I have the same problems you do at mine. It's like being at Chuck E. Cheese on Friday night...scary! I think that is an absolutely awesome idea and will probably do that for this years carnival. After all, I can't see how that could hurt the redemption center in anyway. Thanks for sharing the idea with us!!!

Hi,
We are trying to improve the flow of kids at our carnival redemption booth. In the past few years, we have had pure chaos at the end of the event with kids, siblings ( not enough parents) all trying to hand in their tickets at the same time. It is time consuming to count the child's tickets and make sure they get the prize or prizes, they want, while making sure no other child is having their tickets stolen( if they set them down to look at prizes) and that our prizes are not being taken from the table.

We have prizes on 3 tables, and try to keep only a few out for display, with most of them under or behind the table to be handed out after we have received the tickets. Even so, some kids think the prizes are theirs for the taking and walk off with the display items. It is noisy and we are lucky if we can get 6 volunteers to staff the 3 tables ( due to the number of volunteers needed for the rest of the carnival and games).


We are thinking of having the kids present their tickets for counting at one booth that will be before the prize selection area. After an adult counts the tickets, we will write the number turned in on a separate slip, which the child will take to the redemption booth. They can then choose their 5 ticket, 1 ticket, 20 ticket items, etc, and the redemption worker will punch off the numbers along the sides to show how much the child still has left to redeem.

We think the precounting booth will help speed up transactions at the prize booth, and prevent kids losing all their loose tickets. I should also add that we have a very small area to set up redemption prizes in and it is so chaotic because of the small area and the fact that all the kids are trying to redeem at the end of the carnival. We cannot move the redemption area to a classroom or other, larger area.


What do you all think? Will this work to speed up the prize area? What do you do at your carnivals?