Yesterday we signed on as presenting sponsor of Princesses vs. Superheroes at Florida Gulf Coast University on Saturday, September 12. Our interactive sports inflatables will be on the Library Lawn.
I want to explain what the event is, why we said yes to it specifically, and then get into the part that is actually useful to anyone else running a community event in Lee County — which is what an inflatable does and does not do for you, and how to think about it before you sign a sponsorship agreement of your own.
What Princesses vs. Superheroes is
It is a student-run fundraiser, and the detail I keep coming back to is who runs it: the Gulf Coast Student Occupational Therapy Association, an FGCU student organization. Occupational therapy students. That matters more than it sounds like it does, and I will come back to it.
The last one ran on Saturday, April 4, 2026, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM on the FGCU Library Lawn. Three hours, outdoors, free-flowing. Based on how that one was built, families should expect:
- Live performances from costumed princesses and superheroes, with meet-and-greet time built in
- A crown and hero-mask craft booth
- Face painting and character makeovers
- A photo station for the kids who show up in full costume, which is most of them
- Storytime sessions run by the characters
To that, we are adding the inflatable competition games. That is the new piece this year and it is why they came to us.
One honest caveat before anyone books a Saturday around this: the September event was finalized very recently, and as of today the specific hours have not been posted to FGCU’s Eagle Link calendar yet. The date and the Library Lawn location are confirmed. Watch FGCU Eagle Link for the published time, or call us at (239) 212-0011 and we will tell you what we know. FGCU is at 10501 FGCU Boulevard South in Fort Myers.
Worth knowing: it is a big day on that campus
September 12 is also a soccer doubleheader at Pickering Field, about a ten-minute walk across campus. FGCU women’s soccer hosts High Point at 4:00 PM for Camp Reunion Day, and then the men host North Florida at 7:00 PM in the ASUN home opener, with players signing schedule posters afterward. Single-game tickets start at $14 for adults, $12 for youth and military, and $8 a head for groups of ten or more.
If you were already planning to bring kids out to the Library Lawn in the afternoon, you can turn it into a full day without moving your car. I would not normally point people at somebody else’s event from our own blog, but a family that drives from Cape Coral to Fort Myers deserves to know the whole day is sitting there.
Why we said yes to this one
We get sponsorship requests. Most of them we decline, not because the cause is weak but because we cannot tell what the money does. I spent two decades in the Air Force and I have been a CFO five times over. Both jobs taught me the same reflex: before you commit a resource, ask what specifically changes if you do.
Two things made this one easy.
First, the ask was concrete. They did not want a check to put toward general operations. They wanted the thing we actually own — equipment and the crew to run it — placed on a lawn for three hours on a specific Saturday. A sponsorship where the deliverable is the sponsor showing up and doing work is a sponsorship I can price honestly.
Second, the host organization is a group of occupational therapy students, and our equipment is a strangely good fit for what they study. OT is largely about motor planning, coordination, sensory regulation, and getting people to participate. A Double Basketball Challenge is a speed-shooting duel that asks a kid to track a target, adjust force, and repeat under mild time pressure. A Quarterback Challenge is a throwing-accuracy station. The Inflatable Soccer Challenge is a kicking-accuracy station. Nobody is calling these therapy tools and I am not going to pretend otherwise, but a room full of OT students immediately understood what our units do in a way most event committees do not.
The part other event organizers should steal
Here is what I have learned about putting inflatables at a community event, as opposed to a backyard birthday. They are different problems.
Competition games move people. Bounce houses hold them.
This is the single most useful distinction and almost nobody gets told it up front.
A bounce house is free play. Kids get in, kids stay in, and a parent eventually has to extract them. That is exactly right for a backyard party where you want the children occupied for two hours. At a three-hour community event with a line, it becomes a bottleneck — the same eight kids in the unit at 1:15 are still in it at 1:40.
An interactive sports game works the other way. Two players enter, a heat runs somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty to ninety seconds, somebody wins, both step off. We plan on roughly forty to sixty kids per hour per unit at that pace. That is a line that visibly moves, which is the difference between a station families enjoy and one they walk away from.
If your event is a festival, a fundraiser, or a school night with a fixed window, you almost always want the competition format. If it is a party where the goal is to occupy children, you want the bounce house. Most organizers ask for the bounce house by default and then wonder why the line got ugly.
Costume events need a costume plan
This one is specific to September 12 and I would not have thought about it before we did a few of these.
Every child at Princesses vs. Superheroes is going to arrive in a cape, a mask, a tiara, a full gown, or all four. Every one of those is a problem on an inflatable. Masks cut peripheral vision on a surface where kids collide. Capes and long skirts are entanglement and trip hazards. Tiaras and plastic accessories are hard objects on a soft-play surface, and they are also the thing the kid cries about when it disappears into the netting.
So we run a basket. Costume pieces come off at the entrance to the unit, go in the basket, and go back on at the exit. It costs about four seconds per child and it converts the entire category of problem into a non-event. If you are running a costume-themed event with any inflatable, put a table and a bin at the entry and staff it. That is the whole solution.
Ask the sponsor whether they are staffing it
There is a real difference between a company that drops equipment at your event and one that stays and runs it. Both are legitimate. They are not the same product and you should know which one you are getting before the day.
When we take a community event, our people stay with the units for the duration — loading riders, watching the surface, managing the line, and keeping an eye on the sky, which in September in Lee County is not optional. A volunteer committee that thought equipment came with operators and finds out at 12:45 that it did not is a committee having a bad afternoon.
Build in a weather decision, not a weather hope
Mid-September in Southwest Florida sits in the back half of the wet season, and an outdoor afternoon event has real odds of seeing a cell come through. Decide in advance who makes the call, at what time, and what happens to the equipment when they make it. Inflatables come down fast when somebody has already decided who says the word. They come down badly when three people are looking at each other.
Come find us on the Library Lawn
Bring the kids in costume. Bring the costume pieces you do not mind putting in a basket for ninety seconds. If your kid wants to know whether she can beat her brother at the basketball unit while wearing a full Elsa dress, the answer is yes, right after the cape comes off.
And if you are with a student organization, a nonprofit, a church, or a school PTO somewhere in Lee County and you are trying to figure out whether an inflatable belongs at your event — call me at (239) 212-0011. I will tell you honestly whether it will help your event or just complicate it, including the times the answer is that it will complicate it.
Event details for the April 4, 2026 edition of Princesses vs. Superheroes are as published by the host organization on FGCU Eagle Link. September 12 date and location confirmed with the organizers; specific hours had not been posted at the time of writing. FGCU soccer schedule, promotions, and ticket pricing as published by FGCU Athletics. Confirm all times before making plans.
About the author
Gabriel Denny — Co-owner, SWFL Amusements LLC
Gabe is co-owner of SWFL Amusements. He spent 20+ years in the Air Force, first enlisting after high school before commissioning and retiring as a Major. He is a 5x CFO, which he continues to do when not working bounce houses. He lives in NW Cape Coral and answers the company phone himself, including at 2am.