During Orientation Week, the Last thing you want is for the energy to die out and vibe to be ruined. All it can take is a few bad hours, and students will lose interest and motivation in the events and maybe even in the semester to come! Ensure you avoid these common mistakes to keep your event fun and your orientation week moving forward.

Avoid Scheduling Gaps

When students are in the middle of orientation week, they have a lot of things to do, especially when they’re freshmen getting used to the campus, finding their classes, setting up in their dorm, and heading to the union for a bite to eat. All of this and more is on their plate, and in the middle of it all, they want to have fun and meet new people.

This is where scheduling gaps can be killer. Students are already very busy, so if they have the time and are looking for a fun event to do, but there is none because of a gap in scheduling. Then a student can go through all of orientation week without the time to enjoy the festivities.

In addition to the students who are dedicating more time to the activities and the fun. If there is a scheduling gap, then that could lead to them simply going back to their dorms or even worse, going home during the festivities of orientation week. And an absolute energy killer.

Also, when scheduling your events, it’s important to consider event capacity and guests per hour rate. When you have more guests than your events can hold, then you will turn your exciting orientation week into a line convention, a sure-fire way to have people get bored fast.

Avoid this common mistake by keeping the schedule booked and full. Even if the events have to be small, as long as you schedule something, people will be much less likely to leave or get bored. Also, keep in mind to schedule the events you assume will be most popular with your students during high traffic times, when most students will be out of class. That way, when a busy student has a break, they’ll be much more likely to participate in the orientation energy!

Monotone Programming

When a program is uninteresting to a student, they will be disappointed in orientation week and not participate in future events. That’s the sad truth of it. So, when everyone has unique values and things they like and dislike, how are you supposed to make everyone happy? There are two ways, the second way we will get into later, but the first is by simply having your events be more interesting.

Easy to say, hard to do. Or at least it would be if we weren’t Neon Entertainment! We have lots of amazing events that boast high interactivity and extreme fun. Roller Rinks, Game Shows, Escape Rooms, Inflatables, and so SO many more! Attractions like these are not only fun in nature, but they also have a novelty to them, and that is extremely important.

Students will be much more willing to participate in orientation week if the activities that are going on are unusual. If a student feels like they could participate in the event anywhere, then they may opt to simply not do the activity. Alternatively, if the attraction feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the students will be eager to participate. That’s the power of novelty, a power you absolutely should be capitalizing on when planning for orientation week.

So, to avoid monotone programming, schedule larger events, especially during peak times. Let’s take a nice, laid-back event as an example, Zen Gardens. This event is perfect for a nice, calm afternoon for letting off stress and achieving zen. However, it is not grand enough in appearance to capture that novelty feeling that you want to keep alive during orientation week.

Ensure that your events look fun, be fun, and continue to be fun to prevent students from getting bored and to encourage them to participate in their first activity. Don’t have a student to stay in their shell all week!

Include Attraction Variety

Here is the 2nd way to ensure all your guests with their unique tastes are happy: variety. It goes without saying that not everyone will enjoy every event, so go out of your way to plan different activities and also different kinds of activities. You want to make sure you have those high-energy novelty events, but some people might want to have fun in more laid-back events.

Perhaps your guest would enjoy Create a Creature, or how about just taking a picture with their friends in a Photobooth. Or maybe they would very much enjoy Zen Gardens. These activities are good on their own, but they become outstanding when used in tandem with other attractions.

A variety of events also ensures that students won’t simply stop participating once they’ve done your other attractions. It almost doesn’t matter how fun it is; most students won’t play 6 games of laser tag in a row. So include variety, get people moving, and wanting to experience everything your orientation week has to offer.

In much fewer words, the key to a successful, energy-filled orientation week is by preventing students from getting bored, not participating, or leaving. Keeping students in the fun longer makes everything around the entire campus glow with positive energy. At Neon Entertainment, we are happy to help you prepare for your orientation week. Speakers, Novelty Events, DIY Events, we can help! If you or anyone you know would like help planning, Contact Us right now. We would love to help turn your orientation week into something special