Childrens entertainer in Eugene - Magician for kids parties, events and special occaisons in Eugene, Springfield, Portland, Salem, Corvallis & all over Oregon. Company picnics, office parties, festivals, corporate events, holiday parties & theme parties.
Below are helpful articles and tips on party planning, theme party ideas, outdoor events & company picnic planning, and a list of party venues in Eugene.
Call 541-343-2500
or email:
danfreed@comcast.net
Planning A Company Picnic or Outdoor Kids Birthday Party or Event? Tips to Remember!

This article is to give you tips and things to remember when planning an outdoor party or event. This is not an all purpose "How To" article, it's about some things I haven't seen mentioned in other articles, but may lead to a much better event and prevent major headaches.

1. WEATHER is hard to predict anywhere, and here in Eugene Oregon the weather reports seem like a waste of time because they seem to be wrong half the time. Don't hope for the best. You must plan for rain, super hot weather, heavy wind, cold, etc. Don't pick a location unless you have plenty of shelter available if you need it. Super hot weather and blazing sun can be a real party spoiler, so have lots of cold water and lots of shade for EVERYONE ready to go. Make sure all your hired entertainers are in full shade because it's not nice to stick them out in the full sun and because they won't be at their best if they are uncomfortable. For heavy wind, have plenty of tape ready so you can tape down tablecloths, signs, etc. Have rope, tent stakes and weights ready to make sure games and tents, etc don't fly away. Flying EZUp tents are dangerous and get broken - ALWAYS stake them down.

2. ENTERTAINERS and Suppliers have requirements to do their job. Make sure you know what they are and have it ready before the event starts. Don't wait till the entertainers show up - you'll be busy, you may be hard to find, you'll waste your time and theirs, and it may cause the entertainers to start late. They will need shade, they may need tables and chairs, they may need a level mud free area, and they may need lots of electrical outlets nearby. The same advice applies to all of your vendors, including caterers and the people who set up inflatable moonbounces, dunk tanks and games. Have plenty of extra extension cords – you may need more than you think.

Electricity for a band should be close by, reliable, have plenty of it, don't make guests trip over extension cords if you can help it. Know where the outlets are in advance - don't wait till your caterers, entertainers, equipment suppliers, etc show up and then look around for outlets like a fool, wasting time. If you have multiple suppliers that need electric, or have a moonbounce company with multiple inflatables, you will need a lot of power and many separate outlets on separate fuses. Not all outlets have enough amps to power bounces and other big stuff, especially if more than one thing is plugged in to the same circuit. If you don't have enough power, fuses will blow and be a major problem. Have generators if needed, but keep in mind their placement because they tend to be very loud.

3. FOOD: Don't forget about vegetarians. There are a lot of us, it's very likely they will be at your event. So LABEL all food items, so people know what’s in it - it's hard to tell by looking. Don't make people guess if ham, bacon bits, and chicken stock is in the food.
Popular Kids Birthday Party Ideas – Birthday Themes & Tips
 
Do you have a kids birthday party coming up and are at a loss for ideas and themes? Here are some theme ideas, and some advice you won’t get elsewhere (written by a professional kids party entertainer).
Themes are cool, but I’m not a big fan on being too strict with sticking to the theme. The kids just want to have fun, so for example, if you have a Spiderman theme, you can have other things going on that have nothing to do with the theme – I’m telling you this because the kids rarely care how close you stick to the theme and sometimes it’s really hard to do anyway.  Also, if you are having trouble finding the right decorations and plates, don’t worry too much about making your decorations related to the theme. Again, you probably care more than the kids do about that kind of stuff, and the party is for the birthday child, not you.

Picking a theme and using that theme doesn’t make the party fun by itself; the theme is just a framework. You still need to figure out some activities and entertainment – that’s where the fun is. Yes, I’m a magician/balloon twister, so I recommend considering hiring a good entertainer, magician, clown or costumed character if you don’t have enough really fun stuff for them (high energy, lots of laughs kind of stuff – making a paper hat or whatever is OK, but you can do better).

Here are some childrens birthday party theme ideas:
1. Barbie Birthday Party
Barbie, girl’s best friend, inspired young girls for decades. She and her friends are still the life of the party even today!
2. Batman Birthday Party
Batman lives! As long as he continues in the hearts of those little caped crusaders and the parties go on and on, he never dies. Batman is eternal—and so are his parties - a Batman and Robin party is a real “smash” for little caped crusaders who like excitement and fun.
3. Care Bear Party
Whether it is Cheer Bear or Bedtime bear, the Care Bears are always a wonderful addition to any child’s birthday party, especially girls. They are bright, lovable, fun, and cheerful, and always leave children and adults happy.
4. Birthday Construction Party
The obvious decorative eye-catcher is having your home strung in “caution” tape, along with flashing safety lights. This will add a dramatic effect and will be a fun setting for children to play. The boys can wear their hard hats as they play in the construction site you have created.
5. Disney Princess Party
No decoration is more elegant for a Disney Princess birthday party than a grand castle. Swirls of light-colored streamers adorn the grand ballroom. You can have the basement made up to look like the inside of a medieval castle with painted wooden or cardboard sets.
6. Dora the Explorer Party
Dora the Explorer is a girl who loves to search, discover, and learn about and share with others. A Dora the Explorer party, then, should be fun as well as cultural and educational.
7. Hello Kitty Party
Hello Kitty likes her tea parties, her scrumptious sweets, and her crafts. At a Hello Kitty party, you can have plenty of all three!
8. Incredibles Party
isn’t what they thought it would be. A whole new kind of adventure begins! An Incredibles party can be just as on-the-edge as the story. Let the excitement fly!
9. Spider Man Party
Spiderman spins a web and has captured the imagination of people for decades. He still keeps kids cheering even today. A Spiderman party will keep the kids entranced right from the get-go!
10. Spongebob Party
The decorations for a SpongeBob party should follow SpongeBob’s locale, namely the town of Bikini Bottom. Underwater motifs and imagery will place the kids in SpongeBob’s world, if even only for a couple of hours.

Even More ideas for a Kids Theme Party:
•Airplane birthday party
•Camping Birthday party
•Beach Birthday party
•Clown Party
•Cooking birthday party
•Cowboy Birthday party
•Cowgirl birthday party
•Hollywood premier party
•Winnie the pooh birthday party
•Sports Birthday party
•Zoo birthday party
•Carnival (clowns and plenty of games)
•Toys (Bratz, Barbie, Hot Wheels, etc)
•Dress-up Party - Pick up some nail polish, hair accessories, makeup, and dress-up clothes. Then, provide each girl with her own individual makeover followed by a photo shoot.
•Tea Party - Have everyone dress up and pretend to be grownups while pouring and sipping tea. Set up tables in the backyard with flowered tablecloths and matching tea set, and let each guest decorate their own teacup.
•Limo Scavenger Hunt – Get a big vehicle or 2, or rent a passenger van or limo, and drive the kids around to different locations to llok for items o the scavenfer hunt. Also, provide snacks for the drive, and take them for short stops at fun places such as a park.
•Magician, Wizard, or Harry Potter. Provide cheap magic tricks. Have them perform a simple magic show in costumes, for Potter they can make wizard concoctions with colored liquids.
Call 541-343-2500
or email:
danfreed@comcast.net
How to find talented local magicians or entertainers for your party or event

If you are planning a birthday, a company picnic, a wedding, or really any kind of local event or party for adults or children, here are some tips from an expert (that’s me) on how to find the right magician. This article also applies to finding any kind of local entertainers such as clowns, bands, jugglers, face painters - you name it.

Obviously, first you have to find some magicians in your area to choose from. You could get a recommendation from a friend, and that can be a good start. Keep in mind that almost every magician out there (even the lousy boring undependable ones) have some people that will recommend them. Why would they suggest someone bad? Well, it may be because they don’t know any better – they may not have seen a good local magician to compare with. Also, just because someone is good doesn’t mean they are the right magician for your party. In any case, don’t stop with just a recommendation, check the guy out carefully and make sure he specializes in the type of magic that is right for your event (more on that later).

OK, then after recommendations, you have 2 options. You can find and hire a magician directly, or you can go through some type of entertainment agency. There are usually local agencies in your area (unless you are in a small town) that book magicians as well as a big variety of entertainers for any occasion (I used to own a business like that back in Ohio). There are also national online agencies that list thousands of entertainers available for parties anywhere in the country, even for childrens birthday parties.

If you find a good local agency, they tend to be very familiar with most of the local entertainers and can give you more personalized help and suggestions than you could get from a national online agency. Not all local agents are good, though. Some are just out to make a quick buck and are not very picky about who they send out. Sometimes local agents book great people, but sometimes they have a hard time finding good people who are available when they need them. Sometimes the better local entertainers don’t want to work for agents because the agents may not be able to pay them enough and still make a decent commission. Sometimes the local people get plenty of work on their own so why bother with an agent. Therefore, agents can work out well, but check out the agency carefully.

Now, for online agencies: some are just a listing service and don’t get involved in the booking process at all. All of them let you sort out entertainers by city so you can find someone close, though none of them have a complete list, and many lists are very incomplete and miss some really good people. Some sites simply provide some names and contact info, but some show pictures, demo videos, links to the performer website, and have room for several paragraphs of info provided by the entertainer. Some even show ratings and comments from clients who got the entertainer through their service. With most of these national sites, the performers are not screened for quality – anyone can be listed. A few do screen for quality magicians as best they can considering they have not seen most of the performers in person. Generally there is no personalized help from the agency; they serve more like an online phone book.

And of course the sources that a ton of people go to first are Google, Bing, & Yahoo. To use these and find the biggest selection of local entertainers, do several searches, each search with a different set of words or phrases. Be very specific with some of the search phrases for better results. For example, don’t just type in magicians, try “birthday magicians Eugene” or “close-up magicians for corporate events Salem” etc. You’ll get different results based on how you search. You’ll find individual sites for magicians as well as some of those online and local agencies I talked about. Not all good magicians have websites, hard to believe I know. And some websites don’t show up unless you dig through several pages of search results. There are also those paid ads put up by the magicians – they have ads for very good people sometimes (on Google they appear on the right side and sometimes the top).

Anyway, once you find some people, then you can first narrow it down based on their specialty. For example, some magicians (such as myself) specialize in local childrens parties and events, so make sure you read their websites carefully so you don’t waste your time contacting magicians that are not right for your event or won't travel to your city. Some specialize in expensive illusion shows for big events, some only do close-up walk-around style magic, some don’t do kids birthdays. Some do a mix of everything, but may not admit that they are not good at everything (though some are good at everything). Some are expensive and worth it, some are expensive and not worth it. Some will charge a very reasonable rate and give you a better show than you expected. Most importantly, get the magician that seems to specialize in what you want if possible. Some magicians, such as myself, also do balloon twisting, face painting, caricatures, game leading, juggling, etc. Multi-talented people can be a great choice because they can keep the party going by doing multiple things (if you want).

Make sure you know exactly what they will do for you, make them be specific so you can make the right decision. See their demo videos if they have them. Make sure the entertainer knows the details of your party, make sure they have good lighting, enough space, shaded area, a contact number for the day of the event, etc. Oh, and book as far in advance as possible – let me say this again – book as far in advance as possible (several months or even a year in advance if you can). Don’t procrastinate or your favorite person is likely not going to be available.
For a talented local magician and childrens entertainer in Eugene, Springfield, Portland, Salem, Corvallis or anywhere in Oregon, please contact The Amazing Spaghetti (Dan Freed). Call Dan at 541-343-2500 or email danfreed@comcast.net .

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