Fall Festival Planning Guide for Schools and Churches

If your festival is in October, you should be building the plan now. Here is how.

Start with attendance, then work backward

Attraction count is a throughput problem, not a decoration problem. A rough planning rule for a three-hour festival:

The number people underestimate is the line. One bounce house serving 400 kids produces a 40-minute wait and a lot of unhappy parents. Two mid-size attractions almost always beat one large one.

The fall festival attraction mix that works

• One anchor attraction — an obstacle course or a large combo. This is the photo everyone posts.
• Two or three fast-cycle attractions — sports games, a dunk tank, carnival games. These move lines quickly and keep older kids engaged.
• One toddler-safe option — separate, low-wall, supervised. Fall festivals skew younger than field days.
• Concessions — popcorn, cotton candy and sno-cone machines at $179 each. In October in South Florida, sno-cone is still the right call.
• Tents, tables and chairs — packages from $649 for about 40 guests to $1,399 for 100.

If your event is a fundraiser, price your wristband against the total attraction cost divided by expected paid attendance, then add your margin — and decide before you print whether food is inside the wristband.

Layout: five things worth walking before you commit

1. Delivery access. Where does the truck park, and what gate does the crew come through? Locked gates on a Saturday morning are the number-one cause of late setup.
2. Surface. Grass, asphalt or pavilion slab? Hard surfaces need ballast anchoring instead of stakes — tell us in advance and we bring it.
3. Power. Count usable outlets and their circuits.
4. Clearance. Overhead wires, low branches and awnings kill more attraction placements than square footage does.
5. Flow. Keep food and inflatables apart, and keep the toddler area out of the main traffic lane.

The power question

Every inflatable needs a blower running continuously for the entire event. School courtyards and church parking lots rarely have enough circuits, and most Miami-Dade and Broward park pavilions have no usable power at all. We supplied more than 900 generators last year, almost all of them for events where the organizer assumed power was available. Generators are $119–$249 — put them in the plan from the start.

Staffing and safety

Trained attendants are $300 per 4-hour shift. For a festival with public attendance, plan on staff for every inflatable and every mechanical attraction. Volunteers are wonderful at ticket tables and unreliable as ride operators, because they rotate out exactly when the crowd peaks.

Ask any vendor you are comparing whether their rides are state-inspected, whether they will name your organization as additional insured, and what their wind and weather policy is. Our rides are FDACS-inspected, our operators are safety-trained, and certificates of insurance go out within 24 hours at no charge.

The paperwork, if you are a school, parish or city

We Rent Fun is an approved vendor with the Miami-Dade and Broward school systems and parks systems. We provide W-9s, invoice against purchase orders, accept school and corporate checks, and support tax-exempt billing for qualifying organizations — all on one contract covering attractions, tents, concessions, generators and staff. See the Schools, Cities & Organizations page.

Rain

It is October in South Florida. Decide two things in advance: your call time, with a named decision-maker, and your fallback — indoor gym setup with smaller units, a partial setup, or a reschedule date already held. Have that conversation when you book, not on the day.

Book now for October

Send us your date, venue, expected attendance and whether the event is public or closed, and we will build an itemized quote with the COI and W-9 attached.

Call 305-985-0505 or email info@WeRentFun.Net.