🎄 2025 Style and Beauty Advent Calendar Discussion ***SPOILERS*** THREAD 6

[BakeOffRewatch]

New thread!

@BakeOffRewatch I'm afraid I've not seen any discount codes for Sephora. I would post here at lightspeed if I did. 😄

I'm being Facebook stalked by the Parfums de Marley advent calendar advert. 😩I absolutely can't buy it but it's lovely.

1.5 hours queuing 😳 that sounds awful! My ticket is for 11:30, I would've preferred to get there at opening time but I hesitated about booking it and missed out 🙈 It sounds like you got some good samples there, especially considering that the moisturisers in the advent calendar are 15mls 🤣 and a relief that you didn't get the red lipstick, I hope I don't get that too 🤞

Me too, it's teasing / torturing us 😫

This one is really good 😍 if it gets reduced, I may need to add it to my stash 😊

@LightandBreezy thanks for the review. I’ve told DD we need to get there for 0900.
did you get 10% off the Harrods advent?
I hope I don’t get the red lipstick …

Ah I can’t see a time on my ticket - does that get emailed out?
ignore me - it’s says 0900, I thought that was the start time.

I had to select a time slot when I booked mine 😕

@JoRaRaRa oh I maybe I’ve just been given that time - don’t remember an option to select.

I didn’t know about the H beauty event, are you signed up to updates or seen it on Social Media? Thank you for the thorough review @LightandBreezy . Is it free?

Thanks for thise links - I’ll start doing my homework.

what do you mean by ‘you’ll be unlikely to repurchase’?

@OvaHere@JoRaRaRa Glad it isn’t just me 😂😂
I do like the Delina and Valaya but can’t justify any more spends on perfume this year.

@BakeOffRewatch i think I saw it on Instagram.
There’s a free ticket or a £15 one where you get a extra item:

https://www.harrods.com/en-gb/c/news-events/h-beauty-carnival?srsltid=AfmBOorclzLxxwjYF9uJ_RRGhA-6hVIFNYehMD2DIyOBvefcBBofs6re

The thread talks about repurchasing, so some people have said Harrods is a nice treat to try but they’d never repurchase because some of those creams are literally £100s to buy. Cut and paste below of some stuff from the Harrods I would personally never buy.

Evidens De Beaute The Special Mask 30ml (Travel Size) £110 FULL SIZE
Shiseido FSLX Total Regenerating Cream 15ml (Travel Size) £114 (£380 for 50ml)
Lancaster Ligne Princière Cream 15ml (Travel Size) £57.84 (£192.80 for 50ml)
Lancaster Ligne Princière Serum 7.5ml (Deluxe Mini) £57.83 (£231.30 for 30ml)
Valmont Votre Visage L’Elixir Face Cream 15ml (Travel Size) £203.40 (£678 for 50ml)

It might be nicer for you to get an M&S one with stuff like L’Occitane and This Works, which are really nice products and also easier to repurchase as a daily item if you’re saying you’ve spent decades not buying this stuff. You could get an AC for half your budget and then use the other half of your budget to promise yourself you’ll buy a full size of the things you liked through the year.

@JoRaRaRa and @BlueLimes my event only had a morning slot and and an afternoon one - so entry from 9 or from 2. I didn't get there till 11 so it was probably peak times. As I got to the spin the wheel part the staff were discussing what measures they could take as management had said they needed to speed the queue up. This was the first of the H beauty events, so hopefully they will learn from this and get a better system in place by the time of your visit! But equally it's Harrod's and they don't really seem to give a shit most of the time 😂I wouldn't have bothered with the queue if I'd realised it would be over an hour at the outset tbh. And yes I got 10% of the beauty advent. They had the body one in store as well. Not sure how many they have in store - they had a few on display in cases with contents out, but none on the shop floor on shelves - the very nice sales assistant had to go and get one from a store room behind the tills for me. @BakeOffRewatch you can get free tickets or buy one for £15 which gets you a spin of the wheel so an extra full-size freebie. I got an email from them after I signed up trying to track down the fragrance calendar.

@LightandBreezy Thank you ! Do you get an extra product as well as the spin game ? My tickets says samples and a full size product plus a spin (I think!!).

Oh and I tried the PDM Delina in store and was surprised I really liked it so daren't look at that advent now

@BlueLimes yes, you do - you get a full size product with the other game that I described as like the crystal maze - you grab a ticket from a perspex box whilst the tickets are blown around in the air. I won a full size Esteé Lauder thing - this one. Bit weird as I can't believe one shade is inclusive for all skin tones, surely?
www.esteelauder.co.uk/product/681/13160/product-catalog/skincare/daywear/multi-protection-anti-oxidant-sheer-tint-release-moisturiser-spf-15

Thinking about it, for a £60 spend and a £15 ticket you get a decent amount, I've only just recovered from an illness though so the queueing felt particularly painful.

@LightandBreezy good info thanks ! Can you pick the extra product? (I don’t mean the game one). My last question !

@BlueLimes no - the ticket you pull has a colour on it, which defines which colour tombola box a staff member pulls the gift from. I think the different boxes relate to different values of gift, as I saw different products pulled from the same colour box. Or it's just fully random and they're adding confusion and mystery 😂

I think I received an email about it, but I actually booked through Instagram as I kept seeing it pop up. I only got my ticket the other day, and they're going around the country for the next month. It's the hbeauty carnival, so have a look and see if there's one near you 😊 Mine isn't near me though, it's a 3 hour round trip in good traffic. Hoping I get lots of great samples too.

I might try to purchase the Harrods hair and beauty advent calendar. I've just realised why my slot is at 11:30. I'm going on the Sunday and the store doesn't open until 11 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣 mystery solved!

Oh I’m not sure I like confusion and mystery 🤣 or red lipsticks ,

@LightandBreezy was it the first in your location? I went to the previous series of this event a few months ago and it wasn’t the best. Free drink that was included didn’t exist, sample choices were only out of 5 (so no choice at all really if you had the max choice of 5 and they weren’t letting people choose multiple of the same), most of the brands only had a small selection of their goods that excluded the newest collections or most popular items, card machines weren’t working so they had to tell everyone from
multiple slots to return later and ‘try again’ to buy items which was havoc and you can imagine the queues.

They run these semi regularly now across the country & half the time there are nightmare issues 🥲 as you and many others have said they never seem to learn or bother improving. That said, I will still always go if the timing is when I need something from the brands they are present and I will always love Harrods and H Beauty for some reason!

I'd like to go to one of those events. I really like H Beauty but my nearest is a few hours away so I'd probably want to plan a weekend trip around it to feel it was worthwhile.

@TempleBra it was the first event in this latest round of events if that makes sense. Sorry to hear your experience was so bad, that sounds even worse than my mammoth queue. The stock seemed up to date in this one too (at Lakeside) They had the Hourglass holiday palettes there which are pretty new.