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★☆☆☆☆

“Went to the Christmas show - a huge disappointment”

written by on 18/11/2013

My mother bought tickets to this show as a day out for the two of us in London. We have heard good things about the Ideal Home show in previous years, and thought attending the Christmas show could be fun. We did not attend the show with high expectations, and I'm sorry to say that it was far worse than we expected in almost every way. Having now read the reviews on this site from people who attended the regular show in March 2013, I can say that the Christmas 2013 show was just as bad, if not actually worse, and I would actively encourage people to avoid it in future.

I should say that our hopes rose when we first went in: the entrance to Earl's Court was decorated with fake snow, a Santa and plastic reindeer and entrance staff dressed in Christmas hats shaking sets of bells. Although a bit silly, this was fun and made us feel that the exhibition would get us into the Christmas mood. Unfortunately, once we were actually inside the venue, any sense of Christmas spirit completely vanished. With the exception of a few trees, including a large illuminated one suspended over the ice rink, and a present wrapping stall, there seemed to be virtually no evidence of ‘Christmas’ at all. There was no festive music, little decoration – in fact, no atmosphere of any kind. The Exhibition was basically a vast, two-floor market made up of stalls selling, among other things, mirror-screen televisions, henna tattoos, ‘easy-fit’ duvets, and laser teeth whitening. There were a few card, decoration and gift stalls, but these were few and far between, and felt very much tacked on to a much more generic ‘exhibition’ so it could be labelled as a Christmas event. The products we saw were overwhelmingly low quality, very little you couldn’t pick up at your local market. We spent three hours at the Exhibition and didn’t see a single item we were tempted to buy – and furthermore we had to keep dodging the pushier salespeople trying to sell us cosmetic surgery alternatives and home massage solutions.

The food selection was extremely poor quality and expensive: overpriced franchise food, like festival-style hot dogs and crepes. We had a coffee in the venue’s own Lounge Bar, which was actually not bad (comfortable sofas, reasonably pleasant atmosphere), but despite being there at lunchtime we weren’t tempted by any of the food we saw elsewhere. The biggest disappointment was probably the Greg Wallace restaurant: an MDF shack in the middle of the venue, with open air seating around it for diners, which was only separated from the hubbub of the market itself by a short picket fence. It was serving a taster menu on miniature plates for about £26 – I can’t comment on the quality of the food as we didn’t try it, but I can’t imagine the atmosphere was particularly relaxing given the noise and general warehouse feel of the surroundings. Equally, the upstairs Champagne bar didn’t feel very luxurious: it was open plan, consisted of one bar and several bar stools and tables, and the central feature was a hot tub filled with ice and empty champagne bottles (the sponsor was a hot tub manufacturer).

The one highlight was the Christmas fashion show on the catwalk, which was good fun, well choreographed, and showcased some nice clothes. All those involved in the catwalk show really worked hard to lift the energy and the mood, which was tough as it was the middle of the day and everyone was clearly exhausted. That was definitely our best part of the whole experience.

There were things we missed, so I can’t comment on whether they would have been any better than the show in general: we didn’t try the ice skating, or make it to the Cookery demo area. Apparently we also missed a few celebrity appearances: by Amy Childs and Jamie from Made in Chelsea among others (there were a lot of reality tv-themed stalls as well, e.g. a fragrance stand from Peter Andre). This sort of thing wasn’t really our cup of tea, but if it was I can imagine this might have made the event more exciting for us.

Overall, this was a huge, huge disappointment. We took a risk in making it a special day out in London, but I honestly don’t think it would have been worth it even if we had just popped along on the bus. Besides the total absence of interesting or innovative content, the biggest problem was the complete lack of atmosphere. There was no sense of excitement or enjoyment – everyone looked exhausted and miserable – and whilst I do understand that sponsorship and sales are an essential part of these events, it was obvious that the whole aim of the ‘exhibition’ was to herd as many of us as possible into a massive room and flog things to us as hard as possible. The ‘Christmas’ label was used to sell the event, with pretty much no effort made to make the event feel Christmassy.

So in summary, an exploitative, lazily put-together event which left us feeling the opposite of festive. Avoid at all costs!





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