School Swimming Carnivals

What's your child's school swimming carnival like?
DD's was today, and I didn't send her to it. I wasn't prepared to sit up there while feeling like I was going to chuck at any moment, plus I have this thing about lots of kids and water. I asked DD if she wanted to go and she didn't.

They split the school up, so it was years 1-3 today and 4-7 last week.

They were holding it of a night time due to the heat, but this year changed it to 9am-11am.

We had to drop the kids at the pool in the morning and pay the $2 entry fee for them to get in for their own swimming carnival. If parents wanted to stay and watch we had to pay $2.60.
They also hired an "inflatable", which every child had to pay $1 towards for the hire.

Does this seem normal or a little over the top?
We never had to pay for our school swimming carnivals and we spent the whole day up there!

So what happens at your school?
Nic

we had to pay every year i think it was $1 or $2. it was a all day thing. there were only 2 covered grand stands and the whole skool is split into 4 teams so every yeah half the skool had to sit out in the sun all day.
I burn really easya nd always ended up with sun stroke lol. also i cant swim so it was always embaressing or when i did tell the teaches everyone else around me would join in, so it looked like we were all trying to get out of it.
mum only made me go to a few all the way through primary and high school. she didnt see the point of me going to just sit there all day in the sun when i cant go in any races even if i wanted to.

Our school has only the primary kids go (Yrs 3-6) and they are bussed from school to the pool.They pay for bus fare and pool entry, parents pay to spectate . The pool entry is not a school thing, its the pool which is council run charging that and the parent money. We have ours at a pool with a huge grandstand big enough so that everyone is undercover. We don't have any free time in the pool as it is harder to monitor and look after so the only children in the pool are those racing. We have novelty events for non swimmers too. (can you tell I am a teacher who has had to organise it before LOL)