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A row of grand carnival funfair stalls lit up at an evening event

About Fun at the Fair

The outdoor funfair and fairground ride hire arm of DB Entertainment Ltd, working out of Rotherham since 1999.

Year Established
1999
Sq Ft Warehouse
25,000
Public Liability
£5M
Delivery Coverage
UK & EU

From PA hire to a yard full of fairground kit

Our History

The business started in 1999 hiring out PA systems for live events around South Yorkshire. One thing led to another - a client wanted a bouncy castle alongside the speakers, then a rodeo bull, then a dodgem track for a town-centre weekend - and the warehouse kept filling up with fairground equipment until the funfair work deserved a yard, a fleet and a website of its own.

Fun at the Fair is that site. It carries the outdoor end of the trade: the mechanical rides, the stall rows, the catering carts and the Christmas outfits. Between us we've been setting this kit up on fields and closed roads for over a quarter of a century, and most of the people who answer the phone here have driven a trailer onto a showground at six in the morning more times than they'd care to count.

Browse the Rides
A waltzer ride set up on grass at an outdoor event

25,000 sq ft five minutes from the M1

The Yard

Everything lives in a 25,000 sq ft warehouse in Rotherham, five minutes off the motorway network with the A1, M1 and M18 all close enough to be useful. When you ring to ask what a hire includes, the person answering is describing equipment stacked a few aisles away from their desk, not a supplier's brochure.

Our own vans and lorries do the delivering, and our own operators travel with the bigger rides to build, run and take them down again. The kit is maintained in the yard between bookings - the dodgem cars come off the trailer and go back to the workshop when they need work, rather than being swapped out with a call to somebody we've never met.

Almost all of what you can book on this site is ours outright. The small remainder comes from showmen and suppliers we've used for years, and we'll say so plainly when that's the case.

A traditional helter skelter standing on an event field

How We Work

  • One Office, One Job Sheet

    A permanent office team in Rotherham takes the enquiry, writes the quote and stays with the booking through to collection. The person you first speak to is the person who knows where your dodgem track is on the day.

  • Operators on the Payroll

    Mechanical rides go out with trained operators who work for us directly. They build the ride they'll be running, which is the difference between somebody who knows the machine and somebody reading a laminated sheet about it.

  • Paperwork Before the Day

    Risk assessments and method statements go out ahead of every job, and the insurance certificates go with them. Council licensing officers, venue managers and school business managers all get what they need without chasing.

  • Power Without a Mains

    Fields rarely come with a socket. Generators travel with the kit that needs them - rides, stalls and catering alike - so the middle of a showground works the same as a town square.

  • Tested and Certified Kit

    The mechanical rides carry current examination reports and the inflatables their annual inspection paperwork. A quarter of a century of council and venue bookings hasn't left much tolerance for kit that can't show its certificates.

  • Our Own Transport

    The same drivers run the same routes with the same trailers, so access requirements and arrival windows are worked out by people who have actually reversed into your venue before.

Who We Work For

Town and parish councils putting on summer galas, school PTAs running fairs that have to pay for themselves, companies booking the works summer do, organisers of Christmas markets and country shows. Clients over the years have included Amazon, Alzheimer's Society, Prostate Cancer UK, and council events teams at Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham.

The outdoor venues we know best are the ones round this part of the world - Penistone Showground, Newark Showground, the Yorkshire Event Centre at Harrogate - but the fleet travels, and winter takes us to town-centre Christmas markets well beyond South Yorkshire.

Get a Quote

When It Rains, and When It's Indoors

The honest answer about British weather is that the canopy and the groundwork matter more than the forecast. Most of the kit works in the rain, the rides light up when it goes dark, and the mulled wine sells better for a bit of cold.

Indoor funfairs happen too - school halls, leisure centres and exhibition halls with the doors and the height to take a trailer. For indoor corporate games and branded attractions there's a sibling site in the family, Exhibition Game Hire, alongside Mobile Climbing Wall Hire and Staging Events for staging and production.

Fill in the form with the date, the venue and a rough idea of what you want on the field, and the office will come back to you. Prefer the phone? We're on 0845 468 0590.

Is it on grass or hard standing?
Do you have electricity on site (within 25 metres)?
Do you require the items to be staffed by us?
For event bookings
Are you VAT registered?