K BUT WATS GOIN ON THO GUIZ
K BUT WATS GOIN ON THO GUIZ
~*Fizzgig*~
No hotel even chosen yet? Are we even gonna be in London or in an area close by? Aren't these supposed to be first to get knocked off the list?
~*Fizzgig*~
What's important is finding a venue for us, because there's not much point in getting everyone to London with nowhere to go, or getting hotels miles away from the place we're all going to be hanging out. Not many of us are local to London, though, so it has been difficult actually getting a venue found.
A bunch of us will be tourists, there's not much to do for touristy stuff in London of all places?Originally Posted by Shauna
I mean don't get me wrong I think the venue is important too because of the live ciddies and whatnot, but if getting people congregated in one place is so difficult shouldn't the hotel be the more important thing to pick?
That way even if we all end up going and doing different things for a day we are all together by the end of the day.
~*Fizzgig*~
Hotel is also dependent on each persons own budget, a lot of hotels in London can be pricey - the cheaper ones tend to be further out of the centre. I don't think there's a definitive guest list atm too. I think a venue is most important - after all, people can even book a hotel wherever they would like! Some people might not be as comfortable as others being in the same hotel with members. I would honestly think that hotel is more of something that you should be booking for yourself - absolutely discuss it with others and try and book the same one, but yeah, venue probably more important at this point.
The main event is going to be the evening with the Ciddies, so that'll be where we'll all congregate following... whatever everyone decides to do during the day. If we don't have a venue then we're gonna struggle to find somewhere for a large group of people to hang out in the one place. Which was the whole point of this meet to begin with.
Saying that many of you will be tourists is fair enough - you will definitely find things to do in London - but we're not going to have much luck getting ~30 people around the tourist traps all together. However, having somewhere that we can say "Well, we have a room booked at this place from 4pm - be there or be square", then if people want to break away and do their own thing for a few hours beforehand, they can do that.
Also I will just echo what Night Fury has said. I think the hotel should be a person-to-person decision, for the reasons she pointed out. Transport links in London really are fantastic, so I don't think finding places to stay will be too much of an issue.
Well firstly it's not like we're going to be picking a fancy schmancy hotel somewhere. Obviously the more affordable the place the better. And also it's not like the rooms will be right next to each other, and even if someone isn't comfortable being around someone else, you can ask the person at the desk to pick a room far away from that person.
Also, if you pick a hotel, chances are they will have a ballroom or something that can hold us all in it for the ciddies event. If you don't want to use the ballroom, I bet there will be tons of pubs nearby to choose from and preemptively chat with as well.
Not only that, but if there's an affordable hotel, you can guarantee there will be smaller, cheaper chains around it for people who literally want to spend the bare minimum.
It just seems like this is being haphazardly put together.
Either way, if I don't see a place picked out come September, I will be booking my own place wherever I want and will meet you guys on the nights you have events.
~*Fizzgig*~
Well, if we're wanting to hire a ballroom in a hotel, that will still come down to choosing the ballroom as the venue, and pricing it around that. No point in saying let's all head to this one hotel and then finding out the ballroom hire is outside of what we can afford to scrape together. And re heading to a nearby pub - we won't be able to waltz into a pub with 30 or so people and expect them to have enough space for us.
Honestly, I think the best course of action is to find a reasonably priced function suite, book that for the Saturday night and have everyone gather there. It is just incredibly difficult to do that when you don't actually live anywhere near the city you're planning the event in.
I think that's what most people are going to do.
You can ask any hotel for a price estimate on certain amounts and types of rooms as well as a banquet reservation estimate. It's not like you're going in blind as a bat. You just ask a bunch of hotels for that and pick the cheaper place.
Easy.
As for a pub, you also need to call in or email and send in your head count.
You're talking as if this is all gonna be done on the fly when we're flying or just getting there. That's what gets me worried about this type of planning.
~*Fizzgig*~
I don't know why you're getting that impression, when we are looking at venues right now. It's not going to be June 2016 and we're still shrugging our shoulders and scratching out heads about where the venue is going to be, phoning up places as we are travelling. We want to have the venue found and booked within the next few months.
If it turns out that the best value for money venue is a Hilton ballroom, then so be it, but I doubt that it will be (a brief google search shows that could be as expensive as £125pp). With the lack of a proper headcount (I doubt we'll get a 100% accurate one), I think that booking a function hall for 50-100 people is probably the best decision we can make, instead of going for somewhere that requires a concrete headcount and charges per person. But, this may not be a possibility. All function suites in my town are a set price for the room, regardless of the number of people. But my town is not London, so who knows?
It is just a case of finding somewhere, which is what we're currently trying to do with the help of a few London EoFFers. They are doing the footwork to find the best place for us, which is more than I can do 400 miles away. So we are just waiting for their feedback at this point in time.
There's seriously going to be 30 people at that thing? I was expecting you'd get maybe half that...
I'm only going by the Facebook event which has 32 going and 17 maybes. So that plus anyone who hasn't responded/doesn't do Facebook, that's like 40 people. But who knows in the end.
Just wanted to pop in and say I think the organisers are doing a sterling job. Trying to organise for so many people is really tough, especially if you don't live in the area you're planning for. Me and Mr. Carny are really excited to see what you guys will do!
One of the things that is cropping up repeatedly is how much I get asked "what is the head count for the evening looking like" when I say 40 people, some bars are telling me it's too few, others are telling me it's too many. I'm not having great luck so far. Plus as stated on Facebook, I've been super busy with the end of the Academic Year and now going in to the 6 weeks holidays, I will have a major distraction here for 5 of those. The idea of using one of the Hilton's in London is a tad dramatic there though Shauna, but I agree with your point, these venues can get super expensive. Ideally I think we're looking to hire a venue for at a maximum 400, maybe 500 for the evening (excluding food and drinks cost) which definitely means a smaller venue where it may be a little more crowded but would work out. It'd also be pretty cost effective for us in terms of "ticket prices" adding in the charge for drinks and food (I assume a limited meal with drink offer might be appreciated) and we could be looking at as little as £20pp for the evening.
Tourist traps I.E. The Tower Of London and a few others could definitely be done with a group of 40 people or so. The situation there would be to have it pre-booked as a group. It'd work out cheaper for us (individual tickets are around £20 last time I went) and be easier to do as they'd open up a specific time frame we can go in and start a tour complete with a guide. Others like the Science Museum or the Natural History Museum don't have a price to enter or policies on group size walking in off the street to my knowledge but I could check with them if that was something someone was interested in.
Knowing where DC and the others are hitting up would also help I'm not sure how co-ordinated the rest of the effort is but whilst I appreciate that I'm the odd man out here by no fault other than my own, getting me involved in any discussions going on about location (even if it's like a whatsapp group message and I just read but not reply for a while I'll be aware of the situation) might be helpful because if there's somewhere other Londoners can't get to or aren't having much luck with I can at least try to be of more help.
I only used the Hilton because it was pretty much the only hit on Google when I did a quick search - I was just trying to make a point at how limited my ability is to truly do any research about where we can go, from all the way up in Scotland. I would not recommend going to the Hilton and I would never really suggest we go, but if there are any cheaper, seedier hotel alternatives... But yeah, £400-500 would be an ideal sort of price. I think I mentioned on the fb post that I found a wee church that will hold up to 75 people for like £50p/h that allows external food and alcohol to be brought in. So, even something like that could be fine.
Regarding tourist traps, we definitely can go and do things (it was never my intention to imply that we couldn't), I just don't think that should be the main thing of the meet up and that should be down to personal choice whether they want to go on the London Eye or whatever (particularly because of costs for many places in London). So, it shouldn't be the coordinator's main concern, sorting out people's day to day activities.
I am not enjoying the news of 40 people being knocked back repeatedly though. xD Why are we such an awkward uncertain number!
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