Soft play hire with happy hopperz

The party was run by an entertainer with the soft play there to keep the little ones busy.  After the entertainment and food the kids sat down to watch a DVD of Peppa Pig and to their surprise our special Pig Mascot made an appearance at the rear of the room (one rather large rugby playing Dad did the honours!)

Pig Mascot HIre

When we arrived to collect we found several small kids racing against several large dads on the happy hopperz.  A great time was had by all.  This is the second time the soft play and hoppers has been out in a smaller venue – you could even do this at home!  A lot of entertainment for the little ones for just £60

Remember you can now book online through our website www.bouncy-party.co.uk

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Boreham, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!

This castle is a 12 x 12 and in the popular penguin theme.  So we now have a choice of 12 x 12 castles AND a choice of penguin themed castles, either the NEW 12 x 12 or the original 17 x 15 slide combi.

As for the other new castle – its still not been up – but it has two bookings shortly so watch this space.

Both of the new castles are included in our popular party packages.

12 x 12 bouncy castle penguin themed

WHY is online booking better? 

Like most small businesses we can’t always answer the phone, we might be driving, in a meeting or somewhere phones are not allowed.  Sometimes we are working at our “day jobs” and they just don’t appreciate us taking time out to call our customers!  Yes you can leave a message but you are still waiting for us to get  back to you.  The online booking system sends an email to us immediately and if we can’t phone you right away we can usually email pretty quickly and let you know we have your booking and when we can call to confirm.

This works both ways – YOU might be at work and look online but not want to make a call to discuss your private business, much easier to fill in the online booking form and let us call you.

So book your bouncy castle hire online.  Visit our bookings page to find the map of the area we service, view our calendar for our availability and book your castle right there and then by filling in our online form.  And if you are not entirely sure what you want to book – don’t worry we will be calling you to discuss your full party requirements.

Booking page with coverage map & live calendar

Booking page with booking form

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Springfield, Melbourne, Boreham, Broomfield, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Hatfield Peveral, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!

To keep the kids amused they hired our 12 x 12 party castle and of course – our popular pig mascot.  It was our first bouncy castle hire in  Roxwell and its a lovely village hall.

Pig Mascot HIre

The soft play hire has picked up another Happy Hopper – look closely and there are now 3 cows, a bull and a dog.  Bully has been welcomed by the cows!

Of course picking up the balls from the ball pond was a nightmare but hey ho it was a great party.

We only charged an extra £30 for the second castle so that was a complete party package for just £130.  Excellent value for money!

Bouncy Castle - Ball pond - Soft play - Happy Hopperz

We cover Wickford, South Woodham Ferrers, Rettendon, Billericay, Stock, Ramsden Heath, Ramsden Bellhouse, Downham, Chelmsford, Boreham, Great Baddow, Little Baddow, Rayleigh, Witham and surrounds! See our Bookings page for full details of our coverage!