On May 12-13, 2011 I had the extreme pleasure of joining forces with my son and 2 of my online Disney friends to participate in The Great Disney Scavenger Hunt. Our team “Mr Morrow’s Party” did very little prep for the hunt. The grand prize was a cruise on the Disney Fantasy but honestly, my goal was to finish in the top 50% and the satisfaction of maybe beating a few high profile teams…who shall remain nameless.
Our hunt began at Magic Kingdom where we spent 3 hours in the 90+ degree temps hunting down obscure clues on signs, in stores, in queues and even in rides. We felt we did ok at Magic Kingdom but we knew we needed to do better in the afternoon.
We needed to eat some healthy food and cool off for a bit so we headed to Pollo Campero at Downtown Disney before heading to Epcot. The morning had wiped David (Oom) out so much that he napped as I drove to Epcot!
We had 4 hours to scout out clues at Epcot since the park is so large. We even ran into two of our favorite other teams WDW Radio and Hidden Mickey Guy! Once we were signed in, the race was on. Future World, Mission Space, Innoventions, Journey into Imagination, Great Britain, Canada I was wearing down fast, but we kept on and did our best. By the end of this leg my body was revolting against me (the whole no strenuous exercise order by my doctor kinda went out the window) so we decided day 2 the guys would push me in a wheelchair!
Friday morning we began the hunt at Animal Kingdom. There were tons of clues in Dinoland and specifically the Dinosaur ride. I can’t ride that ride due to my back so the guys parked my wheelchair in some shade at the exit and they were off! We finished Dinoland and headed to Discovery Island and then Harambe Village. Our last stop was the OASIS…we never even made it to Asia before our time ran out. For lunch we headed to the McDonald’s for some air conditioning and a quick bite (FYI a $1.00 sweet tea costs $2.49 there).
Next stop, Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Once we got ourselves organized we headed to the Streets of America where there were a lot of questions about the businesses featured there. Our hunt also took us to the Animation Courtyard, Echo Lake, Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd. We turned our book in at 4:59pm and Aaron and I headed back to the hotel to relax and clean ourselves up.
At 8;30pm we all met in the Fantasia Ballroom at the Contemporary for the awards ceremony. We didn’t expect to win a prize but we were pretty sure some of our friends might and we wanted to support them. We were right! Our good friend Lou Mongello and his WDW Radio team finished in 2nd place!!
Later in the weekend we found out that we finished in 114th place…out of 570 teams! That put us in the top 20%!!! We were extatic and to top it off we found out we creamed the team we really wanted to beat…and a few others that really surprised us too.
It was a fun and totally exhausting 2 days, even when we hot a loose brick and I was launched out of the wheelchair! I would do it again in a heartbeat! It was great to share the experience with my 18yo son because who knows how much longer he is going to be at home. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to meet Brian in person and spending more time with David they both ROCK!
So, what do you think? Were we crazy to take this task on? Were you there? Would you do it if you had the opportunity? Leave me a comment and let me know.
Mikki says
Hello there!
How fun!! NO!!! You’re not crazy at all. Anything Disney does it fun!!!
I would had LOVED to done this!! How did you get hooked up with that? I would love to be able to do more things with Disney since we live here in Florida. Any info you could share would be GREAT!!
cindy says
Mikki, The Scavenger Hunt was sponsored by D23 The Disney Fan Club http://d23.disney.go.com
Lindsay says
Yes, that seems like loads of fun! I’d love to do something like that!
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Lisa says
This sounds like a ton of fun!
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ConnieFoggles says
I can’t believe that we’re not members of D23 yet. I may get a membership for my husband for Father’s Day. Sounds like a blast. Sorry that you got hurt.
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pammypam says
that sounds like so much fun
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Shanaka says
I would so do that. I love Disney. Now I’m headed to see how much a D23 membership is. Do you recommend gold or is the silver good enough?
cindy says
Honestly, there isn’t much difference between the Silver and Gold memberships so the Silver would be fine.
Kelli says
Congrats on your top 20% finish! That is awesome! Kelli