Bouncy Castle from the ELC

[mckenzie]

Has anyone bought one of the new bouncy castles from ELC or Macro or elsewhere?

I was about to pay £60 to hire one for the day but ELC are selling them for £150 (takes 4 children aged 3-9) or a bigger one for £200, reduced from £300 (takes 6 children from 3-9).

Althogh the blurb says that they inflate and deflate within one minute and you can fold them back up etc I'm worried that i'll never get it folded up to a manageable size to keep in the garage and it will be too much hassle to get it out too often.

Does anyone have any experience please before I go and shell out my hard earned cash?

thanks all

is it on their website?

Are these the two:

£200 one, reduced from £300

£150 one

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They're the ones hulababy. The reduced one seems great value huh but how small will it fold up though do you think? The £150 one is in the stores and is in a box about the size of a milk crate but that's probably been machine folded - i'll never get it that small will I?

I think the big one looks great and seems a good deal. Don't have a garden or I'd be tempted myself

I bought a smaller one from elc which was £40 and came with a paddling pool. It is fine for my three they are age 2, 4 and 5.

You can buy electric pumps which inflate and deflate. They suck all the air out that you never manage to get out by yourself. Don't know how well it would work with the big bouncy castle although it works well with ordinary inflatables.

a friend of mine has the £40 one £40 . They have a relatively small garden but this one fits very well on the lawn with loads of room all around it. You can either fill the base with water and make a decent paddling pool or fill it with lots of balls and teh kids can jump in theere (i think you'd need to put something soft underneath though just to be safe). So all in all this one is a v. good size and good buy but have no idea about how small it gets once it's packet because they never did that yet. but looking at the dimensions of the 2 ones you like, this one is much smaller. just re-read the text and i'm not really helping you at all

How old are your kids McKenzie? Because mine are 5 and 2, and I have the cheap £40 version, which is more than big enough (limit is 100 kilos) for both of them and a couple of friends and comes with a paddling pool.

Even with this small one though, realistically you need the electric pump - doing it with a manual takes me hours, but the electric pump really does work, and takes all the air out so it folds up properly.

I would love this from ELC. Or 3rd product on here to watch a video of it. An inflatable air flow playground. Looks great fun! Expensive though, and as we don't have a garden is of limited use to us anyway - but still looks fun

just found a good site for bouncy castles and they look better quality than the E.L.C if anyone is interested look here

Warning...
if you go for the £200 ELC B castle watch out, imho they are potentially very dangerous.
On our way to local hospital to dd1 broken leg re xrayed we stopped to get her a skirt, outside shop was an ELC B castle errected as a demo, free to use for passing shoppers kids.
DD2 (nearly 2) was having a great time until she bounces straight out the rear door onto the shop front glass!! Nasty gash under eye.
Why is there a rear door in a bouncy castle, surely in most cases the castle will be at the back of a garden, near a fence or wall??
The door is obscured by two toadstall type things so is not visable from 50% of the front

I wonder if its happened before because within 2 mins the castle had been packed away and I was surrounded by ELC staff with sweets etc..

we had the £4o bouncy castle from elc two years ago and my kids went through the whole at the bottom it tipped over and ripped.We took the first one back to the shop because it ripped too, that is why I didn't want another one made by them.My bouncy castle has arrived today so I will let you know if it is any good