Category: Theme Parks
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 133 – Great Disney Scavenger Hunt, Day 2 – Third Place!
WE GOT THIRD PLACE! We’re really excited after two days scouring all four of Walt Disney World’s theme parks, we ended up within EIGHT POINTS of victory – out of 1,000 possible! SO CLOSE. Our score was 804, which means we were incorrect about 196 points. Who knows where in there we could have made up the extra points needed to be on top but it really doesn’t matter. I was worried we wouldn’t even make it to the top 10 (or 20 for that matter), so I’m happy we did so well!
Thanks SO much to Kenny, Kurt, and, of course, my wife Michelle. We made a GREAT team and we’ll gladly do it again next time Disney holds this event. It was exhausting, but SO much fun.
The group photo below is very similar to yesterday’s photo of the day, but this time it was taken right before we began our last park as part of the Hunt at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 132 – Great Disney Scavenger Hunt, Day 1
I am exhausted. Today was day 1 of the Great Disney Scavenger Hunt, put on by the Disney D23 fan club. We started the Hunt in good spirits shortly after 10am at Epcot. We had 95 questions of varying degrees of difficulty to answer by speed walking through the entire park, riding a handful of rides. Four hours later, we turned in our completed question book and were completely wiped out… but feeling accomplished. Epcot is huge but we did well.
After a break, it was time for our second park of the day where we spent 3 more hours at the Magic Kingdom. After that, we were even more wiped out. We didn’t do quite as well at Magic Kingdom, but still NEARLY finished all the questions (and took educated guesses on the rest).
In the end, I think we got around 98% of all the questions right, which is pretty darn good. I hope we win the grand prize of a Disney Cruise, but I have a feeling a small handful of teams will do better than us and get ALL the questions right. We’ll find out tomorrow night after we continue the Hunt at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Oh and our team is the Junior Woodchucks, named after the Boy Scouts-style group that Huey, Dewey, and Louie belong to (with honorary Junior Woodchuck Webbigail). Our team was myself (Huey), my wife Michelle (Webbigail), and our friends Kenny (Dewey) and Kurt (Louie). We dressed the part.
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 127 – Nine Dragons
It was an Epcot day today and for lunch we ate at Nine Dragons in China for the first time. I have no idea why we had never eaten there before because the food was fantastic. Here I’m enjoying a pot sticker, which was followed by honey sesame chicken and rice. My stomach is grumbling just thinking about it. Good stuff.
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 125 – Goofy’s Mystery Tour
Tonight I was invited to join a trio of Disney Cast Members at the annual Goofy’s Mystery Tour at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s a night packed with Disney trivia, puzzle solving, and frantically looking for bizarre characters (Flubber scientist, Fantasyland construction workers, Batman, Waldo, Imagineers – just to name a few) around the park. There were 250 teams of 4 competing and the top 3 were announced on stage at the end of the night. We didn’t make it up that high, but they did say only 48 of the 250 teams got the final answer correct, which we did, so at least we’re in the top 48! We’ll find out our specific rank some time soon when it’s posted online.
Even though we didn’t win, it was still a fun (though exhausting) time. Thanks to Gary, Jon, and Rachel for literally being tethered to me all night while we speed walked around the park. And congrats to the winning team, pictured below, comprised of Disney Industrial Engineers. Figures.
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 123 – Rockin’ to British tunes at Epcot
I hopped over to Epcot today to check out one of the first performances by the new band English Channel, replacing The British Invasion in the UK pavilion. While music of The Beatles performed by costumed soundalike musicians was fun, this new band simply rocks. They do a great job playing not only The Beatles’ catalog of songs but also many other British rock ‘n’ roll hits. The band members aren’t British, but it doesn’t matter. They’re a tight band that plays well together and have fun doing it. They also throw in a few facts about songs and artists between them, so it’s a bit educational, even if only a little.
While they may not be costumed, they still fit into the Disney vibe as they’re all smiles and quite nice. I unfortunately didn’t think to get my picture WITH them today, so instead today’s photo is the group shot I took just after their 6pm set. You can watch video the whole performance here.
