*This is a gifted experience in return for a blog post and a vlog! All words and photos are my own and opinions are mine and honest. Working with the Character Company IW they supplied my tickets for the event and travel over to the island and back, everything else was paid for by myself*
Festival of Heroes 2019! We're so excited, so ready and raring to go. We LOVED the Princess experience back in February and I just know that both Iris and Lucas are going to go crazy and have the best time ever. The Summer holidays started on Wednesday and this is the perfect way to kickstart it.
Festival of Heroes is organised by Kellie and Mandy of "The Character Company" and Daisy Chains Children's charity and they have a whole team of incredible performers who are truly amazing.
I'll talk you through our time on the Isle of Wight below so you can get a good feel for the festival! We hope to go back next year too because we loved it so much.
O U R T R I P O V E R
Boarding the boat to Ryde after a 5am start, a taxi and a coach, two VERY excitable children, one fast asleep baby! We were all ready with our suitcase and tent ready for our first festival of the Summer and our first time camping as a family. We're smelling the sea air, talking about the day and disaster hits my camera battery? The one I need for the whole weekend? It's nowhere to be found, it's in my charger at home. DAMN!
Thankfully, Argos had replacements and after a pricey taxi ride to Newport and back to Brading and money out of my pocket for the battery, we FINALLY arrived at Brading Roman Villas, De-stressed, excited and with a working camera! PHEW! I also have taught Lucas that he needs to yell "CAMERA" at me every time I leave the house from now on.
Apart from that the catamaran service from Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde takes 22 minutes and is definitely the best route. You could go from Southampton to Newport or Cowes but you'd have a long journey on the other side! Which would be okay if you're driving. You could easily make this a day trip or a weekend trip depending on your budget and the experience you want. We wanted the proper camping festival vibe so we booked our own camping tickets for a local campsite.
If you don't have heaps of stuff and are also not as disorganised as me and forget a vital part of the equipment you could hop on a bus from Ryde to Brading and then you just have a short walk up the hill. The journey would have been really straight forward without my mishap so it's easy to get to even if you're from the mainland.
T H E F E S T I V A L!
This year's tickets were £4 per person or £15 for a family ticket, with under 2's being free. So a really affordable day out. It's run between 11-5 so you definitely get your money's worth there. There are food stalls there and an ice cream van but you can also bring a picnic if you're on a budget or just want to bring your own food.
F O O D S T A L L S
There were quite a few different stalls! Food-wise we had...
D I P I T
For Lunch which you can see in the picture above! These were waffle's on sticks which were £5 each and you chose your toppings. I chose a mixture of white and milk chocolate, nuts and Honeycomb (which is what you can see above) Brad had a mixture of both chocolates and fudge, smarties and choc-lick toppings and both children had a mixture of both chocolates and marshmallows.
We knew there were no food facilities on our campsite so wanted to have dinner at 4pm, so having two cooked meals a few hours between each other would have been too much but this along with the kids having snacks that I'd packed was enough and my gosh it was delicious! They're a new business and deserve the support because they were great.
V E G A N B O Y S
For dinner, we had Vegan Sausage and Chips! I have recently given up meat and we were so excited to try their food AND Rufus could eat it too as it was free of his allergens!
The food was amazing and they had nachos, curry chips and so many other choices. Their chips were amazing and it's making me hungry just thinking about them. They take card too which was handy as we were starting to run low on cash!
There was also an ice-cream van, and a few other cafe type stalls too.
C H A R A C T E R M E E T A N D G R E E T S
Walking in you're overwhelmed with choice and no huge queues either. Think Disneyland but without the waiting. If your favourite character has a few people waiting, there is another character wandering near for you to visit and then head back when they're quieter. The characters walk around and are not limited to one place; which is great.The characters are so accommodating, so kind and stay in character so well! They're true professionals.
C H A R A C T E R S W E M E T
- Mary Poppins and Bert
- Woody and Bo Peep
- Elsa
- Captain America
- Merida
- Cinderella
- Stormtroopers
- Chewbacca
- Iron Man
- Shoretrooper
- Jessie
- TIE Fighter Pilot
- Glittery Stormtrooper
- Superman Stormtrooper
- Moana
- Ariel
- Belle
- Green Power ranger and Red Power ranger
- Spiderman
- Aurora
- Anna
- Alice
A C T I V I T I E S
There were quite a lot of stalls to do things during the day too! There was so much to do that we didn't stop at all.
There were a few rides and a hook-the-duck, as well as stalls selling little bits and bobs and a clothing stall.
Iris wanted festival glitter on her face and opted for Moana blue and Moana gold which was so cute. Nicky also painted her lips Moana blue too! She looked so cute and the sassy pout on her is brilliant.
Lucas went for Spiderman and he LOVED it. It looked so good. She was so patient and she also has pay by PayPal system which was amazing considering once again we were running low on cash.
Iris and Lucas enjoyed making fairies with Jade and Lucas also bought a stormtrooper charm too! Jade was so patient, so kind and she spent a lot of time helping Iris. It was so lovely and she came away with a bracelet made by Jade and a fairy she made herself (with Jade's help) Lucas also made a fairy too!
M A K E A F O R K Y
Lucas and Iris are both HUGE Toy Story 4 fans and well Toy Story in general. They loved making their own forky's and I even made my own for them as theirs were a little obscure.
S L I M E M A K I N G & M E S S Y P L A Y
We ended up just purchasing a small pot of slime each for the littles at £1 each but there was the opportunity to make your own at £4 a tub and they also had a messy play too at £2.50 per child. Had Rufus not been asleep I'd have put him in there for a while.
There was also make your own teddybear and lots and lots of other things to do too! So much to do, so little time.
Oh, and Cineworld was there donating Cinema posters for a donation to charity! We have a Toy Story 4 one for a frame in the littles room now!
E N T E R T A I N M E N T
If all of that just isn't enough for you then they had a whole lineup throughout the day inside the big top and outside too!
There was a lot of parkour going on throughout the day in the main arena, a dog show and lots more!
There were REAL dinosaurs too and Transformers at their stalls too!
We spent a lot of time in the big top watching the shows!
T O Y S T O R Y S H O W
The littles loved this! Woody and Jessie helping them all to become Cowboys and Cowgirls with a special dance and Bo Peep and Buzz Lightyear were in the crowd with the children joining in and they all joined in with the dance at the end! It was so cute and the Characters were once again great!
P R I N C E S S S H O W
Anna, Belle, Elsa (the Queen), Aurora, Cinderella and Ariel all came out to perform some of the children's favourite Princess songs and then right at the end Elsa belts out, let it go and it's fantastic!!!!!!
Iris particularly loved this one and she was singing along to it all! SO CUTE
S U P E R H E R O S H O W
DC vs Marvel! Flash and Super Woman VS Spiderman and Captain America! DANCE OFF (Shhhh, we were team Marvel for sure. Spidey had some great moves!
Lucas loved this one, and so did Iris. Spiderman is my Mum's favourite so of course, it is Lucas and Iris' too!
Once again they smashed it! So good.
T H E G R E A T E S T S H O W
Wow. These guys were faced with technical issues right at the end but they did incredible, even through MIC problems and sound issues they truly did amazing and they carried on like true professionals. The dancing is incredible and even with sound issues, you could tell how great everyone could sing too.
Well done P.T Barnum and team, you put on the greatest show you could under the circumstances!
Once the festival had finished, we got into our taxi and Lucas sobbed and sobbed all the way back to the campsite. He was so gutted to leave and said he had the best day! If that doesn't make you want to buy a ticket I don't know what will.
Can I just thank Kellie, Mandy, Bailey, Eliese, Amy, Sam and Chlo just to name a few for making this weekend so special for these guys! The team are amazing and I honestly think they're incredible.
We took a taxi to Shanklin to our campsite which was "Ninham Country Holidays" we booked this for £30 for the night on Pitch Up which is something to keep in mind if you want to go next year! It's a really cheap and fun way opposed to a hotel.
The campsite also had an outdoor pool and we had packed our swimwear so we were winning after we got back, put a tent up and blew up beds in a hot climate (which nearly resulted in divorce) and the kids loved it. It was a nice way to make sure they were really, really worn out when they went to bed! (IT WORKED).
We then watched the sun start setting by the lake where ducks came to say Hey! It was beautiful, so beautiful with a rose goldy sky in the background!
We then headed back and put the kids to bed. We had no idea of the time because both our phone batteries had died, as had the power bank so we sat and enjoyed the silence once they were asleep, played with their slime pots and headed to bed ourselves.
The next morning at 9am, tent packed away, a not awful nights sleep, we headed to reception where I could charge my phone, the littles played hide and seek before our taxi turned up to take us to Ryde Pier.
Once we arrived at Ryde Pier we headed back on the catamaran service to Portsmouth Hard and homeward bound we went, with a pit stop to Nanna and Buddha's to tell them all about our weekend at Festival of Heroes.
We WILL be back next year! I just cannot fault it and we had so much fun. Well done team "character company" and all the other teams that helped make the festival character team complete.
Bloomin brilliant weekend, full of memories and aches in Mummy's and Daddy's bodies! Perfect!
Sounds like it was such fun especially the food!!!
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