Page updated Sunday, August 14th, 2022 |
|
The Rocky Horror Picnic Shows
TimeWarp's get-togethers at Oakley Court Hotel | |
Frequently Asked Questions |
2022 Updated
Back in 2006 TimeWarp celebrated Eighteen years as the official Rocky Horror Fan Club. To mark the occasion and from what had gone before it seemed certain that there should be.........a picnic. So we had one! Oakley Court, the original filming location for The Rocky Horror Picture Show itself played host to just under fifty of us. We had such a good time we did it all again in 2007 and 2008 when we had an amazing 75 fans at the event. The 2008 event was such a success that the hotel were booking for 2009 two days later. 2010 saw 83 fans attending and 2012 around 87! As always a good time was had by all and the event just gets to be more fun and more friendly as each year goes by. 2012 started booking before 2011 ran and 2013 had people booking as they checked out from the 2012 event. 2013 coincided with TimeWarp's 25th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of the stage show and we had over 90 people at the picnic to celebrate both events. Our 2014 event saw the most bookings yet with 95 signed up before the day itself. 2015 was another great year and 2016 saw 80 attendees at the event. The 2017 picnic started booking the day after the 2016 picnic and by the end of the week we had 76 signed up for 2017 event, on the day itself we had over 120 people there! By the 2018 picnic we had sold the event out well before the day with 148 people there. 2019 had 190 attendees and we took most of the hotel's rooms and if anything the screening room was too packed, future picnics are likely to be capped at around the 120-150 mark because of that. 2020 nearly sold out two days after booking opened, but we could not have predicted how the world would change early that year. The Coronavirus pandemic meant that the goverment restrictions on groups of people and the social distancing rules hotels had to follow made running the event impossible. With deep regret the 2020 picnic had to be cancelled at the end of June. The 15th Picnic went ahead in 2021 with 120 attendees, an ideal number and not too many for the movie screening. We were back for one more Picnic in August 2022, see the 2022 Picnic page for details. 2022 will be the last picnic for the foreseeable future. We had hoped and planned to continue to run the event every year, but the price from 2021 (held from 2020 prices as there was no picnic in 2020 due to covid) went up from £270 a room for two people including breakfast to £365 plus £12.50 each for breakfast for the 2022 event. Many fans were already struggling to pay that. When we were given prices for 2023 we were quoted a non-negotiable rate of £665 per room plus breakfast. We do not want our event to become something that only the really well off fans can afford. The original point of the picnic was that we could stay at Oakley Court, get to wear our Rocky costumes and have a picnic at a cheaper price than normal room rates. We love being at Oakley Court, but we cannot expect fans to pay more than double the cost of two years ago. If things change, we will be back! The TimeWarp picnic day is the one time of year you can visit Oakley Court and walk around in your Rocky costumes all day without a problem. Oakley Court are after all a working hotel and host many business meetings, weddings and conferences and quite rightly so they would not appreciate fans just turning up in costume at other times. We have made this our annual fan club event on the Sunday before the August Bank Holiday. That way people can travel back on the bank holiday itself. The whole point of the day is to relax, chill-out, have fun and enjoy this amazing venue with fellow Rocky fans. You don't even have to be a member of the fan club to book, everyone is welcome. The only things you need to bring are yourself and your picnic rug to sit on! Room rates are based on a maximum of two adults and two children per room and include the food for the picnic (very nice!) as well as a full breakfast the next day. You also get access to all the usual Hotel facilities. Costume is permitted if you want to dress up. You don't have to dress up of course, but you may have felt a bit left out with all the rest of us in sparkling attire. Although the main point of the day is the picnic itself, we have been very fortunate to have a few visits from Richard O'Brien as well as a movie screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show most years. It's great to watch the movie actually inside the place it was filmed! We also arranged a special dinner in 2007 in costume in the original room used for filming, a recreation of the movie itself. Use the Griffin Menu above to choose a year to view hundreds of images from each event, plus for a report on what we got up to.
Top of Page Print page Email this to a friend Copyright ©TimeWarp fan club |