Dear Valued Customer,
Firstly, we hope that you and your family continue to remain safe and well during these challenging times.
We want to share our plans for Sleeping Beauty, this year’s Christmas Panto, and always a special time of the year for us.
As you are all more than aware, we will be required to adhere to social distancing measures this year in order to keep our audience, our staff, and our cast, safe.
This will mean that we will have to make some changes in order to ensure that we comply to government guidance as follows:
• The show will last approx. 1 hour 20 mins and there will be no interval, just the right length for a festive family treat but without the break in between, which would make social distance planning a little tricky.
• There will be a smaller cast and less children taking part as everyone needs to be tested, and have individual dressing rooms and we must keep cast and crew safe and well.
• We will ask you to take you and your parties temperature before you leave home and if you or any member of your party are experiencing any symptoms, however mildly, we ask that you stay at home and we will reschedule your visit.
• Your temperature will be taken on arrival at the theatre and providing everything is within the normal range, you will be directed to your seats, there will be no waiting in bar areas.
• Should we record an abnormal temperature we will ask you and your party to return home and we will reschedule your visit once everyone has had a negative test.
• There will be a one-way system throughout the theatre and the lift will only be for use by guests with a disability.
• We ask that no prams or buggy’s are brought into the theatre.
• Face coverings will be required in line with government directives
• There will be a contactless bag search on arrival we therefore also ask that bags are kept to a minimum.
• In order that social distancing can be achieved we will on the busier dates need to increase the number of performances, it maybe that we have to change the time of your booking, and seats numbers but we will, where possible aim to keep you in the same area that you have booked.
• We ask where possible that drinks, snacks, popcorn, hotdogs etc. are pre-purchased and there will be a number of ‘click and collect’ points throughout the theatre.
• In the event of a ‘local lockdown’ or general directive from Government that the show cannot go ahead we will reschedule your visit to a later date in the run if possible or transfer your booking to Panto 2021.
Finally, we also acknowledge that there will be a number of guests that have purchased tickets and are nervous about attending. Please don’t worry – as a gesture of goodwill, we will reschedule your booking or indeed if some of your party wish to attend and others do not, to panto 2021.
At this stage we will transfer you to the same day that you have booked this year, i.e. the Sunday before Christmas, first night, Christmas Eve, etc. Then, if you need to re-jig later we be more than happy to rearrange once we are back to normal in the New Year.
We will be updating our website, Facebook and all other social media platforms as we begin to re-organise the seating arrangements for guests that wish to join us, and we will be in touch with everyone individually, by email or telephone, if there is something we need to speak to you about.
We are working throughout August, to ensure all guests that have pre-booked are rescheduled/re-seated. During this time, we will close the show for new sales and put back on sale on September 1st.
As you can imagine, it is a mammoth task, as 19 of our planned 34 shows are already over our social distancing capacity.
We thank you, as always, for your understanding and patience during these unprecedented times. It really is appreciated. Your well-being, and that of our staff and cast, are paramount at all times.
We very much look forward to welcoming you back to The Old Savoy, home of The Deco Theatre.
Kindest Regards
Jill and Kevin Roach, and all at Team Deco. See you soon!