anyone used an entertainer they can recommend?

[mammanetta]

Party for about 20 kids plus parents and the odd younger sibling most probably.
In March.
Going to be within the nursery room of our local community ctr and our flat too small.
Has anyone used anybody they can recommend at all?
We're in N19 (London).
Found this company...bit pricey for me, but wondering if anybody had used them and if they were good, or something equivalent but not so expensive? :
www.magicfairyparty.com
Many many thanks!

We had a man called magic sam for our dd's 5th birthday he was expensive but totally brilliant (better than any of the others i have seen). He charged about £200 for 2 hours, I'm not sure how the prices compares to your link.
www.magicwish.co.uk/parties/index.html

Blimey - even the celebs have used him then!

Thanks for the link - he sounds amazing.

so if a party for 4 year olds is generally around 2 hours long, he'd be there for all of it? Is that what you did?

No idea what Magic Fairy charges...have just emailed them to see...

Yes we had the party for 2 hours, he got there just before to set up, entertained them for about 1hour 15mins, then they had food (we let him have a break then!) and then he did the last 20 minutes or so of the party.
We had 35 kids who were aged 4 & 5.
When we booked him we didn't have a clue, i phoned loads of entertainers and althought he was a little more expensive he was the only one that sounded like he had any enthusiasm, he was great, talked me through everything we wanted at the party, phoned a few days before to see if I had changed my mind about anything/ had any other ideas he was really good.

Dd is nearly 7 now and i have picked her up from lots of parties since, I can honestly say of all the other entertainers I have seen he has been the best.

Thanks nancy he really does sound amazing - though I wonder after him it must be quite a hard act to follow with successive parties!
Can I ask - what sort of entertainment did he do?
And given that he was there pretty much the whole duration of the party, did you at any point feel that he was invading your space?
Just wondered, as he is a stranger amongst lost of kids and adults who know one another and am trying to imagine if that felt weird ever, or not!
You can see I'm a total novice :)

He did magic and dancing, from what I remember he started of with getting them all to dance (quite amazingly he got them all to do a routine almost) then he sat them down and did magic, but the children were very involved in it all, he got them plate spinning, coming up and doing tricks with him taht kind of thing , he did games with them.
I had really said that i wanted somebody that would deal with the children, I'm not great with kids - let alone with 35 children that I don't know, so for us he was good because we didn't have to do much and could get the food out, take children to the loo, stuff like that. I think whoever you have they tend to "take over" the children.
I was concerned that with children that small they would get bored, but because he broke the magic up with dancing and silly games they were never sitting down for too long.
I think with any good party entertainer you tell them what you want. i seem to remember he did offer things like face painting when i booked the party, but as we had so many children it didn't seem like a good idea for us.

What i would really recomend is phoning a few and find out what they offer, like I said earlier you can get a better idea of what they are like on the phone, some of them seemed like it was a chore even talking to me (which for £200 I thought was a cheek!)

My other recomendaton would be to ring them asap, the good ones get booked up early.

nancy you are an absolute star!
Thanks you so much for all the info - he sounds ideal - especially as he seemed to listen to what you wanted too.
I guess that's true - any entertainer will take over to some extent...and that's also what you want really.
Gone are the days that our mums invited a few kids 'round ours for a special tea, then big sis organised a pass the parcel and put on a puppet show for her little sis's party

Hi

Try www.PartywithCharacters.co.uk They did my daughters birthday last week and a friends last month they were both fantastic.

The children were amazed for two hours and the adults what just as excited about it all.

They organised everything from the decarations to the invites and RSVP. All we had to do was turn up it there was no stress and pre party rush it was so lovely.

Good Luck