When planning a summer carnival party sometimes you need to think outside the box to cater to your residents. One community with a lot of college students included both bungee trampolines and bungee runs as part of their festival offerings. 

If you have a more diverse age range of residents you’re going to want to ensure that you have a variety of carnival activities, fairway type games, and other competitions to keep residents entertained. 

Making or renting?

While carnival services do exist in most states, the games themselves can be expensive to rent, costing anywhere from $150-500 each. Making your own games costs a fraction of that and can also be a boredom-beating project for your team. There are plenty of fairway game ideas and many are almost free to make. 

The website How to Build Carnival Games also offers full access to step by step instructions for building 30 of the most popular, audience tested, fairway games at a fraction of the cost of renting. The website is administrated by an owner of a carnival and fundraising company based in Georgia with over 30 years in the business. For only $37 you can get full access to all the videos and instructions for building the most popular games.

There are also free YouTube tutorials for carnival games that visually walk you through the steps for making popular games like ring toss, mini golf, and more.

How to Make a Ring Toss Game

INSERT VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSqXoS1dtd8

Image source: Lowes Creative Ideas

Additionally, when it comes to stocking up on prizes and plush animals, there are numerous websites that offer inexpensive bulk candy and prizes for carnival giveaways. Some also carry wristbands and tickets.

**A note on hiring professional entertainers**

Balloon animals and face painting are just a few of the other activities that you may want to have at your community event. We don’t all have time to learn how to make balloon animals ourselves. 

Image source: Pizzazzerie

Depending on your budget you can negotiate with professionals on a flat fee for the event (which will allow you to offer the additional services to your residents at no additional cost) or allow professional entertainers (like clowns, balloon twisters, and face painters) to come onto your property and sell their services for a small fee on-site.