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Holiday Party!
- Thread starter TanksNStuff
- Start date
I am sorry to say I am highly dissapointed in this event. While I love the fact that Ken is coming up to speak, love the location, and happy to see another frag lotto, I think the pricing was rather steep. Is the club subsidizing any of this admission? I was looking forward to attending (as were my kids) but I would have been forced to come by myself. Now I am locked out do to this rediculous deadline that was established. Please clarify these points for me. Is this room too small to open up to more people? I was on the BOD call last year when we talked about having a holiday party and I CERTAINLY would not have agreed if I had any clue that it would be hard for members to attend.
Taz, I respectfully must disagree with you. This was posted for quite some time with minimal interest. I was shocked at the lack of interest in attending. There was plenty of notice and reminders by George to sign up before we were locked into the room for 25. Very few did. We could have easily gone BIG, but the club members didn’t respond.
I also feel that $30/person is reasonable. Regardless of me attending, I would not want the club paying for people to attend. This is a pay-to-play situation, and fully justified.
JMTC….darn, I’m giving out too much cents tonight!
I agree that there appeared to be minimal interest and unfortunately I have seen a lot of that over the past couple of years, but I do not think 2 weeks from announcement to close of registration is appropriate for this case. I also agree that there was reminders by yourself, Dan, and George.
Where I disagree is the cutoff 1 full month before the event? I also do not understand the 25 person cutoff? I understand that the HOTEL restaurant needs some notice, but I think one month was far too much. As for the CAP of attendance, is this a true seating cap or due to food choice? I mean in a situation like this there may be a cap for food packages, but OK we didn't qualify for the 40 and over means we can't get 37 people for the lower valued meal package??
I'm not trying to create waves, just voicing my curiosity. I would have loved to see Ken again, but unfortunately I was shut out due to the way this went down. Yes it was my personal problems(not the club)that didn't allow me to sign up earlier, but nonetheless I am still curious as to how this was negotiated. I do still think that the price is a little steep though, maybe I'm just cheap!
I am Sorry you feel this way Don. But I have to agree With Paul on this. That it was posted for quite some time with minimal interest. We had to do a room lock of 25 people because that was the minimum number of people we needed. They need to order the food and have the extra staff. So they gave us till the November 14th to let them know. The club is not subsidizing any admission. Members paying 100% of there own. I find the pricing to be very good. This is not going to be at McDonalds. Don if you go Vincent Town Diner and have a hamburger with a soda is about $15.00. So I also feel that $30.00 is a reasonable plus you are getting much more. Just so you know the club is making nothing on this party. If we did not do this way the next number of group people we needed was going to be 40. I feel if we set the limit to 40 the club would of got stuck paying for open seats.
Don we almost did not think we would get 25 people. If we had 35 people signed up on the 14th we would of just got the meal plan for 40 people. But that did not happen. I looked into more than 60 places and they all had the same timeline on when they need to know by and how many people where coming. The Hilton Garden Inn gave us the best pricing. I was getting on average $40-75.00 per person. Remember this is holiday time and they have fixed menu pricing.
I have to agree with the current decision. If we only got 30 people in and had to pony up the balance it would be a sizable nut for the club to pay, money that could be used better than just given away to a restaurant. It is a gamble that doesn't have a lot of upside. Just my two pennies worth. Hope to see everyone there who was lucky enough to know they had that date open to attend. Wish it was more people but sometimes things like this happen.
Very well said guys and to you Paul you put in your 10 cents not your two. LOL we will have a great time.
If we all keep putting in our 2 cents, we might end up with a couple bucks in the end. 
While it's regretable that we had to close the signups early, it was due to the party plans that were available. Going in, we had 2 plans to choose from that were both $30 per person.
- Plan A - The pasta bar w/carving station. This was available ONLY if we had 25 or fewer guests. If we ended up with 15 people, we only paid for 15 people. If we had 26, we would have had to go to the next option, regardless of whether it was 26 or 96.
- Plan B - The buffet w/ more choices and better selection overall. This had a MINIMUM of 40 guests with a MAXIMUM of around 100. If we ended up with say 28 people, the club would have had to pay for the extra 12 plates that nobody would be eating. At $30 each, that would be quite a hit to take and frankly, I don't think we would legally be allowed to use money from the club's funds to pay for that.
Now, the Hilton needed to know which plan we were going with by Nov. 14th. They didn't need to know a head count at that time, just which meal plan we would be using so they could prepare with ordering supplies and also which crews would be scheduled for our party. That said, we had very little interest early on and as others have said, we didn't think we would even get to 25, let alone come close enough to 40 to choose the Plan B. If we had over 30 already signed up, we would have gambled and chose Plan B... hoping to get to at least 40 or close enough that it wouldn't be a big hit to the club's funds.
So, we decided to play it safe and choose Plan A. Then, once we had 25 people signed up, we had to close registration due to the MAX of 25 that this plan was able to cater to. That's why it was closed so early.
I'm sorry if there are some of you out there that would have liked to come but weren't able to sign up early on. We did try to push it hard early on, in hopes of getting enough attendants to select Plan B early on... and allow more people. If that happened, signups would have remained open until the week before the party instead of when we had to close it. Hopefully, you all understand that we really didn't have a choice without risking a big financial hit to the club.
I have to say that planning this party was a lot harder than expected. As Dan said, he contacted many many venues in hopes of finding a spot for the party. When we did finally find some that had a date open that we could work with, all of them were very highly priced and were just simply not going to work. The Hilton gave us a great location, the best price, and if someone didn't cancel back in November.... we probably wouldn't have been able to get this spot either. In fact, I think they worked with us on pricing because they lost the booking spot so close to the date. Dan and I went over a bunch of options and we managed to get this deal which we all thought was reasonably priced considering all the other options available.
Anyway, hope that explains the situation better. Unfortunately, we can't simply ask them to "add 1 or 2 people" because the plan we had to choose has a Max of 25.
While it's regretable that we had to close the signups early, it was due to the party plans that were available. Going in, we had 2 plans to choose from that were both $30 per person.
- Plan A - The pasta bar w/carving station. This was available ONLY if we had 25 or fewer guests. If we ended up with 15 people, we only paid for 15 people. If we had 26, we would have had to go to the next option, regardless of whether it was 26 or 96.
- Plan B - The buffet w/ more choices and better selection overall. This had a MINIMUM of 40 guests with a MAXIMUM of around 100. If we ended up with say 28 people, the club would have had to pay for the extra 12 plates that nobody would be eating. At $30 each, that would be quite a hit to take and frankly, I don't think we would legally be allowed to use money from the club's funds to pay for that.
Now, the Hilton needed to know which plan we were going with by Nov. 14th. They didn't need to know a head count at that time, just which meal plan we would be using so they could prepare with ordering supplies and also which crews would be scheduled for our party. That said, we had very little interest early on and as others have said, we didn't think we would even get to 25, let alone come close enough to 40 to choose the Plan B. If we had over 30 already signed up, we would have gambled and chose Plan B... hoping to get to at least 40 or close enough that it wouldn't be a big hit to the club's funds.
So, we decided to play it safe and choose Plan A. Then, once we had 25 people signed up, we had to close registration due to the MAX of 25 that this plan was able to cater to. That's why it was closed so early.
I'm sorry if there are some of you out there that would have liked to come but weren't able to sign up early on. We did try to push it hard early on, in hopes of getting enough attendants to select Plan B early on... and allow more people. If that happened, signups would have remained open until the week before the party instead of when we had to close it. Hopefully, you all understand that we really didn't have a choice without risking a big financial hit to the club.
I have to say that planning this party was a lot harder than expected. As Dan said, he contacted many many venues in hopes of finding a spot for the party. When we did finally find some that had a date open that we could work with, all of them were very highly priced and were just simply not going to work. The Hilton gave us a great location, the best price, and if someone didn't cancel back in November.... we probably wouldn't have been able to get this spot either. In fact, I think they worked with us on pricing because they lost the booking spot so close to the date. Dan and I went over a bunch of options and we managed to get this deal which we all thought was reasonably priced considering all the other options available.
Anyway, hope that explains the situation better. Unfortunately, we can't simply ask them to "add 1 or 2 people" because the plan we had to choose has a Max of 25.
Very nicely and concisely put George.
And Anthony, I only give 2 cents worth of opinion, and some say it’s not even worth the two cents. So the way I see it, you owe me 8 cents. Again, JMTC.
And Anthony, I only give 2 cents worth of opinion, and some say it’s not even worth the two cents. So the way I see it, you owe me 8 cents. Again, JMTC.
Paul will you take a check. LOL
Paul you have,me laughing my A$$ off!!!
I can float you a bottle of phyto for free. Just did a harvest tonight and will be at the party. If you had a cool frag it would be nice but not necessary! C u at the party!