26th/27th March 2005 Debenham Robot Rumble

Marien (president of the DRG) has noted on the DRG forum that the prices for the EC will probably be in the 8 to 10 ‚ range. The problems regarding the Debenham and WC events have certainly educated us on the need for better more wide-spread publicity and lower prices. An added bonus is that our EC event will happen in the same time/place as the Party Extreme LAN=LIFE / Xlerate event at an easily reached venue near the capital city of The Netherlands. But its gonna be all hands on deck !

(People who happen to be in Brussels on 28, 29 and 30 April are kindly invited to hop in on the Science Fair at Palace 2 of the Expo Heizel where we will have a small demo arena / information stand at which this crazy idiot is going to make as much publicity as she can before collapsing from exhaustion after the German Raptor event the weekend before and the subsequent Science Expo.)

Poetic justice in favour of the Storm team really although no one likes to see the cancellation of any event.

Its a shame that it had to be cancelled and so close after getting confirmation of the final event details, then another Email informing that the Saturday night show was cancelled due to poor ticket sales I assumed that it meant the other shows were doing fine, surly the organiser knew there were problems but for whatever reasons decided to keep us all in the dark. Maybe he could give us all an apology on here!

Sounds like a crisis in confidence. Last year my Welsh Event sold 1150 tickets, but 600 of these were in the last four days. 200 on the door.

For the record, the Wrexham Wrumble 2 years ago sold a total of 1700 tickets.

2 days before the event I was looking at a loss of £4500

The event went ahead with me willing to loose the money, but thanks to tickets at only £5 each, 1700 people showed up, on mothers day!!

Not saying I did anything special, it was my first event so I did lots wrong, just saying that at £5 a ticket, my event worked, and looking at a large personal loss I went ahead anyway.....

Things are very different with other events I know, and I am not saying anything against other people who have cancelled their events. Just offering advice to anyone in future.

A good, well publicized event, with cheap tickets and low costs is my personal view, and Ill probably be running one in chester one of these days so I still have faith in the comercial viability of the robot wars type events.

Any one who had made this weekend free, a few of us are planning on going Alton Towers on Saturday. If any one is interested, could be a roboteers outing. Tickets cost £18 each, or buy one get one free at the price of £28. http://www.rialtoticketing.com/app/rial ... gAgentId=1 If orderd online, you can pick tickets up at the park.

If any one is interested we could all meet up at gates or before.

Cheers,
Dave
teammad.co.uk

Im going.
Love Alton Towers.

Mr Stu

weve now arranged going go Go karting at red lodge near newmarket on saturday

Ian&james

Dont use firefox to order online... Ive had trouble... But booked now. See you there.

Kane

PS Let me know if you are local (on the way) and want a lift. Will be going up the M1 from Hemel Hempstead.

But surely this means well never GET another DRR...once one event gets bad ticket sales, itll never recover, surely!

You never know,
Hate to bring this up but im sure Ed and XFM wont mind. Yes its been a big down-er, but money has been lost and now its time to try and get some of it back, and time to pick your self up and get an event going. Maybe the Debenham area has lost Robot Wars high, Debenham has been going for what? 4 years? Never know, Robot Rumble may return somewhere else - no one knows yet. But XFM have come back strong with lots of little event booked and bigger bigger ones planned for future.

Kane you better go on all the rides!

Mr Stu

I know this is the wrong thing to ask but will the public be able to get money back

Apparantly, Yes.

Even though I couldnt have gone anyway, im sorry to hear about that :sad:

Sorry guys, cant make alton towers now... :-(

Anyone fancy getting together Sunday afternoon for a BBQ.

Ian

what about people who dont have internet, how do they no that the event is now off

Message from Geoff Thorpe, Robot Rumble Organiser

Letters have been sent out to all people who bought tickets, and a refund cheque will follow very shortly.

Were are already planning next years event, after learning from the errors this year and we hope to have your continued support for them, and we will be back, bigger and better than ever before. See you next year.

Mr Stu on behalf of Geoff Thorpe.

Sorry cant make Alton Towers, See you at Denbigh

Ladies and Gentlemen

The FRA governing body are deeply dissapointed by the cancellation of this event. We had been in negotiation with Mr Thorpe with regard to his objection to the attendance of Ed Hoppitt and at no time had he hinted at any problems that would have put the event at risk.

In addition we find his very short explanation circulated to the entrants via Roaming Robots to be unacceptable. We request Mr Thorpe to publish on this forum a more detailed explanation and an apology to all concerned, particurlarly to our friends from Belgium and the Netherlands. We would also request Mr Thorpe make every effort to reimburse our continental friends for any out of pocket expenses with regard to ferry bookings.

Our representative visited the venue today and neither Mr Thorpe nor his agents were there. The only information to alert the public was a poster on the door with cancelled stuck to it, there was no statement available, and the staff of Debenham were doing their best to deal with complaints and enquiries - only having Mr Thorpes contact details to circulate. The FRA have therefore produced an apology stating how dissapointed we all are that this has been cancelled, and we hope that this will go some way to filling the information void left by Mr Thorpe. A copy of this document can be seen http://www.fightingrobots.co.uk/docu...ancel.pdf>here

If you request Mr Thorpe to We request Mr Thorpe to publish on this forum a more detailed explanation and an apology to all concerned, particurlarly to our friends from Belgium and the Netherlands.

Email him/phone him direct. You have both been on phone to Geoff T plenty of times bullying him about issues, why not phone him to do it instead of making this public. Oh i know why - to make it look like the FRA is doing something.

The guy has had letters sent out to everyone who brought tickets, and someone has confirm they got the letter this morning.

Cut the guy some slack - he made an error with ticket sales/prices - hes not trying to wreck the sport, hes sorry and hes upset himself and has plans for 2006. Wouldnt blame him if he dosnt want any link to FRA with the above post. You wasnt this harsh when XFM WC went wrong due to ticket sales. You didnt try to make an example out of them, maybe coz they wont stand for it.

Mr Stu
PS- Dont phone me about my post, i really aint in the mood for a phone call from an FRA rep about my post.

Well put.

I agree with what stu has to say, a lot of things that have been said in this thread should not have been said and other things kept private.

For any one who wants to see, here are some vids and pics of the trip to Alton Towers today: http://www.teammad.co.uk/altontowerswww.teammad.co.uk/altontowers

Spot on Stu. Surely the purpose of this governing body is to facilitate the operation of live events, rather than to slag off someone who has tried to do something for this dwindling sport?

If the FRA executive really do care as much about this sport as they claim, they should be doing everything they can to help this bloke and ensure that there will be more Debenham events in the future. Anything else will only serve the further decay of this sport.

€œAnd we€™re quite high up.€
€œOh S#%t!!!!!!€

This is Mr Stu, reporting from the water plume, Alton Towers :crazy:barf

LOL!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah you got it Karoline. LOL!

Shame i wasnt allowed to do that for Oblivion or Air. Hehe. Even tho my hands were not in use, they stopped Oblivion 3 times while we were waiting to get on it because people were prating around with Cams while on the ride etc.

Some people why do they film on rides- its stupid, oh i did it, oh well.

Mr Stu

http://www.teammad.co.uk/altontowers/http://www.teammad.co.uk/altontowers/ - More vids of the white knuckle Monorail online.

Following the cancellation of the Debenham Robot Rumble, as an approved FRA event the FRA took action to represent both the roboteers and the public.



The FRA saw that it had three areas within its mandate



1) Assuring that the immediate issue of dealing with any disappointed public that might arrive on site were given an apology and explanation.



The FRA produced a statement that was photocopied 500 times and taken up to the venue to be distributed to audience members who did end up at the venue. This was greatly appreciated by both the leisure centre staff and the organiser Geoff Thorpe who thanked the FRA for its prompt action.



2) That where possible we sought to help our members who were travelling over from Europe to the event.



The FRA requested that Geoff Thorpe do what he can to help the European teams that were due to be attending the event, and Geoff has now confirmed that he is in a position to provide some financial help to the European teams which were coming over.



3) That once the dust was settled some attempt needed to be made to retain the trust and enthusiasm of those audience members who would have come to the show.



The FRA requested that XFM consider offering discount tickets to those members of the public who would have attended the Robot Rumble as another FRA Event Organiser in the same area. XFM have agreed to offer discounted tickets to the customers of the Robot Rumble to its events, and XFM will foot the bill of contacting those members of public



The FRA put a very strong post up about the Robot Rumble, following our genuine concerns that the cancellation of the event were handled badly - not due to the cancellation itself. Mr Thorpe has agreed that the cancellation could have been handled better and this is something that all parties have agreed to look at so that both Geoff and other event organisers can learn from this for the future.



In the meantime, we are pleased that the FRA has used its position to help both the roboteers and the public in a way that wouldnt have been possible before in a quick and efficient manner.



The Fighting Robot Association

http://www.fightingrobots.co.ukhttp://www.fightingrobots.co.uk