Roll And Bowl Elf Racing Derby Hire

Manufacturer/supplier: Game Works Creative.

The Roll and Bowl Elf Racing Derby - the game itself is branded The Great Elf Race, and you'll also see this sort of thing called a roll-a-ball, a roller bowler or a racing derby - is the Christmas version of the old fairground roll-a-ball stall. Game Works Creative in Ipswich make it, and ours is the compact two-player model that runs off a single socket and goes indoors or in a marquee.

Two people play head to head, one on the red lane and one on the blue. You roll your balls up the playfield and through the coloured holes, and every ball you sink adds lights to your side of the board and nudges your elf further along the track. The first to fill their lights, nineteen of them, takes the win. Each round only lasts a couple of minutes, so the queue keeps moving, and between the built-in LED lighting, the automated sound effects and the audio commentary it draws people over at a party.

What you get

• The Great Elf Race roll-a-ball derby, a two-lane unit with a lit scoreboard in a Father Christmas and snowy-village theme
• Two players head to head, the red lane against the blue, first to nineteen lights wins
• Built-in LED lighting, automated sound effects, audio instructions and a digital timer
• Runs off one standard 13-amp 240V socket, for indoor or marquee use only
• Up to 80 players an hour, with a Monster operator running it throughout
• Delivery, set-up and collection across Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and London

Where it tends to work

It is built for Christmas, so most of ours go out in December to office Christmas parties, works dos, corporate events and product launches, and it sits as well in a pub or club function room as it does in a marquee. The lanes, panels and skirt can carry your own artwork, which is why it also turns up at trade shows, exhibitions and promotional events rather than only at parties. If you want the same game without the elves for a do at another time of year, we run the Roll and Bowl Racing Derby in the standard horse-racing theme all year round.

We do a fair amount of corporate work, and the bookings tend to come back. Tina at Specsavers wrote afterwards that we were "a pleasure to deal with, both during the bookings and on site. Friendly and efficient, what more could we have asked for?"

Space and power

The unit itself is small, about 1.1m across, and you want a clear space of roughly 2m by 2m around it so two people can stand and play. It needs one ordinary 13-amp socket within reach and a flat indoor floor or a marquee, since the electronics and the lit board don't go out in the open. Tell us the room when you book and we'll make sure it fits, and that there's a socket where you want the game to stand.

How we hire it out

We've run Monster Event Hire from our unit in Havant since 2002, and the kit is ours rather than sub-hired, so the person who turns up is one of our own. This one always comes staffed: a Monster operator brings it, sets it up and runs it for the session, keeping the scores and the balls moving and getting the room going. Everyone we send out has passed the RPII operator and supervisor exams, is first-aid trained and is enhanced-DBS registered. Because a lot of these go into pubs, clubs and bars, it is worth saying we hold the additional licensed-premises insurance on top of our £10 million public liability cover, so we are cleared to work at licensed venues, and the certificate is on request.

It goes well alongside the rest of our Christmas kit. The Whack an Elf game often stands next to it at the same party, and we also hire Santa's grotto and a Christmas photo booth; the lot is on our Christmas party entertainment page, with more lit-up games like the Atari Pong table on the electronic games page. Tell us your date, the venue and rough numbers and we'll send a quote. We cover Hampshire, Surrey, Portsmouth, Southampton and the areas around them.