How to run a trunk or treat

A trunk or treat is one of the easiest community events to start and one of the easiest to underestimate. There is no field to book, no ticketing, and the decorations arrive in the trunks of the cars. Most of the work is done by families who volunteer a parking space and an afternoon.

Then the day comes and it turns out the only working outlet is on the far side of the building, the inflatable cannot be pegged into asphalt, it is dark by the time the line builds, and every child on site is carrying a bag of candy. None of those are difficult problems. They are just the ones nobody thinks about in August.

This is a planning document rather than a sales page. Every number below is a price or a policy published on our own site, so you can check each one, and where we genuinely do not know something the article says so instead of guessing.

The parking lot changes three things

If you have run a school carnival on a field or in a gym, most of your instincts carry over. Three do not, and they are the three that cost money.

1. Anchoring

Our FAQ says plainly that we can set up on grass, pavement, or indoors, so a parking lot is a normal request and not a special favor. The detail to raise when you book is how the unit gets secured. Our published method is that our units are staked into the ground for stability and safety, and asphalt does not take a stake.

We are not going to guess in an article at how your particular setup will be anchored, because the answer depends on the unit and the surface. Ask the question when you book, and say the words "it is a parking lot" in your first message rather than on the morning. If any part of the layout will sit on a grass strip or an island instead, mention that too: the renter is responsible for having all utilities located prior to the event, and a sprinkler line or a buried cable under a grass strip is exactly the kind of thing nobody remembers until a stake finds it.

2. Power

An inflatable is not powered once and left alone. Its blower runs continuously for the whole event, which means it needs a circuit for the entire evening, not a socket for five minutes. Our requirement is that the inflatable should be within 100 ft of a 110V outlet. We supply the power cord, and we ask that nothing else be plugged into the outlet being used.

Parking lots are where that goes wrong. Exterior outlets are often further away than they look, sometimes dead, and frequently already carrying the sound system or the coffee urn. Walk the site with whoever holds the keys, find every outlet, plug something in and confirm it actually works, and then draw your layout around what you found. If there is no usable outlet, we can provide a power generator for an additional charge, which is a normal and planned-for solution rather than a rescue, as long as you tell us before the day.

3. Light

An October evening event in Indiana runs into darkness partway through, and the light goes faster than people expect once it starts. That is not a rule we publish, just the calendar, but it changes your layout more than your schedule: lines need to be visible, the walking route between the cars and any attraction needs to be lit, and the drop-off point has to be obvious to a driver. Most churches and schools cover this with the string lights and battery lanterns families already bring for their trunks. It works well. It just needs to be somebody's job in advance rather than a discovery at 6:30.

The candy problem, which is the one that costs money

This deserves its own section because it is specific to this format and it is the single most likely charge on the whole event.

Our safety rules are unambiguous: absolutely no gum, food, drinks, candy or silly string in the unit. The rules go on to say that these items, especially silly string, are very harmful to the vinyl, and that violation of this rule can result in additional charges for cleaning. Our published cleaning fee is $25 and up.

Now picture a trunk or treat. Every child on site is carrying a bag of candy, by design, and the inflatable is the most exciting thing in the parking lot. Without a plan, candy goes in.

The fix costs nothing and takes one volunteer:

• Put distance in the layout. Site the inflatable at the opposite end from where the candy route starts and finishes, not next to it.
• Make one entrance. A single way in gives you a single place to ask, rather than four sides to watch.
• Combine the bag drop with the shoes. Children must remove their shoes prior to entering the unit anyway, so you already need a stop at the door. Bags go in the same crate as the shoes.
• Brief the volunteer, not the children. One adult who knows the rule is worth more than a sign nobody reads in the dark.

Cars, and the bit that is genuinely about safety

The format puts children and moving vehicles in the same space, which is worth ten minutes of planning before anything else gets decided.

The practical version most organizers land on is simple: every participating car is parked and switched off before the first family arrives, and nothing moves again until the event is over. That turns the parking lot into a pedestrian space for the evening and removes the problem rather than managing it. It does mean deciding in advance where arriving families park, which is usually a separate area with a marked walking route in.

Two of our published safety rules matter here as well, because they are easy to trip over at a fall event. Adult supervision is required at all times when children are in or around the unit, and units must not be used near water or when fireworks are being used or will be used. If your evening includes a fire pit, a bonfire or anything pyrotechnic, that is a layout decision to make now, not the night of.

How many attractions you actually need

Think in lines rather than in attractions, because the line is what people remember.

One inflatable will absorb a line all evening, and for most trunk or treats one is enough. Our published rider capacities give you the maths:

• 15x15 bounce house: 8 children up to age 8, 6 aged 9 to 12, 4 teens, 4 adults.
• 13x13 bounce house: 6 children up to age 8, 5 aged 9 to 12, 4 teens, 3 adults.
• 15x18 combo: 10 children up to age 8, 6 to 8 aged 9 to 12, 4 to 5 teens, 4 adults.

Our FAQ notes that these numbers are only a guideline and that the unit itself carries the specific number allowed at one time. Two things follow. A single unit moves a few children per minute, so it is the bottleneck, not the throughput. And because our rules ask you to keep smaller children out of the unit while older children are jumping, a mixed-age evening realistically needs a separate quieter slot for the little ones, which is easier to run at a stated time than to referee continuously.

Games are the opposite. They move people quickly, they cost a fraction as much, and eight of them running at once feels like a much bigger event than one inflatable does.

On space, if you are fitting an inflatable between marked bays, our published requirement is a minimum of 2 ft of clearance on all sides, with a 17 ft x 17 ft area for a 13 ft x 13 ft bounce house and 17 ft x 22 ft for most combo units, on ground that is flat and free of debris. Measure the bays rather than counting them.

What it costs

These are prices read from our own product pages, so every one is checkable. They exclude delivery, which is charged separately and based on the miles to your event location. Setup and takedown are included in the rental price, and our standard rental is up to 6 hours.

Games. We list 38 carnival games, from $25 to $899, and 14 of them are $65. That makes budgeting unusually easy: a row of eight booth games is $520. Two of the $65 games are a natural fit for the season, Zombie Knock Down and Troll Dentist, and the rest of the row can be ordinary carnival games that nobody minds being cheerful rather than spooky. At the cheaper end there is a Tug of War Rope at $25, Table Top Jenga at $35 and Corn Hole at $45.

Concessions. The Cotton Candy Machine and the Popcorn Popper are each from $115, and the Carnival Treat Shop is from $295. Popcorn in particular does a lot of work at an outdoor evening event. We do also rent a Snow Cone Machine at the same $115, and we would gently suggest not booking it for an October night in Indiana.

If you want a centrepiece. Our Mechanical Pumpkin is from $1,750. That is a different order of spend and it is not what most trunk or treats need, but it is the fall-specific attraction in our catalog and it is the sort of thing that anchors a much larger community event.

Staffing. Our published rate for event attendants is $75 per hour, described on our FAQ as being to manage large events. Most church and school events run the game booths on volunteers and use a paid attendant only where there is an inflatable, since supervision there is required at all times.

A worked example. Eight $65 games, a cotton candy machine and a popcorn popper comes to $750 before delivery. That is arithmetic on the published prices above rather than a package we sell, and your delivery fee depends on your address.

Weather, and the decision to make now

For inflatables the limits are firm and they are not judgement calls on the night. Bouncers cannot be used if there are winds of 20 mph or more, and cannot be used in the rain.

There is one clause worth reading before you sign anything, because it surprises people. If we set up the unit, and the weather later turns inclement, we will pick up the unit according to schedule, and in that event no refund will be given. Our deposits are 50% of the total order and are non-refundable, though you can apply a deposit to a future event.

The practical response is not to gamble and not to worry, but to build the evening so the inflatable is the bonus rather than the backbone. Games, concessions and the cars themselves are all weather-tolerant in a way an inflatable is not. If your event still works when the bounce house does not, an October forecast stops being a crisis.

The paperwork, and why it sets your timeline

Equipment is the easy part. Approvals are what actually decide whether your date holds.

Ask your own church, school or district for its requirement in writing, because it genuinely differs between organizations and we cannot tell you what yours is. What we can tell you is what is available from our side, and all of it is ready now rather than on request:

• A certificate of insurance. Proof of our general liability policy, downloadable from our site.
• Additional insured status. We can list your district or venue as additionally insured for an extra $25 charge per event.
• A W9. On file for vendor setup with school district and corporate accounts payable, and downloadable too.

One timing note. If your event is in a public park rather than your own parking lot, start considerably earlier. Many parks require a permit to have an inflatable set up, and those can take as many as 10 days to process.

A four week run-up

Four weeks is enough for a trunk or treat, as long as the first week goes on the two things that actually gate the date rather than on equipment.

• Week 4: lock the date, start the approval and insurance request in writing, and put out the call for families to sign up a trunk. That last number changes everything else.
• Week 3: walk the site. Count and test outlets, measure the bays, and decide where participating cars park versus where families park. Book equipment now, because the last Saturdays in October are the busiest of the season for every rental company in the area, including us.
• Week 2: draw the layout, including lighting, the walking route, and where the inflatable sits relative to the candy route. Settle the anchoring and power answers. Assign a named volunteer per station.
• Week 1: confirm your delivery window, brief volunteers on the two rules that actually get broken (shoes off, nothing edible inside the unit), and tell people what the wet-weather version of the evening looks like.

Where to look at the options

Our schools and churches page is the right starting point for this kind of event. It covers the package deals for youth organizations, and both the insurance certificate and the W9 are downloadable from it, which are usually the two documents someone asks you for first.

Common questions