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    5 Tips on planning rainy day birthday parties

    There’s a lot that goes into planning a child’s birthday party. From inviting guests, coordinating with parents, deciding on what to do and choosing a menu that accommodates everyone’s dietary restrictions. Now all you have to do is make sure the weather is perfect. Unfortunately, we can’t control that and neither can you.

    Undoubtedly, we get asked “What happens if it rains?” often about when parents book birthday parties in advance. To answer that question all you have to do is check out our rain policy. Our rain policy is the most flexible in the industry. While bad weather is the bane to many event companies, Niagara Inflatables & Games has the perfect solutions.

    Here are 5 tips to planning a possible rainy day birthday party with a bouncy castle.

    1. Don’t delay planning your party

    Sure it may rain on your party day, but there’s a really good chance that it may not. When you plan a month or two in advance, you may as well flip a coin to plan for rain or not. What is worse than rain, however, is not getting the birthday child what they wanted and having to settle for something you don’t want and stressing out about it. Don’t delay your party planning for something that may or may not happen.

    2. Ask your bouncy castle company “What are my options for rain?”

    When you get closer to your event date, the forecast may be showing a chance of rain. Just remember to keep calm. When you book a bouncy castle, you have options. One option is to move your party indoors. If you are hosting your party at a school, gym, hall or another venue, we can almost always find a bouncer that can fit indoors. An example of one of these is our Wacky Combo that’s only 8 feet tall. If moving your party indoors at your location isn’t available, we can switch to a wet unit such as our Rainbow Slip-n-Slide. This way you can have fun rain or shine! A third option will be to move your party to our indoor party room in St. Catharines. We can often find a time slot somewhere in the day for you. Finally, we can rebook your event for another day. This leads us to our next point.

    3. Let your guests know of the rain plan

    It would be very awkward for a child to show up to the party without a bathing suit if you switch your rental to the slip-n-slide, or arriving at your house if you relocate to Stuffy’s Fun Station. It may seem like an obvious task, however, we have seen these instances happen in the past. To help with this, keep a birthday attendee list and their contact numbers on it, or manage an email list and send a blast out.

    4. Plan to have your Bouncy Castle Party anyway.

    Often enough, when the weather man says “rain”, Mother Nature says, “I’ll give you a short shower and then move on.” Let’s put this into perspective in an example. The daily forecast may indicate an 80-90% chance of rain. That seems pretty high. Of course, your party is going to be ruined by that. Upon closer inspection, looking at the hourly forecast, you can see that in the morning there is a 40% chance that you will get less than one mm, afternoon a 60% chance of one mm and come the evening a 20% chance of less than one mm. This means, that during some time in the day, it will most likely rain, but it’s only going to be a short shower. Nothing that will derail a party. Don’t cancel your party based on a forecast.

    UPDATE: Here’s a video from SciShow explaining “Chance of rain” calculations way better than we could and more accurately. It really goes to show you how accurately or inaccurately predicting weather we really are.

     

    5.  Reassure the birthday child that everything will be okay.

    We’re not a parenting blog, but it’s an important lesson to teach your children that sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Set expectations early that the party plan may have to change because of weather and that that’s okay. Children are often quite understanding to a negative situation when it is not a surprise. By doing this, parents can alleviate some of the stress when it comes down to crunch time and altering plans. Not dealing with an overly upset child while making changes to the plan is much easier.

    We hope that this makes your birthday party planning easier. If you want more tips and updates on party planning, events & more, sign up for our newsletter below.

    Our featured image for this article is  Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s Rainy Day Book which will teach your child about some creative ways to have fun on a rainy day.

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