INDIANAPOLIS -- A 1,000-foot slip-n-slide will not be coming to Indianapolis after all – at least not on Saturday.
"Slide the City" was supposed to debut at Wilbur Shaw Soap Box Derby Hill on Aug. 6.
Instead, organizers told us the event had to be canceled. In a statement, a representative from Sack Lunch Productions, the company that organizes Slide the City, said a combination of lower ticket sales than expected and costs forced the cancellation.
"All ticket holders have been refunded. We were excited about the event as well but with the added costs that the city added last minute combined with lower numbers than expected we couldn't do the event." - John Malfatto, Sack Lunch Productions
The cancellation wasn't widely publicized, and RTV6 only got confirmation when we reached out to the company after the listing dropped off Slide The City's official website.
The company had four other events scheduled for Aug. 6, which appeared to go on as scheduled. You can watch a Facebook Live video from the Quad Cities here.
The cancellation appears to follow a national trend that began in 2015. Some cities were re-scheduled abruptly, others were outright canceled with little explanation or notice.
Insider Louisville said the trend of 2015 cancellations stemmed from the event not being granted permits, but they also received comment for their city in particular, saying that not enough tickets were sold.
“We had only sold 150 tickets,” wrote a representative from Slide the City about the Louisville cancellation. “We need to sale (sic) about 3000 to break even and with 3 weeks to go we weren’t at all close.”
Insider Louisville noted that when they received the above comment, the event date was only nine days away.
The same reason was given for cancelation in Flint, Michigan.
Permits were not granted despite planned events in Seattle, Wash. and Tacoma, Wash, forcing them to cancel, too.
When the event was canceled in Portland, Oregon, it stemmed from public officials taking issue with the event charging customers to participate on a public street, despite it being listed on their website.
Regardless of the reason provided, in most of the cancelation cases, Slide the City began selling tickets before obtaining the proper permits, according to Oregon Live.
Sack Lunch Productions has not said if the event will be re-scheduled.
Here's what it might have looked like, if it did come to Indy:
