Thanks everyone. I pretty much got turned off when the letter we received stated, "I am very happy to present to you one of the greatest fund-raisers ever offered to schools in the past 25 years," seeing that I know not ONE parent/teacher/friend whose heard of it, LOL!!
But Skeptic and RDS have a good idea, I have a friend who works for a travel agency and I'm going to see if we can put together a few weekend get-away packages we can raffle off. Nothing expensive, just a weekend downtown (Chicago), etc. That way, more people have chances of winning. Thanks again for the additional input.
Hi Guys,
I also did a bit of a follow up myself with my own personal travel agent and from others on another board. Best advice stay clear of this company. It is an overpriced trip and although a great idea it would be very difficult to make a profit after paying them the 4480.00 no matter what they say. I am going to see if this can be done by a private company as I said the idea is super! Good Luck.
The previous poster asked about this company on another board and I did some research and here's what I came up with:
OK, I decided to do a little research because this falls into the "sounds too good to be true" category for me. The first testimonial listed is for "Lincoln School" in Peru, Illinois, but some online searching shows that the principal listed is at Lincoln School in Spring Valley, IL. This may seem like splitting hairs, but unclear and/or confusing attribution makes me wonder. Later testimonials are dated from 1997 and 1998.
If the travel agency is charging $4480 for the 4 day-3 night stay at a value resort with park tickets and airfare along with a class pizza party and a student prize, I would be surprised if the actual value for the stay and tickets is more than $1935.15 not including airfare. HEY, I think I see a way to fund my own trips to WDW .
3 nights at Value (Regular Season-$125 weekend rate)=$423.75
4 day MYW with Park Hopping (2 Adult-2 Children-Disney pricing)=$1071.40
Disney Music CD=$20
WDW DVD=$20
Pizza Party=$200
Prizes=$200
Total=$1935.15
Airfare is variable and even at $300 per ticket the agency is still netting about $1300 profit on each raffle.
IMO, I think it is a great fund raiser for the travel agency and very difficult for the school. In order to bring in $5000 profit for the school, you would have to sell $9480 worth of tickets which at even $10 each is almost a 1000 tickets sold.
I check ed this out as well and it looks like an okay deal. It's only a 4 day/3 night package. If you sold raffle tickets for 5.00 a piece you would have to sell 896 tickets just to cover the cost of the vacation. I think the idea is a great one and wonder if any other travel companies do this same thing? With the cost of air travel down and actually in 4 days you really could not do 7 Disney attractions. I 'd prefer to have a longer stay and less attraction benefits. Also the stay is at one of the all stars which is the value resorts as well. As for pizza party that is low cost and prizes for the top sellers? not sure how many or what they are? I am not sure this is a great deal. If anyone can offer some more information I'd love to hear about it.Thanks
Thanks for that info, I'll go check out the contract. Given our past fundraising sales, I don't think our school would raise enough to cover the cost of the trip and make a profit.
Hi. I looked at the website. Would love to hear from anyone who may have used this.
If you click to the contracts, it says "The participating school agrees to pay Magical FUN-Raiser Vacations $4480.00 within one week after drawing the raffle ticket winner. "
