2013 Moonbounce Season in Review
2013 started out as most years begin in the moon bounce business: slow. As we reach the depths of the long and cold winter months of January, most of us are hunkered down indoors recovering from the holidays and getting back to work. Second semester at schools begin, the NFL playoffs kick off, and many of us work on fine tuning our New Year’s Resolutions in hopes of actually following through with it in the new year. Moon bounces and water slides are either a distant thought of the warmer months to come or a great memory of a family gathering over the holidays or even a birthday party last summer. While there is no doubt that most moon bounces and moon bounce combos are warmer weather outdoor activities, as we have discussed before in previous blog posts, winter birthday parties can still make the best of the cold weather and rent a variety of indoor moon bounces and fun carnival games. Our 2013 began with fulfilling these winter babies’ birthday dreams and bringing them some great indoor moon bounces.
As the winter days dragged on but the days slowly got longer, the phones once again began to pick up at Astro Jump as people began to plan for their spring birthday parties, school carnivals and Groundhog Day gatherings. This was also the time when many of our summer camps began working with our staff to plan their summer curriculums. Our multiple booking program, which helps organizations and frequent renters save money and plan budgets, kicked into gear as camp coordinators worked with our event planners to get everything in line before summer enrollment began.
If you can remember all the way back to March, we actually got more snow and cold weather than in all the previous winter months combined in 2013. April finally brought warmer weather and the beautiful Washington, D.C. spring days we all love so much. One great part of living in the northern Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. areas is the beautiful spring weather and cherry blossoms that blanket the region. As we entered May, however, the cold returned and brought with it plenty of rain and generally miserable weather. This trend unfortunately continued into the first half of June. This is Astro Jump’s busiest time of the year (rain or shine I might add) and our team worked long and hard hours to make sure the parties never stopped. Some people changed their events to indoors, others postponed them to a later date in hopes of brighter weather, while others decided to plow ahead despite the forecast and rent their moon bounces anyways. All-in-all the music never stopped!
The second half of June brought the seasonally warm weather we all expected and waterslide season was off to the races. The rest of the summer brought with it consistently nice weather and milder temperatures than we are used to in the DC metropolitan area. I feel safe in saying that thousands of children in DC, VA and MD had fantastic moon bounce or waterslide parties this past summer on Astro Jump equipment. We worked hard to consistently deliver the nicest inflatables around in an on time manner and we succeeded in accomplishing this task.
As summer winded down and schools hit the ground running we changed gears as we always do from waterslide birthday party rentals and summer camps to preparing for back-to-school carnivals and church fall festivals. Despite the occasional rainy weekend this past fall, we received warm feedback from our customers and once again slugged through very tough wet days to make sure the music once again never stopped. We are about bringing parties to you. As long as you are still planning to party you can count on us to be right there with you. Only in circumstances of extremely high winds or snowstorms will we ever cancel your party for you. Otherwise, we’ll be there.
As we met as a team recently to take our Christmas card photo and to discuss the year, we were all proud of the work we had accomplished in 2013. As the owner of Astro Jump, I always like to break down our numbers at the end of the year for my team not by sales, numbers of parties, or size of parties, but rather by how many children we brought joy to during the year through their hard work. My calculations on this front are of course only approximations, but by taking the number of parties we had and then estimating the average number of children at each party, in 2013 I estimate that we helped bring joy to 70,000 children in the DC metropolitan area. If that doesn’t make you happy and proud of the work you have done, I don’t know what will.
Thank you to all of our loyal customers in 2013 and we hope that we can be a part of your next big event in 2014. Happy New Year!