We have enjoyed reading all your reviews so much, and have finally found a winner!
WINNER! – Lisa Rabone, from Birmingham
We all agreed that she described the event beautifully and also managed to pick up the Festival Kidz style, including some lovely personal experiences in her writing.
We like it so much we asked her for some photos to go with it, and have published her winning review of End of the Road here.
The two runners up were:
RUNNER UP! – Nikki Payne, from Kent
Nikki’s description of a day out with the kids at an ice skating rink made us laugh, while including a lot of useful information.
RUNNER UP! – Catherine Prescott, from East Sussex
Catherine gave a real feeling of what Comedy Club 4 Kids was all about, and included useful information on facilities and accessibility in the venue.
We have published the runners ups’ entries at the bottom of this page.
Out of the rest of the entries, special mention goes to the following writers (in alphabetical order):
Kirsty SouthwarkBelle
Ellie Allen
Katy Barton
Kat Jackson
Tim Kaye
Lisa Mills
Karen Scullion
Anna Waldron
We will keep all the runners up on reserve for reviews, in our extended team. There are so many festivals and day trips that we would love to cover, and your reviews were all very well written.
Of course, don’t let this put any of you off writing! It was a tough decision as we received so many high quality pieces, and we enjoyed reading all of them. Please continue to send in your festival reviews and we will publish them on our site, and who knows what will happen in the future…?
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Nikki Payne’s review about a Family Roller Disco
The roller disco is a terrifying spectator sport if you happen to be a parent of an eight year old boy who hasn’t quite mastered the art of roller skating and is displaying alarming kamikaze tendencies. Never have we seen so many children throw themselves, literally, into an activity. After 15 minutes our children were vermillion and sweaty as they ran with skates erratically around the hall in (loosely) managed chaos. Hilarious if not rather alarming.
One and a half hours of frantic activity for £5 – not bad. Your £5 includes skates (helmets, knee pads and wrist guards apparently). The family session started at 6.30pm. Make sure you arrive on time, five minutes earlier if you can, to ensure you get the right sized skates as there is limited stocks. The venue was the main sports hall at Tenterden Leisure Centre. There was loud music and flashing lights and for this session the main hall lights were on; the children didn’t seem to make the connection between disco and darkness and we as parents were thankful for the visibility.
Skating is very thirsty work (especially if you can’t/refuse to glide and end up running constantly) so take lots of water with you. The leisure centre cafe was closed, so you could only buy refreshments out of the machines which were very temperamental. I saw this as a huge missed opportunity. The children all got hot very quickly, so it would be best to arrive in layers and take a bag to put all the sweaty abandoned tops in. You can take your own roller skates and helmets but roller blades are not allowed. The vast majority of the children seemed to be between six and twelve, and there were a fair number of adults on skates too. We loved it and will be back next month!
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Catherine Prescott’s review on Comedy Club 4Kids
Event: Comedy Club 4Kids
Venue: Komedia, Gardner St, Brighton
Date and time: December 7th 2013. Doors 1pm, Show 2pm
Parking: Limited street parking at meters
Nearest Station: Brighton – 5 mins walking distance approx.
Value for Money: 4/5
Overall rating: 5/5
Accessibilty: Excellent. Free carer’s ticket for disabled ticket holders
Age: 6yrs+
The compere, Andrew O’ Neill, opened the show by explaining the concept of the show. Basically it is no different from the comedy shows that Mums and Dads go to, they just miss out the rude bits – “so we don’t say things like ‘poo’ or ‘bum’!” All three comedians were excellent. Andrew O’ Neill told us that his most embarrassing moment ever had been weeing himself in a karate lesson. Bec Hill got us all singing, and also did some excellent cartoon animation for a song about dinosaurs going around London. The headline act, Nick Doody, was superb. He started his set by berating the sound engineer for having the microphone set in French, and had to go through several languages (flawlessly, I think), intermittently complaining in English that he had no idea what he was saying, before going on to be hilarious, in English (thankfully). He told us a story about the Poo Tiger, which was very rude, and had the kids laughing their heads off.
There is a cafe on one of the floors, with a fine menu. Food from the cafe can’t be taken into the comedy club though, as it is owned by a different company. The comedy club room has a licensed bar at the back selling bar snacks and pic n mix at good value, which we thought was a nice touch for a kids’ show. They even had free blackcurrant and orange squash available.
The Comedy Club 4Kids is in a room which is one floor down from street level, easily accessible by stairs or lift. The lift goes to all the floors and the staff are very helpful, which is especially useful at Komedia, which is a bit like a rabbit warren. The room we were in was long and narrow, but although the seats are not raised visability is good as the stage is several feet high. We actually sat on the tall bar stools at the back, which made us feel very grand.
We had a great family day out. I have joined the Facebook page to make sure we hear about the next one as we would definitely all want to go again.