This year’s prom, “Tangled in a Night at Prom,” will be on Apr. 5th at Gilroy Gardens, according to the MHS Prom website. There are a variety of factors that go into the cost of prom tickets, such as rides, photo booths, and food, Junior Class President Jason Nguyen said.
There will be a variety of activities at prom, junior class Vice President Alanah Phan said. Activities include unlimited carnival games for two hours, provided by the park, Phan added.
“There’s going to be five rides, including a roller coaster, and then there’s the banana split ride, which is kind of like a pirate ship,” Phan said. “There’s a lot of food options because we chose the package with a variety of desserts. So there’s Mango Mocktails, Icees, pasta, etc.”
The junior class cabinet has been looking for prom venues since the end of their sophomore year, Nguyen said. They begin to plan prom early on because they don’t want all the venues to be taken, Nguyen added.
“For us, it was a bit more limited, just because last year, options were open to San Francisco,” Nguyen said. “But this year, due to parents and stuff, we have to keep it a little bit more constricted, just because it’s more dangerous in those areas.”
A lot of the nice locations the junior class was looking at were in Oak Ridge and San Francisco, but they had already been booked, in addition to safety issues, Student Site Council Representative Meiyi Chung said.
“Because of other scheduling issues that were outside of our control, our real only options were between Gilroy Gardens, the Tech Museum, and Levi’s Stadium,” Chung said. “Levi’s Stadium would require a very large upfront payment, without any guarantee, or just very costly, and we would need to reach a certain minimum amount of people to come, which would put a lot more stress on us.”
The theme of “Tangled” was chosen after seeing their prom venue, which was Gilroy Gardens, Nguyen said.
“We went and visited the Gilroy Gardens and the vibe matches the theme of ‘Tangled’ a lot, just because there’s a lot of nature,” Nguyen said. “The venue itself pretty much matches it (the theme), but we’re also making backdrops. There’s going to be table decorations, lanterns, and then when we announce the prom (court) winners, the celebration will be also themed as well.”
She wants to emphasize the theme of “Tangled” through their prom decorations, Phan said.
“For the tables, we decided on the most, I guess you could say classy or elegant centerpieces,” Phan said. “For Prom Court, we were trying to do more with the tiaras from ‘Tangled’ and the ‘Wanted’ posters. … They just got new lights recently in the dance room, like the ballroom, so we’re trying to make that as close to the theme as possible.”
ASB’s total payment to Gilroy Gardens was around $80,000, with the down payment being about half of that, Chung said.
“The way we calculate profit is estimating about $100, maybe more than that, per ticket, and we estimate about 1000 people for max capacity,” Chung said. “To get the initial deposit, since our class account usually doesn’t have enough or sometimes it won’t have enough, we’ll take a loan out from the ASB account, and then we’ll pay it back once we sell out all the tickets after prom.”
As of Mar. 17, only 600 people have bought prom tickets, a few hundred less than their goal, Phan said.
“One of our biggest goals right now is to get more people to buy prom tickets,” Phan said. “I know a lot of people who are waiting last minute to buy their tickets, so I think we’re just going to try to publicize more. It’s usually within the last week (that) we get a bunch of sales. But I don’t want to wait for that, just in case.”