You might remember the Donkey Derby from seaside arcades — roll the balls into the coloured holes and your horse creeps up the track. This is the same idea, but it's been given a proper Christmas overhaul by Carnival Games in the US. Two Bounce a Ball units linked side by side give you four colour-coded lanes — blue, red, orange and green — each with its own reindeer racing up a bank of LED lights above the playfield.
The scoring is straightforward. Small balls bounce off a launch pad onto a tilted target board with four slots, each worth a different number of points. Trot, gallop, sprint, dash — the better the shot, the further your reindeer advances. There's a PA system built in pumping festive sound effects, and the illuminated backboard with Santa's sleigh and snowy village scene makes it the kind of thing people stop to watch even when they're not playing.
We own both units ourselves — they're not sub-hired in. That means the maintenance is ours to keep on top of, and if something needs attention on the day, the person you're dealing with is the person who can sort it.
This is the four-player setup. If you're after the two-player single-unit version, have a look at our Bounce a Ball Reindeer Racing page — it's the same game, just one unit instead of two.
