Ideal Home Exhibition - What's it like?

Mrs_Thrify

Oh and I went yesterday with our FREE e tickets, a lot of folk were handing them in. On chatting to people 2 couples told me they had bought theirs on the web for £9 each :eek:.

Lots of intresting stands selling their wares at high costs.
The Ideal home book was £3 and then you join a que on your walk round to get the goodie bag(if you payed for a book).

We saw 3 sit down shows. One with Monti Don the gardner doing a question and answer session.

Long que's for the show houses so we just walked passed.

Mostly just leaflets handed out and npower a bag containing 2x low watt candle lamp bulbs.

The whole of upstairs was mostly food with demmo's and cafe's.

It was a nice day out and we avoided much of the BUY TODAY tactics. We just bought a brush for the dog, and that was £15.
We would go again but not for a few years.

System

NicolaC wrote: »

I didn't see this thread before... I started a new one here...
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2354269&highlight=ideal+home

Apologies if I've started it in the wrong place!

Hi Nicola
Thanks for the link to the thread, I've had a read of them. With something like this it's hard to know how to search as lots of posts appeared when I searched.

Thanks to all for the feedback it's great.

spring_chicken

Mrs_Thrify wrote: »

It sounds like the FREE tickets I have? Just have to pay the £34.40 train fare for 2 adults, off peak day return. Should be a good day.

no, mine was free, I didnt have to buy a train ticket or anything

denny15

Hi we went on Sat, took our children (14 &10) SO BUSY. We got there when it opened and had to make our way round the back of the building to join a massive queue, which did move quickly. Inside we covered the top floor first which wasn't too bad, but by about 1pm you could hardly move.Top floor comprised of Ladies stuff (perfumes, bags, nail art pens,skin creams etc) Had a lovely quick family photo done at Sonam photos...all free..they were selling voucher packs for a photo session, hair &makeup and one print for £10, bargain if you are near Shepherds Bush to get to the studio, and really friendly. Son settled into the Nintendo section, lots of DS consoles set up and again no hard sell (in fact they were only demonstrating,so no selling at all). Went downhill from there though, the gadget section didn't seem to have changed since our last visit about 5 years ago, and the food part was expensive and busy.We tried downstairs but after getting to the garden section we just had to shuffle along with the masses. We had free tickets, so didn't feel too hard done by, and left to visit Hamleys on the way home. People were still streaming in when we left. Only advice i can give is wear comfortable shoes, and pick out the sections you really want to see and head for them early. Hardly any giveways this year, a MOC booklet on arrival, but mostly full of competitions to enter online later. As mentioned elsewhere goody bag was only available if you paid for the £3 show guide, we didn't bother so not sure if that was worth having.