There will be a cocktail party (free of charge) to the first 100 ticket holders.

There will be a further 50 ticket holders selected at random from ticket numbers 101 - 300.

This will be your chance to have a mingle with the guests in quieter and more intimate surroundings

Eckie Posted on May 22 2004, 12:25 AM
Nice load of information there Silverlady! This is more like it, keep up the good work!

Gaijin_Jola Posted on May 27 2004, 01:22 PM
Another Guest Announcement:-

Carlos Bernard - Tony Almeida in "24" - FIRST UK APPEARANCE

The worst thing about running an event at short notice is getting the word out to people, especially when you've been relatively inactive for a while. So after some discussion, the organisers of Valhalla have decided to offer a kind of incentive scheme to people attending, to get them to spread the word as far and wide as they can (but no posting to groups which don't allow such posts).

Refer a friend

Until the end of June 2004 we are running a "Refer a Friend" promotion. In order to participate you must have referred at least FOUR people to book a weekend adult ticket for Valhalla - from person number FOUR you get a £10 bonus - this can be used as either £10 back off your own registration fee or an autograph from the guests attending.

Example:-

Joe Bloggs refers Person 1 (Joe Bloggs him or herself), Person 2, Person 3 & Person 4. Joe Bloggs would then receive a £10 bonus for Person 4. But.... it will continue for Person 5, Person 6, Person 7 so in effect you the referrer will get a discount of £10 for each and every adult ticket booked from person 4 onwards......

This is a great way of either a) reducing the cost of your own ticket or getting extra autographs at the event for free......

Spread the word, refer your friends....

And if you've already booked, fear not - we will back date this for those who've already shown their support. If you've already booked two, three or four tickets when you called or wrote to us, then you have got that many referrals to your name.

You MUST say at the time of booking who referred you!

This is not an easy e-mail to write, because what I have to say is one of the hardest things I have had to in several years of running events. At this point, Valhalla is looking very much like it will be unable to run. The ticket sales for the event are very low, and as things stand to run would simply cost more money than we can afford. We are prepared to lose money to keep the event running (indeed, we will lose thousands of pounds anyway if we don't run), but given the current level of ticket sales, if we run, the amount we will lose is just too great.

I have never had to cancel an event before, and I don't want to now. The reason I have not been on the list the last couple of days is that I have been trying to discuss options with the actors to see if we can salvage the situation. But at the moment, the only chance the event has to run as advertised is if we see a massive upturn in sales - if we can sell another sixty tickets by the event, then we'd still lose money, but we'd be able to run. However we'd need to see that things were looking better on that front in the next few days, because one way or another, the final decision has to be made before Friday morning. If you know people who are planning to book, but have been leaving doing so for any reason, tell them they need to book now or there will be no event.

I'm aware that telling people of the situation will probably have the opposite effect, and stop them booking. My first priority has to be the people who have booked though - anyone who hasn't already booked travel or hotel rooms would be advised to hold off doing so until we know what is happening. Those who have booked the hotel through the event block booking need not worry on that front; if it becomes necessary to cancel your rooms, you should not be charged by them, so long as you cancel before the 23rd. If we do have to postpone or cancel, then every ticket holder will be entitled to and get a full refund for their tickets, as fast as we can physically post them out.

The worst thing about this is that the people we will be letting down the most if we have to cancel are the very people who bought tickets and put their faith in us. Sadly, there simply haven't been enough of you.

I know that if we have to cancel there are going to be people very upset. I know how I would feel in their shoes, I know how I feel at the prospect of letting down those people. However, if anyone is going to be angry and lose their temper at anyone, please don't do it over the phone line to Jola. It's not her fault, or at the end of the day, her decision (and there is just a chance you might be tying up the line when someone is trying to book, and thus keep the event running). If anyone is going to lose their temper, do it to me.

Stuart

I'm afraid the news is not good. Sadly, we have no option left open to us now except to cancel the event.

As everyone on the list knows, ticket sales are extremely low. We have sold just over 130 tickets - that amount has barely changed in the last three weeks (I think it has gone up by about ten tickets). Two weeks ago, just before I announced the risk of cancellation, the actors had a deadline for providing flight details - over the years running the events, I have gained a few contacts who can, on occasion, get discounts on flight costs, given sufficient notice.
Given the current financial situation, I needed those discounts to be able to afford to run. Losing those discounts would make it impossible, and the contact I had who could get the flights at a price I could afford was going on holiday.
Sadly, most of the guests missed the deadline, for a variety of reasons which I am not going to discuss. I knew we had most likely lost the discounts, and hence announced to the list the risk of cancellation. I had a deadline on various deposits which would need to be paid which was due on Friday just passed, and my flight contact would not be back until today; given the likelihood of the flight price having risen sharply, I would need to pull before Friday unless I felt ticket sales had improved sufficiently to survive the increased flight costs we might face.

Most of the people on the list have been amazing. I didn't want to let you down. So although the ticket sales hadn't noticeably improved, I managed to convince the people who were due deposits on Friday to give us an extension - better to give us that and hopefully get paid in full if we ran, than to refuse the extension and have me cancel on Friday. Thankfully, all of them were reasonable, and granted us the extension. However, even with the extension, we needed the flights to come in at the lower price, because the ticket sales had not improved.

Today my flight broker came back from holiday. They confirmed to me late this afternoon that we have lost the chance of the discounts - my flight bill would treble if I were to run. I have now informed the actors, we have discussed the options, and none of us can see a way ahead that allows the event to happen. I don't want to leave anyone hanging any longer, hence this e-mail to inform everyone on the list.

To cancel will cost me over £10,000. If we had got our discounted flights, running would probably have cost me £15,000 by the end of the day (that is taking photo sales and the like into account - it'd be more without them). Now, without the discounts on the remaining flights, to run would incur a loss in the region of £30,000. There is simply no way we can do that, and no amount of photo sales would make it survivable.

Refunds will be posted out to everyone in the next few days.

Stuart