Costume character hire in Australia: the complete guide

A character appearance is short by design. Half an hour to an hour, a door opening, a room full of children losing their minds, photos, a game or two, then gone while it is still exciting. Stretch it and the magic thins out fast, which is why the good performers push back when you ask for three hours.

This is the biggest of the children's categories on the site and the widest in price, because a hired suit and a trained performer are two very different products wearing similar photos. The live figures below are by city. What you are really choosing between is the costume and the person inside it.

A character performer is unrecognisable in costume, often surrounded by children, and at some events they are hugged by every child in the room. Ask for their working-with-children check, and ask for it in the name of the person who is actually turning up rather than the business.

Every state and territory runs its own scheme and the rules are not the same across borders. We do not check or verify anyone listed here, so the sighting is yours to do. Ask for the card, match the name to the person at the door, and for a school or council booking get a copy on file.

The live range below is by city, and it is wide for a reason. At the lower end you are paying for a straightforward appearance in a good costume for a short window. At the upper end you are paying for a professionally made suit, a performer who stays in character the whole time, and often two people, because many suits need a handler.

A second character in the same booking usually costs less than the first, since the travel and the setup are already paid for. If you want two, ask about the pair price rather than doubling the single one in your head.

Full costumes are brutally hot. An Australian summer party in a suit with limited vision is physical work, and that is the real reason sessions are short. Ask what the performer needs: shade, a fan, a break every twenty minutes, water. Giving it to them is not a courtesy, it is what keeps the appearance good to the end.

They also need a private space to change into costume and out of it, out of sight of the children, and it needs to be bigger than a car. A bedroom, a garage, an office off the function room. Sort this before the day, because sorting it while a performer is standing in your driveway in half a suit is nobody's idea of a good start.

The performers worth their rate never break. They do not take off a headpiece for a photo, they do not talk about traffic, and they answer a child's questions the way the character would. That discipline is most of what separates the two ends of this market, and it is the thing to look for in the videos on a profile.

Decide up front what the appearance includes. A photo line with every child, a short game, a song, the birthday moment, a small gift handover. Write the running order with the performer so the half hour is spent on the parts you actually want, rather than on forty separate photo negotiations.

Performers in Australia offer characters inspired by the sort of thing children are watching, described in general terms rather than by a brand name. That is deliberate and it is a legal matter, not coyness. When you enquire, describe what your child likes and let the performer tell you what they have.

It also means the costume quality varies far more than the marketing photos suggest. Ask for recent photos taken at a real booking, in ordinary light, rather than the polished shot on the profile. A suit that looks superb in a studio can look very tired in a backyard at two in the afternoon.