A trip to the Panto!

Automatically generated from the audio, so it may not be perfectly word-for-word.

Hi, welcome to the PTA Podcast. My name is Yvonne, and I've been a PTA volunteer for a few years now. But I'm just one of thousands of volunteers up and down the country who all want to make a difference to their schools. PTAs are becoming even more crucial in UK schools to boost budgets, and I find it fascinating to talk to other volunteers about the different approaches they take. So please join me in this podcast to share information, generate ideas, debate issues, and celebrate success. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. Hey everyone, welcome to episode 5 of the PTA podcast. Today I am chatting with my friend Lisa about a fundraising event that she leads in her PTA, which is a pantomime trip for families at her primary school. I'm very conscious that I also need to update you guys on what I've been doing over the past few weeks, but I will mostly save that for my next episode because I really want to focus on all the information Lisa's going to give us about her pantomime trip. But as a little summary or a little taster, if you like, uh since September, my PTA has organised uh a rainbow hour event in school. We've held our AGM and we also organised a festive sale because it's only a couple of weeks until the Christmas holidays. So as you can kind of tell, we haven't been very active at all this term. And there is a reason for that. Uh the reason for that is that we had an event that turned into a bit of a nightmare, um, which I will fully explain in my next episode. There's quite a lot to say about it, and I wanted to focus this time on everything Lisa's got to tell us. But this one event that completely drained and sucked out of me all my enthusiasm for fundraising and my PDA. It had quite a major impact. Um, it's it's one I think the hardest event I've ever had to deal with as a as a chair, and um I've never had an event that's had that that sort of impact on me before, so I wasn't really expecting to feel that way after we'd done it. And um it's very unusual for me to um struggle to kind of get back to my normal 120% level of enthusiasm. So that's why I haven't really talked about what we've been doing recently, but I will update you um next time on that. So without further ado, uh I'm going to hand over to Lisa, who's going to tell us all about her experiences with organising this lovely pantomime trip for her school. Lisa, welcome to the PTA podcast and thank you so much for coming to talk to me. Before we get started, could you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, please?

Of course. So, as you said, my name's Lisa. I've been a drama teacher for about the last 20 years. Um, had a little bit of change, as many did during uh Covid and lockdown, and created the Drama Coach, which is mainly sort of online drama resources, mostly a YouTube channel, but some other bits and bobs and courses as well. So I surprisingly really enjoyed that. I didn't want to make videos, but again, online learning sort of lent us that way. Yeah. And I found I really enjoyed that. So that's all out there in building. Um, so I'm not working as a teacher anymore. I'm doing that and also working for my husband's company, but that's a whole nother story that perhaps doesn't tie in so much to the PTA and the trip. Um, two children go to our local school where I'm on the PTA now. Yeah, been there for the last nearly two years. Again, we moved there from the school that they were going to with me prior to lockdown. And I think that's pretty much me in a nutshell what I'm doing.

So you've joined your school's PTA. So what motivated you to take part in that?

Um, I think I always saw myself being on the PTA. I think when we sort of phoned up and got the girls' place at this school, I pictured doing that. So I've always been a teacher, so I've always been involved in a school, and then it became the girls' school. Um, but I saw this as perhaps a more fun way to be involved. My husband's a governor, so he's got the serious bit. It's all sort of switched around for us now. He's got the serious bit, and a friend of mine said, Oh, I'm I'm gonna join, shall we join? I said, Yeah, let's let's do it. As long as they don't want me to do too much about maths or numbers, yeah, then I'll see what I can bring to.

So your your role on the PTA is just is a general member, or you don't have a specific titled role or anything?

No, no, just a general member, and I think the PTA really tries to tap into the things that we like doing or the skill set that we might have. So I said to them very early on, you know, this is me, I like drama and sparkly things. Use me, you know, where you can.

Oh, that's so great. So you mentioned that the school is a village school. Could you just tell us how big it is, how many classes there are, that kind of thing?

That's a really good question. I see it as a small school. So they've got a couple of split classes where they have to put the year groups together because they're a small school, um, which I've actually grown to really love. It was one thing in the beginning, I thought, oh gosh, how would that work? Yeah. Um they're offstead outstanding, although like just about every school they are due.

Yeah.

Um, yes, I'd I would just call it um sweet, it's got this family feel, but obviously they do push and encourage the students as well. A real um my eldest is in year six now, a real push for them to sort of be ambassadors for the school and have links throughout the school and look after each other. I just I think it's adorable.

So that sounds like there's a really great parent community at the school. Do you know how many, roughly how many kids are there?

That's a really good question. No, nothing. Okay, all right then.

So we want to say about a hundred and something. A hundred and something, I think we'll probably think about right. Yeah. I could be wrong. Okay, but again, I told the numbers and I, we just they don't stick in my head on the front. That's fine. So I really wanted to talk to you on my podcast, as I know you organise a specific event at your school, and I'd love to hear more about it. So the event that you organise is a pantomime trip for parents and children to a local theatre. So, what gave you the idea of arranging that?

Absolutely, this is my trip. Um, I pretty much stole it. A friend of mine who was leaving the PTA as I started, they said, Oh, her job was going to be look into a pantomime trip. And I put my hand up, it was on Zoom, but yeah, waved at them. Great. Yes, please, me. That's my domain. Give me that one. Um, and the research into it wasn't hard at all because my family and I have a favourite pantomime that we go to every year in Bath anyway. We have a friend that writes it and is in it, and you know, we may be biased, but we think it is the the best panto you can possibly go to. Again, being a drama teacher, I've been to a lot of productions. So I knew that my research wouldn't be hard as long as the the parents are happy to travel there. So then our chair helped me with a lot of forms, I can't uh survey monkeys to check, you know, would the parents be willing to? Interesting.

So you did a survey before just to see what the uptake would be like.

Because you don't want to book a hundred tickets and be stuck with the bill, especially when it was in my name. That was a bit scary to see, actually. Um to see, you know, the thousands of pounds under my name. So when you sent the survey out, did you get a good response from that? Um yes, lots of uptake. Yeah. Um originally we were, I think this might be tapping into some of your questions later, but originally we were going to provide a bus as well from the school into the uh the town. It's about 40 minutes away.

Yeah.

Um, but actually there wasn't a huge uptake on that.

Oh, that's interesting.

So we ditched that plan and a lot of us got the train at the same time, and that was quite fun. So we will sort of push that again this year. Um, I've maybe gone a little bit off topic there. Yeah, the survey, yeah, really good um uptake from the survey, and it gave us a rough idea of numbers so that we could start booking the tickets.

Yeah. Okay, so could you talk us um through how you actually organise it? So I was thinking about how I would organise it if it was me, and I was thinking that I would probably have to start really far in advance because Panto tickets are on sale from something crazy, like March or something, aren't they? So, when do you actually start in the year to do that?

Um, so this we're about to go this December for our second year running, and this this will be an annual event. So, in the first year, um I can't remember when we booked them, but it wasn't as early and there wasn't quite as much availability. And I'll talk to you about the complications of that bit later.

Okay, so I'm looking forward to that.

Um, this year, yes, I think uh summer holidays. I think before the school broke for summer holidays, we made sure we had the numbers.

Okay. So numbers from parents. Yes. So do you get the numbers first of who wants to go and then book the tickets?

We did originally, but this time we just said I think it was 100 tickets we did last year. This year we said, well, look, let's go for 120 because we have really good feedback.

Right.

Um, actually, we ended up selling 98 of those. But the great thing about going early is, and the the box office have been brilliant with me. I've been in a bit less trouble this year than last year. Um but they've been brilliant, and as long as you pay by the end of September, you can be a little bit flexible. You book your 120 and they go, actually, we've had 98, and then I get the pick of the tickets. Right. And then the horrible nightmare that we had last year of um having tickets and sticky notes all over my friend's kitchen island, and it it took three of us about three hours to allocate the tickets, but not this time. It took me half an hour, 20 minutes by myself. It's okay, completely different. If you get that block booking in, yeah, yeah, all those seats together. We had the whole of the dress circle. Okay. Um, and then you can allocate in the party. So this this family won't four, this family wants six, these won't eight.

I was I was really interested to find out about this because I could imagine I was kind of worried that you might end up with odd seats, you know, single seats in the middle of like family groups, and thinking, oh no, but that would really eat into your profit that you hadn't sold those seats. So so you basically go to the box office and you book out like a hundred seats and they hold those seats for you, yeah, and then and then you approach parents and say, Um, we've got this is the price, yeah, you need to pay by the end of September or whatever, and then whichever seats you don't sell, the box office just releases back. Oh that's it.

Although if you've paid your bill and you still have problems, um, as we tried in Covid, we were hoping they might sell them back. But the the policy, of course, is unless the production is fully sold out on that performance, they won't take and resell the tickets. But we we didn't lose out massively, and there were some parents that just decided last year again COVID was a bit wobbly, so they didn't come, but they they didn't ask us for their money back, they were very kind, you know. We've paid, and I think we gave them some other incentives. I think a free ticket to our camping trip and just things to just sort of smooth things over a little. But the atmosphere was was great, and everybody was very supportive, but it's definitely been easier this year. I've learned a few things. Although I've got another plan for making it affordable for all, yeah, um, which is only just just an idea in our head is that perhaps this becomes a biannual trip. Okay. And in the off-year, we the PTA pay for a company, a travelling company, to go into school and perform to the whole school. We've not taken this to school yet, we only came up with this at our last meeting. Absolutely. Um, because you know, it is theatre tickets are ridiculously expensive. And again, as a drama teacher, I feel passionately that theatre should be available for all.

Yeah.

Um and it shouldn't be elite, although it's it's hard, isn't it?

When when theatre tickets are expensive, it is hard for everybody to go. You're absolutely right.

But we've got to work out how expensive it would be to fund that company coming in. Would the teachers have time off assembly time to, you know, they can't perform to the whole school at the same time?

No, because your hall is probably not big enough for everybody.

So there'll be some logistics there, but that's it's quite exciting that we might be providing that for school.

Uh so you mentioned um the parents paying a deposit. How did you work out how much that would be?

Oh again, that would be our chair's domain. She's very good at that. Um and I think we said £15 per ticket. So if I dive into the numbers, so this year, um, a standard ticket if you'd rocked up to the theatre and bought a ticket on its own is £41.

Wow, just for one person. Wow, okay, yes.

Um, we get the block discount. Okay. Great. Um, so it would have been £27.30 per ticket. Oh gosh, that's a really good difference. But the PTA just put a little bit on top because we want this to be a fundraiser.

Of course, yeah.

Yes, we want it to be fun and an amazing trip, but we want to make some money, so we put, I think it was just £1.70 per ticket on, so it's £29 for a ticket. Still a huge saving.

It is massive. I didn't realise that the block discount was quite so large, actually. That's really good.

Are they um yeah, it might even be better this year than it was last year. So we pop that on, and with our 98 tickets, if I've got this right, I think we've made £166.60. Okay. And I mean it's not a huge fundraiser, but it's about, and we've said this more this year coming out of COVID and meeting that we want the students to have fun, the parents. Yeah, we don't want to be the bane of you know, give us more money, give the PTA money.

Yeah, you know, let's go and have a really fun festive trip. Well, I think it's really important in a PTA to balance your activities. So some of some of them will absolutely be 100% let's raise some money, and then there are other experiences that you just want the children to enjoy and the parents to enjoy, and all the communities come together, and so I think balancing your activities is a really is a really good idea. So So, what how did parents actually buy the tickets? Do you have some sort of finance system that that you can use at the school or is it?

No, that's a very good question. We have the the bank account for the PTA, and they just do a backs transfer directly to that. Yeah, um, because I know there are some other things where lots of cash is brought into the school, you know, for non-uniform days and other bits and bobs. Yeah, but this one all went straight in there, which was great because you could we asked them to put their child's name as a reference so you could see, you could work out how many tickets they wanted to buy and and see how you were doing with your 120 or 100 tickets. Um, that was really, really helpful. My chair was brilliant at keeping an eye on the names coming in. Do we need to push it? Do we need to remind those that definitely want to come because they came last year that they haven't paid yet and they might not get a ticket? Um, yeah, so that's a really simple way. But last year it was with the £15 per ticket deposit, and it was getting a bit complicated because they were going to pay an extra three pounds per ticket for the bus that we were going to provide. Oh, okay. So that was a bit more fiddly, but getting rid of the bus actually was made much more simple.

Okay, so basically the so that was quite an um intense admin thing to do, I suppose, is to go through the bank account and check names and check numbers of tickets. So I guess that's kind of an area where it could have where you could make a mistake as a as a PTA, I guess you could make a mistake with the tickets, but so but that was okay. My chairs all over that.

Brilliant with that and the spreadsheets. Um, but yeah, even allocating the tickets, I did triple check have I got the right amounts? Are they together in their party? Yeah, you know, did I want somebody to double check? In the end, I had the confidence to go, you've definitely got it, you've checked it three times now. The numbers match up. They didn't actually, they were off by one. And I found it because this this sort of as big as we can print this theatre plan, it's still quite tiny. Yeah. And I just um left, I don't know, I'd given a party of three instead of a party of four. Yeah, right. Double checked it, sorted it out, and um hopefully everyone's going to be really pleased because we didn't get any restrictive view this year. Oh, yeah because again, we booked early. So we've left those off. So, yes, a strange stranger could book that. Well, I can't imagine a single person is going to book on a random Saturday afternoon one restricted view ticket, so it'll probably be an empty seat by by us. Yeah, but again, last year we felt if if they were given a restricted view seat, they should pay less. Yes. So we pushed for well, there's these cheaper tickets if you want them, but of course, that's one in a party of four. Yeah. Uh again, it was very complicated. Yeah. So we've just not booked any restricted view tickets this year.

Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? When you run an event for the first time, how much you learn to make next time so much easier for yourself. Yes. And easier for everybody else as well. And you yeah, it sounds like you've taken a lot of decisions away or a lot of options away just to really streamline it. So, do you want to talk me through what happened with the bus? Because I um thought, oh, maybe you all got on the coach and went together, but it sounds like well, that would have been a nice idea.

But of course, not everybody who goes to the village school is in the village. So then they've got to travel. Do they need to park at school? We did get permission for that, and it could have happened. But they're on the the Survey Monkey, there just wasn't enough uptake to make the bus viable. I think it was about £500 or something.

Yeah, really expensive.

I could be exaggerating there, but it seems like I think you're right, actually, they are really expensive to hire a coach, yeah. And and if loads of you were going, it would be worth it. Yes, but actually the uptake was low, and I was a little bit relieved because I'm sort of done with organising school trips. I'm not a teacher anymore, and it was quite nice. I was a bit worried about the responsibility of that. Yeah, um, and now we'll just say, look, there are these two um train times. A lot of us are getting the train that we're free to get at the same time. Um, but other people might want to go in because they're going to have um lunch before you know, and meet other you know, it's a lovely city to go and explore. So other people might have plans either side of the performance itself, and it just lets everybody be a little freer and enjoy their so you basically left um people to organise their own transport to the theatre.

And so on the actual day of the performance, did you um how did you manage that and the tickets and meeting people and everything? How did that go?

That's funny actually. So this was still in um the realm of actual tickets. So they were printed. I had weeks in advance put them in envelopes. Oh wow, to reception, they got sent in. Yes, they got sent home. Okay. I was nervous, but I'd already spoken to the box office and they said, Don't worry, you've got this sort of master list. If anybody does forget their tickets, I didn't tell the parents this, I said Facebook message, you know, don't forget your tickets. Um that you know, nobody did. Yeah, but I could go and get them reprinted, so I was cool with that, but it was quite funny how everybody started queuing down the street, and the ushers just said, You don't need to cue, you don't need to like come on in. It's quite funny, and they sort of wanted to sit together and cue. Nobody was late because that would embarrass me. It's a COVID. Yes. One of my party had to be let in at a convenient moment, I would be dying. Um, oh, I'll talk to you about other other problems. You've got to be really careful with um other people's children dangling over the barriers and things. Um they were very again, I was quite new to the PTA and quite new to the school to sort of tell off other people's children is is not what I want to be doing, but I said sort of sweetly, oh you can't do that, da da da. And then the mum's like, brilliant, great, they're all one family. Yes, I totally agree with you. And we this year I've put in the front row, so so it's this high front row with a um barrier. Yes, yeah. Um, and again, you don't want a child dangling over with their water bottle, which is what I saw and terrified me last time. Um, so I've put families mostly in this front row that I know. Okay. It's quite nice because it meant I legitimately could put my family in the front row. I know I can tell them off. And that's called a PTA perk if you can put yourself on the front row. But it's not very well. My chair said, I hope I've got well, we say front row, it's only front of this particular um circle. I said, I hope I've got front row seats. I went, well, actually you have, and there's a reason for that because I know I know you. Yeah. Um whereas some of the families I just won't know. Or actually, um, some of them are younger, and and the child would have the bar right in their eye line. Yeah. So you needed the slightly older children anyway. Oh, but tickets. So that's really changed now this year. Okay, so we've got that. That worked well. I'm gonna do I've bought my envelopes. We're gonna do that again. Yeah, get our lovely school manager on board and she'll send them home with the kids. Oh, we've gone to e-tickets.

Right, okay.

So on my to-do list now is to I don't know whether it's appropriate to email out the whole group, here are your tickets, and just put then their name, their party, and and their tickets, or are they gonna get all comparative and and whether I should email individually each parent saying these are your tickets, but then letting them in when I've got the master thing on my phone, again I'm gonna. Worry about people being late, etc. I might tell them it starts earlier than it does. I don't know. Um, so that's sort of to be continued as to how the e-tickets. Okay.

So don't they, the e-tickets, don't they have a QR code on them that the theatre scans can't remember?

They do, they do. And so I've got them individually on my I could, but I thought that's a bit bad on the environment. They're obviously doing this for a reason. Yeah. Um, but then I thought if I could um chat to my husband probably be really clever with my email and send out the barcodes separately to each parent, that would be the ideal for them.

Just bring them in.

But to send them their one, two, three, four, five, six tickets and not send them the wrong one. Oh gosh. I'm figuring for you now, Lisa. Yeah, so so that bit's changed. I was very comfortable with my paper tickets and my envelopes. Um, but you know, things change hopefully for the better. Yeah.

So um I'm sure you'll figure it out. Any sort of questions greatly received. I'll have a think about it. Uh so we talked about the fact that you decided not to do the bus or the coach. Do you provide any ice creams or anything for the kids at the interval? Is that included in that?

They are available there, and you can sort of pre-book your drinks or your ice creams. It's not a bad idea. It would be quite a nice and that when I saw that question, that led me to think back to the idea of having a company come in. Right. And when schools that I've worked in previously have done that, they also have done an ice cream. Oh, have they? Okay. The kids in the hall in the in the interval. Yeah. Um, so it is a really nice idea. I think it's gonna end up bumping up the price or making a loss because ice creams aren't cheap in the theatre. They are very nice.

You're right. Yeah, when we go to the theatre, we always get an ice cream, but it is expensive. Yeah, and I guess you would then run into difficulties of who would want which ice cream, and then there'll probably be be kids who can't have an ice cream dairy intolerance, and actually, maybe it's just easier not to.

And then each family, they're there with their parents, you know, it's not a school trip, they're there with their parents, they can make the decision and do what works for them, which worked really well last year. Everybody seemed very happy. Yeah, some of us had a little glass of wine, it wasn't.

Oh, very nice! That's the advantage of going on the train, isn't it?

Absolutely.

Yes. Did you find that there were any extended family members? Did any grandparents go as well?

Well, yes. Um, well, I I brought the girls' grandparents and they're keen and signed up to come again. I'm just looking at these as well. The this party's brought their grandparents and this one. So, yeah, a smuttering of grandparents and then some younger children as well that aren't at school yet. Oh, that's cool. Um again, the panto is great, it's hilarious for the adults and the little ones. Um, the dancing's fantastic. Um, it's the dance school I used to go to as a child. So I feel really passionate, really connected to this. Absolutely. This was the first stage I was on as a I don't know, three-year-old. So I'm so invested. I think this place is just gorgeous, and I love the fact that that we get to go and then we get to spread this joy to the rest of the school that want to come, really.

Yeah, and it's a wonderful tradition, isn't it? British tradition to go to the panthe. So anybody who's not from Britain or has lived elsewhere can can experience it as well, which is really great.

And they are, I know I'm waxing lyrical about this particular one, but they are, you know. They're up and down the country.

Yeah, I've been to lots of different ones, and uh, yeah, they are great, great fun for the family. They are so much fun, and and especially for the kids because they're so interactive, aren't they? As well, it's not just you're just sitting there watching something, you can take part, can't you?

Which is and it gets very loud, and just have to make sure taking them to something serious afterwards.

This is not a pantomime, so don't shout out at this one. Can't be everybody that comes on stage. So, what kind of feedback have you had from people that have been on the trip then?

Um, just generally that they had a lovely time, it was a a fun trip. That I was a little bit worrying that uh some of the older kids were starting to get the adult jokes. Oh, there we go. That's no, no complaints at least. No complaints, okay. That's great. Yeah, just that they had a really lovely time. They are we doing it again. Oh I think the only negative feedback it was Cinderella last year, and some said, Oh, I don't think the boys really want I think they didn't go because it says it's big bit girly, and it's Aladdin this year, so we're all going. Um again, it's it's it's got such a mixture in there of all the the traditions and techniques and things.

So I think I think that was the only negative Yeah, which obviously was out of your control because you can't control which Panto is going to be on. No, no, but I'm I'm sure that a a boy or a girl would enjoy anything.

Oh, absolutely, the ones that came really did. So it was uh wouldn't matter in August.

Yeah. So um you mentioned there were some problems or some tricky situations. Can you tell us a bit about some of the it's some of the problems that you encountered, maybe how you overcame them or what you've changed this year?

So yes, first of all, it was that allocation and making that work. But again, the parents were brilliant. I would message them and say, Oh look, I'm really sorry, can I put four in front and four behind? I've actually done that again for this same family because a row of eight, yeah, it's much longer. It's harder to communicate if you need to uh tell your child to uh whatever. Um, you know, or just to be together. So actually it worked really well. But I said to them, I can't get you a row, you'll be sort of split up. Can I do that? She was fine with that. Um, so it was the allocation that was the the biggest nightmare the first time, but we're over that by getting a big block booking earlier and allocating before you pay for the tickets. I think that's the one thing that I would give to anyone who wants to do a trip like this. Allocate your tickets before you pay, and then you can just give back the ones virtually give back the ones that don't suit you.

Yeah.

Um, and then yes, it was just the sort of like somebody else's child dangling over the barrier, terrifying me for their safety, for everyone else's safety. But again, that was it really didn't become an issue. I said to the child in the interview, you know, sweetheart, that's really dangerous. You can't do that. And you know, I'm gonna I I don't think it was actually their seat. Um, and you know, if I'm gonna you're gonna have to go and sit back with mummy and daddy or whatever, but the parents were so supportive and lovely and said the same thing, and it wasn't an issue.

But again, when you're quite new, yeah, you don't want to be going around telling kids. It's a very unexpected situation, like you would never think that somebody would do that or somebody would dangle their water bottle over. So I guess if you're unprepared for that, it feels like quite a big thing at the time.

It did, and my husband was like, sit down. I said, I'm gonna crawl over there. It's like just shut up and enjoy yourself. Um, but again, they weren't intentionally doing anything wrong, they were leaning over to see, they had a water bottle in their hand, they they weren't trying to be naughty. They're a lovely, lovely group to to take, they weren't trying to be naughty. Um but like you said, it just sort of blows up in your mind, this is my trip here, and I really don't want anything to go wrong, but it didn't, they were fine.

That's great. So, just gonna ask you again, Lisa, um, about the tickets. Um so the first year you booked tickets and then you got um bookings from parents, and then you tried to match your parental bookings to the seats that you'd got. Yes. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And then you gave the parents the their ticket numbers. Yes.

I gave them their tickets with the numbers on.

Yeah. So can you just describe to me how how that is different this year? What did you do differently? Because I don't quite understand.

So, what I did differently, I mean there were more tickets available because we did it earlier. Okay, so you so you've knew the area we liked that we used last year. So we booked we booked more. We went from a hundred to a hundred and twenty, even though we didn't end up using them all. We thought we might. Yeah. Um, if we had, the allocations could have got tricky, you know, and you've got a three left on the plan, but a four. But you will always have the right number, but you might not have them to sitting together. That's what you mean. So I would say overbook. Okay. So I would do that again. If we think we've got 120 interested next year, we'll book 130 seats just to give you that playroom. Yeah. Um, so again, last year we also had included the restricted view tickets. Yeah. Some parents had signed up for those to have tickets a little cheaper. Yeah. But then we had to put them in that block with a restricted view. Then you've got blocks with aisles. Yeah. Um, then you've got blocks with tickets you don't own. Um so it yeah, it did. It did it took hours and a lot of sticky notes and a lot of moving around and a couple of messaging people. Would you mind if you know sat to either side of an aisle? Um, but again, everybody, it was the first time we did it. They were very supportive and they were very happy with their tickets.

Yeah.

So much so that they said, can we have that area again? Oh, okay. Because I thought we'd go down to the stools where it really is a block and you kind of can't go around. Whereas up here you've got a couple of aisles and things.

Yeah.

Um, so no, overbook to your tickets. Some breathing space. Absolutely. Allocate and then give back the theatre, are very happy for you to give them back as long as it's before you pay, before the deadline they've given you.

Yeah.

Um, and it just makes your life so much easier.

Oh, that's great. So then this year you you got your seats booked, and then parents would say, I want four tickets. But are you still allocating seats?

Still allocating the seats, yes. Although I can't give them the physical ticket this time because it's moved over to the ticket, so we'll work that out. Um, so it's we're doing it in the same way, but we've just overcome all of the problems by having more tickets to play with. Okay. So I've there's a five here, great. Put those in there. Or these have got eight. Here's the eight. Let's give that to that group. Whereas we didn't have as much play when we had exactly the right amount of tickets for parents. I see what you mean. They didn't fall into groups of four and six and three, and whatever they had purchased, it was much, much more difficult. So I think well, it it works in the same way, but we've got extra tickets and we haven't given them a a tier price. We haven't given them the these are the cheaper tickets, we've just bought all of the same type of tickets. Yeah, so it's a lot more simple. Definitely.

Yeah. So when you um I presume you had a deadline for parents to book their tickets. Yes. So after that deadline passed, was that the point then when you knew you had everything in? That's the point where you do your allocations. So you weren't doing allocations as you went along, you just did it all in one guy. Absolutely. So everyone can fit.

We wrote that's so I I hand wrote it because that's the way I like to work from the spreadsheet, you know, the surname and the number of tickets that they need, and then allocated the bigger numbers first. Um, but there was a couple of parents in mind that thought, oh, they came last year. So I just gave them a little message. Oh, yes, we do want to come.

Yeah.

So we we did a couple of prompts and reminders before that final deadline, and then and then allocated them after that.

Yeah, people always need about a thousand reminders, don't they?

And it's a long time, you know, when you're asking them in June, July for money for a pantomime. Yeah, that's very true. They don't know what they're doing on the 17th of December. So, but again, I think the more years that we run this, you will get the families that went, oh, we've we've done this every year, we love it, of course. We'll we'll pay for the pantomime.

So, and just out of interest, if you did um start organizing and sort of getting bookings in June, and what did you do for the new reception parents who start in September?

Well, this year they were mostly already there. It was a lot of siblings this year. Oh, I see, okay. I think we put a reminder out in September. I think it's an email. Again, our school manager, she's brilliant, and we just email her and she sends it out to the parents. So we did we did talk about that and make sure they were involved, but actually there weren't many that weren't already aware of the trip, yeah, because they already had older siblings in the school.

But then there was a little bit of time in September where you can. So they weren't they didn't miss the deadline or anything.

No, and if they wanted the payment plan, yeah, we never actually came up with it, but there was the suggestion just email us, you know, if you need to pay a deposit. But again, we wanted to keep it simple for the banking because it spread such a long time when we had deposits in the summer and then final payments in I think it was even before the summer, it might have even been spring. Yeah, we went super early. I think we came out of the pantomime in December and went, This is great. Oh, look, on the back of the programme is the advert for Aladdin next year. Shall we book it? And I I really think it wasn't long after. No, I don't think it's got those those tickets block blocked out, but you know, free of charge. Yeah. And then you can see your big bill for a thousand odd ones, whatever it is. £2,675. My goodness, all the 98 tickets. I know when it is, I practice And you're responsible for all of those tickets. No, I think maybe I need to get an account with the the theatre that has the school's name, you know, the school PT because seeing it against your name was a little bit scary. Yeah. Lovely. Um is there anything else you you wanted to say about this? No, I don't think so. Just I can highly recommend it if anybody wants to take a group to the theatre. But yes, get your bookings in early, overbook and give back after you've allocated.

Oh, that's great. Lisa, thank you so much for coming to talk about your Panto trip. I've often thought of whether something like that would work at my school, so it's been really helpful to chat through all the details and understand all the preparation that you've done. So uh thank you so much for sharing it with us. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's so great to talk to other PTA volunteers about their experiences in organising different events and finding out some really useful tips and tricks. Many thanks to Lisa once again for sharing her wisdom with us. And that's it for episode five. Next time I'm going to talk about the event which my PTA organised that turned into a bit of a nightmare. I can laugh about it now and I can talk about it now, but at the time it was incredibly stressful. And I know that I also need to update you about the Christmas fundraising that my PTA's done in term two. So until next time, bye.