Wipeout Challenge

Total Wipeout-Style Inflatable Challenge Hire

If you grew up watching Total Wipeout, this is the range you are picturing: the giant balls you try to cross without falling, the spinning sweeper arms, and the soft obstacles that catch people out and drop them onto inflated PVC. They are built to be watched as much as played, which is why they earn their keep at corporate fun days, school events, fetes and festivals where you want something happening in the middle of the field rather than another castle in the corner.

The range splits into a few groups, and which one you want depends on the event more than anything else.

The two people most often recognise from the telly are the Big Balls Challenge and the Sweeper. The Big Balls Challenge is the four giant balls strung between two platforms, crossed one player at a time. The Sweeper, sometimes listed as Last Man Standing, puts eight people on podiums round a central column and spins two padded arms at them until one is left standing. Both come with one of our operators, suit ages 10 and up, and draw a crowd because they are as good to watch as to have a go on.

If the day is about teams rather than individuals, look at the Challenger, the Cross Beam Challenge, the Mangle Run, the Up and Over Mini Everest and the Wibble Wobble Soldiers. Most of these run groups of thirty up to a hundred and fifty through in teams of up to ten, as timed relays or head-to-head heats, which is what makes them the usual pick for corporate team-building. They are also the smaller-footprint end of the range, from around 28ft to 50ft long, so they fit sites that will not take an 80ft course.

For high turnover, the Dash N Grab giant hungry-hippos game takes eight at a time on bungee cords, and the Grand Bounce National is a four-lane inflatable horse race that works for all ages. If you want one big set-piece, the Inflatable Base Jump tower goes on grass outdoors only, and the 80ft Big Red and 100ft Boot Camp Challenge are full run-throughs. If a straight obstacle run is really what you are after, our full assault and obstacle course range is on its own page, and there is more for staff days on the team-building and corporate page.

Whatever the mix, we need the same handful of details before we can say what fits: the venue and surface, indoor or outdoor, access for the van, the rough age range and how many people you are expecting through. Footprints run from about 28ft up to 100ft, and the taller pieces want clear space above as well as around, so a site plan helps. Power is standard 13amp sockets, anything from one to four depending on the unit. Several of these always come with a trained operator, and any of the others can be staffed on request rather than set up and handed over.

The kit is all ours, owned outright and kept at our unit in Havant, where we have run Monster Event Hire since 2002. Every inflatable is PIPA-tagged and inspected each year by our own in-house RPII inspector, which is the scheme the HSE recognises, and the staff who turn up have passed the RPII operator and supervisor exams, are first-aid trained and hold enhanced DBS checks. Outdoors we set up an anemometer and follow the written wind procedure, evacuating and shutting down at 24mph. We carry £10 million public liability with licensed-premises cover for pubs and clubs, and the certificate, risk assessments and method statements are there for the asking if the booking is going through a school, council or procurement team.

Chris from FIL Investment Management booked a set of these for a staff day and wrote afterwards: "The team of three who accompanied the activities on Monday were all absolutely fantastic and did a really great job of overseeing the activities and encouraging people to join in whenever there were spaces, which I'm pleased to say were not very often. There must have been 300 people coming and going during the three hours that I ran the event for."

Send us the date, the venue and a rough idea of numbers, and tell us if you are after one headline piece or a pick-and-mix of several running together. We will come back with what is available and a price, and we are happy to suggest a sensible spread for the space rather than just filling the field.