Summer event dried out

By Jessica Howard

The world’s biggest water slide festival was coming to Myrniong, but has now been sold out – and not through ticket sales.

On the Slideapalooza facebook page and website they stated the business was available for sale.

“Toward the end of last year (2017) a decision was made to move our focus as an event business back toward our running events brands Miss Muddy and Rumble Run. At that point we put the word out that our Slide event Slideapalooza was available for sale.”

The statement from Slideapalooza read “The reality has been that we found interest straight away, and not from a company the likes of what we thought would be interested.”

“Despite our best efforts to convince them otherwise, the company acquiring the slide business does not want to risk any damage to the equipment by transporting it to Melbourne and running a one-off event and instead want to keep it in Queensland, following our Brisbane event which is where they aim to use it in the future.”

Because of the change of ownership, the Slideapalooza event had to be cancelled with refunds being processed through their ticketing company PleezPay, back on the card tickets were booked on.

Slideapalooza would have seen the event staged at St Anne’s Winery at Myrniong, transforming the landscape into a sea of slippery fun, with over one kilometre of single inflatable and sky high water slides.

Adam McDonald, chief executive of Fun Events and creator of Slideapalooza, said the one of a kind festival would have welcomed around 1,000 sliders per session.

“The festival had 1.2-kilometres worth of single lane inflatable slides; a number of street style slip and slides; and two big blow up slides that are two and four stories high,” he said.

Slideapalooza was created in 2016 after Mr McDonald became inspired to beat the world record for the longest inflatable slide.

If you have purchased tickets and have changed credit/debit cards since booking the tickets, organisers have asked you email [email protected] to let them know and they will organise an alternate method to return your funds. Refunds will take up to three business days to process, you should receive an email once it has happened and then see it in your account within five working days, depending who you bank with.

“We know event cancellations are disappointing and apologise for any inconvenience caused. If we had any way of coming to Myrniong and still getting the sale completed we would have, but unfortunately there was no room for negotiation, thus the cancellation,” a Slideapalooza spokesperson said.