We found Doug Shaller via the website, Thumbtack. On a positive note, Doug responded quickly, was very polite, and was willing to come to our party with only 24 hours notice. Because he also had another show to get to after ours, we agreed upon doing an abbreviated performance of about 45 minutes. We were still charged the full price of $225 though. Doug performed 4 tricks and drew them out over the 45 minutes. His jokes were inappropriate in content and inappropriate for keeping the attention of mostly 4-5 yr olds or any child of any age really. His 1st trick while impressive, took him about 10 min or more to get to the "Ta-Da" moment that he had totally lost the kids attention and almost all the adults had left the room by that time. During another trick, Doug made a comment to the children stating, "sometimes grown-ups cheat". One of the fathers at the party was so upset about this comment that he angrily said out loud to the room, "Yeah, that's a great lesson to teach the kids!". During another trick where Doug was making a balloon animal, he asked a child what her favorite animal was and when she said "a cat" Doug said "too bad I can only make a dog" and then made a balloon dog. He pretended to make the dog do tricks like "rolling over" (just turning the balloon upside down). Finally he said, "the dog has one last trick...he can play dead" and throwing the balloon dog on the floor, slammed his shoe on the balloon dog and popping it. I was dumbfounded that he did that in front of the kids not to mention, we now have a lovely dent and crack in our newly installed wide plank wood floors that are less then four months old thanks to the heel of his shoe slamming into the floor!!! When we spoke on the phone, he asked me what my son's favorite candy was so that he could magically make it appear during the show. When he emailed me the invoice a little while later he stated, "If I am unable to purchase this [Favorite candy] in time, I will magically produce lollipops and marshmallows as part of my finale." Unfortunately, he did not come with my son's favorite candy, marshmallows, OR lollipops. Instead, he made a plate of Oreos appear and put them in front of the children. Right away all the kids jumped up because they wanted to grab a cookie without even giving parents an opportunity to be able to say I don't want my child to eat that, especially since we had no idea where the cookies had been stored and b/c they were unwrapped. My husband was furious the entire time telling me "this is such a waste of money, I'm going to tell Doug to leave, I don't want him in the house anymore". I stopped my husband from doing this just because I felt bad for Doug and thought it was rude to kick him out of the house. Additionally, Doug requires that you pay him his fee upon his arrival to your house which meant we had already given him all of his money and I kept hoping that by some pure stroke of luck the show would improve. The biggest disappointment of the show was that he failed to make the birthday boy feel special in any way, having him participate as the main volunteer for only one trick. A couple of the kids asked if he would make a balloon animal for them too, and Doug proceeded to say, "if you invite me to your birthday party I'd be more than happy to make a balloon animal for you"; however, the 1 balloon animal he did make at our house was not even given to the birthday boy. Instead, he gave it to another guest. We all had to keep telling our children to sit down and watch the show because five minutes into the show they had already lost interest and we're trying to wander off. When Doug left, my son, the birthday boy, said to me that "he didn't like the magician much, but that at least his friends laughed a couple of times." So sad! I will say that the kids did laugh at some parts because they themselves made funny comments and were being silly. I feel as if Doug misrepresented himself and gave no indication of how inexperienced he actually was. At first, I decided I would not post a review because I knew my honestly would by really disheartening to Doug, but then a day or two after the party I got a v-mail from him thanking us and asking me to post reviews on several websites for him; he even emailed me links where to post reviews. At that point I realized he had no idea just how terribly bad the show went and that meant this would happen over and over again to unsuspecting parents wanting to provide fun entertainment for their children and being sorely disappointed just as we were. I would never want another birthday boy or girl feeling like my son did after Doug left our home. This was such a waste of a lot of money and I so wish there was a way to get a refund and treat my son to something else more fun, and that he wouldn't have felt so disappointed on his special day! read more
