Christmas Entertainment Dorking

Dorking's December diary is the town's corporate and school calendar moved indoors: office parties at the business parks along the M25 corridor, dos in the function rooms around RH4 and RH5, and the school fairs in the last week of term. The town sits about 55 miles north of the workshop, A3 to the M25, with the A24 running up past Box Hill and Mickleham.

An office do in Dorking usually builds around one headline and a set of fillers: the rodeo reindeer or the Christmas pudding ride for the centrepiece, the Christmas photo booth or magic selfie mirror against a wall, and the dance machine, racing simulator and retro arcade machines for the gaps. Pub function rooms take the smaller kit instead, and Whack an Elf with the Christmas mega wire fit those rooms without a fight. The school fairs run the family side, which is where Santa's grotto, the inflatable snow globe and the wooden Christmas side stall games earn their keep.

The corporate work up here follows a rhythm we know well: a company's annual barbecue in Haslemere with the crazy golf, the crossbow challenge and the axe throwing out for staff and families, and a prep school in the county we visit a couple of times a year. December bookings from the same patch tend to run the same way, one booking that recurs and spreads by word of mouth, with whoever books it wanting the paperwork and the operators as much as the kit itself.

Which suits how we work: the firm has been Joanne and David Morris's since 2002, run from the Havant unit with the whole fleet owned outright, so the machine that arrives is the one we serviced ourselves. Rodeos hold ADIPS certification, the electrics are PAT tested every year, and the people who set up and run the pieces are our own, first-aid trained and enhanced-DBS registered. For a Dorking quote, the £10 million public liability certificate and its licensed-premises cover come attached, and the risk assessments and method statements are ready if the venue office wants them.

The Dorking event hire page lists the range for the town, and the two pages beside this one split the rest of the year between them: corporate event hire in Dorking for the company days and garden games hire in Dorking for the fete and party kit.

The December Saturdays either side of the office-party fortnight are the hardest Dorking dates to land, so get the venue, timings and rough numbers over while the date is still forming, and the quote comes back with the paperwork attached.