What you must know before booking a magician:
1. Booking the right person for your event is the priority. The magic tricks are secondary. The right person creates the experience; not the tricks.
2. Expect to find a wide choice of fees. What you may think is expensive might just be the right fee for the right magician for your event.
3. For your major corporate event, if any close up magician has a three digit fee starting with a 1 or 2… RUN AWAY!
4. Many magicians are award-winning. That’s because there are many awards going around in magic. Local magic clubs have all manner of awards on offer. It’s important to know what award/s the magicians have won. Stevenage Borough and Manchester United are both title-winning football teams. The latter have won the Premier League while the former have won the Conference Premier, the lowest nationwide league in English football.
5. If you are looking to book a close up magician as an ice-breaker for groups of people, bear in mind some of these groups will be waiting an hour or more for the ice-breaker to make it over to them. Better to book someone who can create an atmosphere for everyone.
6. There is a difference between 100 people at a sit down event vs. 100 people at a cocktail reception. The former will probably have 10 groups of 10 people; the latter may have 20 groups that are constantly changing!
6. In a battle between a table magician and a speaker system enhancing a band, the band will always win.
7. If your dinner is 2 hours long and there are 30 tables, 120/30 = 4 minutes. Take away the time needed for food being eaten and moving between tables brings the time down to around 3 minutes. Solution? You really do need more than one magician.
8. People will forget what food they ate at your event; they will forget the speeches; they will have no idea what music was played. What the right magician does at your event will be remembered forever.
9. 99% of what you may have seen on television cannot be done at your event.
10. Booking a close up magician is an expensive option to stop children from running around at an event.
11. Close up magicians cannot stop children from running around at an event.
12. If, at your event, everyone is up on the dance floor in between the dinner courses, there is nobody for the table magician to entertain during the optimum times.
13. Never book a magician without first talking to the person on the phone. Use your gut instinct as to whether you want the person at your event mingling amongst your friends, family, business colleagues or clients.