Photo TR: Minnie's Midnight Madness

[arrowfanman]

Hey everybody!

 

How are we all doing? Well, I hope!

 

Anyway, I suppose we should just get right into this. Earlier this month, I got an offer I simply couldn’t refuse! My good friend TJ, now a Disneyland Resort Cast Member, invited me to a “cast member event” at Disney’s California Adventure. The event is traditionally called Minnie’s Midnight Madness but was this year called “Minnie’s High School Madness”, themed after Disney’s tween-phenomenon “High School Musical”. Perhaps you have heard of it? They have been doing it for some time now. Let my try to explain this to you:

 

Minnie’s Midnight Madness is a Cast Member and charity event hosted by Disney where the CM’s can group together into teams of 4 (or invite friends and family to take team-positions as well). The event starts in DCA in the Hyperion theatre (after the park closes) with a trivia session, where teams are quizzed on EVERYTHING about the entertainment empire that is Disney! After the trivia, teams are then tethered together with a rope (about 6-8ft long, if I had to guess) and then sent throughout Disney’s California Adventure on a massive scavenger hunt. Teams have 2 hours to solve 10 clues, which involve both knowledge and puzzle-solving skills. The event concludes with a small ceremony at midnight, where the winners are announced.

 

Still not so sure about what the event entails? Well read on! It was a really fun night and I’m glad I’m able to share it with you! Today’s PTR isn’t really so much about “what rides I rode” as it is about explaining this totally unique and fun experience. So, enjoy!

 

 

 

Today’s PTR starts at none other than DaCOC!

 

Time to check the traffic, driving 60 miles across the heart of LA at 4:00.

 

How could Sigalert LIE to me?!?!

 

Actually, the drive wasn’t THAT bad. It took about 1 1/2 hours. Anyway, I finally arrived at the Disneyland Resort around 5:20ish.

 

Look, the castle is submerged in a thin fog!

 

 

…did I actually just attempt my own castle-size joke?!?!?!

 

Anyway, the event wouldn’t start for a couple hours, so I figured I would head into Disneyland park for some dinner and some rides, before hand.

 

Yeah…the park was pretty empty!

 

Workers tearing down from the POTC:AWE premier. I wanted to go, but after hearing Kiera Knightly was going to be a no-show, I figured it wasn’t worth it!

 

That didn’t keep me from riding the ride though! Once I had finished with my dinner, I met up with my good friend Chris Fourmont and walked right onto Pirates of the Caribbean!

 

I suck at on-ride shots, so here’s a generic front-entrance shot! You’re going to take it and you’re going to LIKE IT!

 

Haha! Chris found the secret bathroom, thus denying full-bladdered handicapped folks privacy for a minute!

 

After Pirates, we figured we would go ride the Matterhorn, so we can check out the Submarine Lagoon. It was the first time either of us has had a chance to get over there since the walls came down!

 

“Hi Chuck! I seeeeeee youuuuuu!”

 

Hey Ladies—do you want a ride on my dingy? Don’t mind the bush.

 

Wow…there’s about 3 feet of queue in there!

 

“You gotta be f**king kidding me!”

 

…in actuality, that wait-time is on a wheel. So that wait in the station can take anywhere from 15 to 120 minutes. I’m sure hoping for the 15!

 

Anyway, I told you we went over to ride the Matterhorn, so it’s about time that we did!

 

Hi Lou!

 

Anyway, we got REALLY lucky, because the crew was backing up and we managed to get transferred off the main line! For those who don’t know, that means we got a second ride for free.

 

OMG I think I just came!

 

After the Matterhorn, we got a call from TJ saying that we needed to get over to DCA pronto before they ran out of room for the event, so we split. Unfortunately, we had Walt Disney’s Parade of Dreams in our way! Ugh!

 

Show stops are NOT trying-to-move-in-a-crowd-friendly!

 

By the time we finally made it out of Disneyland, we were greeted by a MASSIVE line to get into the event!

 

OMG! I didn’t realize there would be this large a turnout!

 

For those who are wondering, the event handled 350 teams of 4 each!

 

This would be my team. We were so not aware of what we were getting into!

 

 

Chuck was there too, but he thought he was too-cool for us and joined a different team!

 

Rivaling team captains duking it out! After taking this photo, they promptly broke into a Fresnonian Rap-dance Battle!

 

BTW…On an unrelated note, at this point in the PTR, I just waited 5-minutes for my Microsoft Word to unfreeze, fearing I would lose all that I had typed so far. After I finish with this, I’m going to go look at some Mac prices. –No matter how overrated they are.

 

 

Anyway, luckily we registered and got our team-materials in time and made it inside to the Hyperion theater.

 

Wow, they have got quite a gig going on here!

 

At this point, two things are going through my head:

 

1) Wow…this is SUPER cool. I really wish I was a Cast Member and had access to this family all the time.

2) I am sure glad there are Disney-geeks far worse than myself!

 

 

TJ, doing the “responsible team captain” thing, and going through the materials we were provided with.

 

I decided to do some pre-Madness stretches.

 

…what’s funny about this, is I took that photo as a joke, honestly thinking we would perform well in this competition! I guess you can say I was acting a little “DaCocky”.

 

No? I thought I’d give it a try.

 

Anyway, sure enough the event kicked off!

 

It wouldn’t be Minnie’s Midnight Madness without Minnie! Oh, and the guy on the right is the “Genie” from the Aladdin musical in DCA, out of costume! He sort of served as a “speaking” host for the event.

 

 

Anyway, the beginning of the event featured a few guests, a bit of information of Disney values, some clue-ins for us non-Cast Members, information on the charity the event was for, and then finally we were ready to begin with the trivia! I was so ready to leave these folks at the starting line!

 

Now let me explain something. I know a thing or two about Disney. As a matter of fact, one might say my knowledge is “two-feet deep”!

 

 

…But I was totally unprepared for the curveball they were about to throw me! I know who Oswald is. I know a bit about the True-Life Adventure series. I what the Sherman Brother’s generally did, for the most part. But I didn’t think they were going to ask specifics, such as…

 

Wes would choose answer “E”.

 

…like I said—I know who Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is. But I have NO f**king clue as to the names of his shorts! I don’t know individual True-Life Adventure episodes! I don’t know every Sherman Brother’s song! It’s pretty hard when you have two guys who wrote “virtually every classic Disney song” and then have to answer which song they DIDN’T write.

 

And mind you, you only have about 7-10 seconds to answer before they move on. They do this rapid-fire! Here are some more questions…

 

Yay! We actually got this one RIGHT, thanks to TPR!

 

Damn most screwed up question EVER! AP Tests aren’t even this hard!

 

Hell yes! I <3 School House Rock!

 

Once the quizzing was over, we realized just what we were up against. So we cautiously headed outside to start this thing. First things first—we needed to get clipped together on a short rope!

 

Off to Goofy’s Gulack!

 

*pats himself on the back for thinking of that caption*

 

Being tied together was to ensure that ALL team members stay together and don’t go off gathering information on different clues. It also adds a physical challenge to the competition! It isn’t uncommon to stumble over or run into each other! Makes the whole team clumsy! It also wasn’t too uncommon that two teams would be walking right towards each other, which causes a minor crisis. LOL. You see, once the teams get a “rhythm” down in their walk, it’s easy to forget that they are tied. So when they see another team walking in the opposite direction, the members try to sort of “comb” between the opposing members, as people normally do when they aren’t tied. However, you cant do this without clotheslining the opposing team (or being clothes lined)! Teams often only realize this once it’s nearly to late! You can literally be within inches of people before almost running into them! When teams realize they’re about to collide, it often leads to everybody involved screaming! Funny how that works!

 

 

The chaos also leads to the team members trying to walk around the opposing team by trying to move in different directions, which doesn’t work, because everyone’s tied! It just becomes REALLY crazy! But that really adds to the “fun” of it all!

 

 

 

 

ANYWAY…we all had moved out onto Hollywood Boulevard, where we received our first clue.

 

A dormant Tower looms behind the largest crowd I have ever seen in HBP!

 

 

 

The first clue was a simple piece of paper with a series of numbers on it. That’s all. After trying and finding out how to decode the numbers, the sheet told us we would need our pencil to solve the first clue. That’s it! We all looked at each other like “WTF?!”

 

They wouldn’t let us leave HPB until 10, so we could only have 2 hours to conduct our hunt!

 

While waiting to leave, I noticed that they scrim on the Animation Building said something along the lines of “If you expect to solve your first clue, you’ll need a little bit of knowledge on colors and cartography.” Ok, so we know it’s going to involve our pencil, map, and colors somehow. Hmm. Once putting the elements side by side like that, it wasn’t hard to solve the puzzle. Our pencil was green colored and thus, when the rope dropped, we headed straight for A Bugs Land, as it was represented with “green” on the map! The park PA was blaring techno/punk rock versions of classic Disney songs. We suddenly realized what sort of puzzle-solving the night would entail! And I was loving it!

 

I happened to capture the EXACT “eureka” moment I had when combining the elements!

 

 

After finding the answer to the puzzle laying out in A Bugs Land, we headed to “Clue Central”, in the center of the park, along the parade route. This would be where we turned in our answer and received our next clue, to ensure we could only work on one clue at a time.

 

This was the chaos that is “Clue Central”.

 

Ok, so we had or next clue. Themed to “High School Musical”, it was off to “Drivers Ed”, meaning Mulholland Madness! We had to locate 12 real southern California locations on the cheap façade in front of the wild mouse and then find those 12 locations in a word search. Once all of the locations were circled, the remaining letters formed a phrase, which told us where to locate the answer.

 

Do you realize how many times I’ve made fun of this wall—and now I’m actually relying on it for something!

 

Julian and Chris, hard at work to solve the puzzle. TJ, a little frustrated at that I insisted on taking a horrible picture of him than helping the other two out!

 

 

Once solving the puzzle, we waddled over to Clue Central to turn in that clue and get our next. Our next puzzle consisted of filling in a crossword puzzle by correctly identifying which Disney character stated a quote. It was hard for us, despite the fact that the “Drawn to the Magic” stage had all the quotes and characters as backdrops.

 

We couldn’t get it, even with the answers right under our nose!

 

“Maybe if I lick the paper, the answers will magically appear!”

 

Once solving the crossword, we needed to combine the circled letters in some way, to find “the true magic”. Had I read that clue properly, I could have solved it much earlier than we did!

 

 

Random group shot, because everybody likes over-exposed, out-of-focus shots that make Jahan look bad!

 

As you can see by where my rope was tied, this is the most action I’ve ever gotten in one night! Thanks for the yanks—Chris?!?

 

 

 

 

There are so many things wrong with that, I insist on moving on, now!

 

 

 

The next clue we got was for “Flight School”. Now I don’t know how many high schools out there have built in “flight schools”, but I went along with the theme. This clue was staged within the Taste Pilots Grill. Basically, the teams were seated and provided with 4 separate sheets of notes on aviation history. The notes were in block-text, not organized, and completely random.

 

My sheet of notes. I see an Epcot question!

 

Basically, how it worked is there is an “instructor” at the front of the “class” asking a series of rapid-fire questions on aviation history—all which can be found in the notes. If you thought you new the answer, you had to shout out your team number. If you were first, you’d be called on and would have a few seconds to answer before your turn was forfeited to another team.

 

The instructor guy, asking the questions.

 

Oh…LOL…a story. The instructor asked “Who was the captain of Apollo 13?” and Chris and I instantly responded “GARY SINESE!” He sort of smirked and tried to ignore us. But it’s obvious he heard us because he then threw in his own question and asked “Who played the captain of Apollo 13 in the movie ‘Apollo 13’?” Chris and I again shouted “GARY SINESE”—but we were again wrong! I guess it was Tom Hanks!

 

 

Looks like I need to see “Apollo 13” again!

 

Anyway, after getting 4 answers right, we were given a stamp of approval and got out of there! Time to get our next clue!

 

…and this one was on HISTORY!!!!

 

Golden Dreams was turned into a role-playing History classroom!

 

Basically, in this clue, we were quizzed by someone dressed up from any random historic period. This person proceeded to ask us questions about History, as seen in Disney movies. Even being pretty-much a History major and Disney fan, some of these questions were pretty damn hard! And if we couldn’t answer enough questions correctly, we would have to give a speech in front of the entire Golden Dreams courtyard! Luckily, we answered enough questions. I was rather proud of my ability to answer questions on Richard III and the Tudor family, despite never seeing the Disney movies that correlated.

 

 

After our History quiz, it was off to Sunshine Plaza to get quizzed on “Superheros!”. I forget how they related this to “High School”, but we went along with it. In this challenge, we were quizzed on Superheros throughout the Disney empire (including my favorite, Quailman! ). It was pretty straightforward. Oh! And we had to answer the question “as a superhero”, by holding up a fist and shouting the answer into the night! Once we answered two questions, we got our clue answer and proceeded onwards.

 

Me with our quizzer, Duck Tape Girl!

 

 

 

Our next clue was for Math Class—yuck! Math is definitely NOT a strongpoint for me.

 

The challenged entailed us going to the Monster’s Inc: Mike and Sulley to the Rescue entrance façade and counting various things. The number of hard hats. The number of doors with blinking red lights. The number of eyeballs. You get the idea! Once we had these numbers, we had to combine them through some simple math problems to get a alphabetic answer. Sounds easy, but that entirely depends upon if you accidentally miscounted one of the 33 eyeballs, or something of the sort.

 

Mr. Calculus giving a go at these math problems.

 

 

 

We finally solved the puzzle and rushed back to Clue Central. Upon turning it in, we realized that we only had FIVE minutes to solve the remaining 5 clues. While knowing it was impossible, we tried to finish the next clue in those minutes as it seemed relatively easy. Matching certain Disney characters with what schools they went to (characters including Cory Baxter, Kuzco, Corey Mathews, Kim Possible, etc). Once you fill the answers into the word puzzle, you combined the remaining letters to get the puzzle answer. So we were actually able to finish before the competition ended!

 

We stopped on the ground of Clue Central to answer the puzzle, so I snapped this photo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And with an announcement, the competition was over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TJ, sad we only were able to solve a miserable 6 out of the 10 clues.

 

While we knew we were nowhere remotely near the winners circle (we ended up ranking 278/350), we were still BLOWN AWAY by how much fun we had! A lot of our performance was because we were so poorly prepared. Lots of teams had the benefit of knowing to bring clipboards, flashlights, reference books, etc. We had none of that! It also took a good while to figure out what exactly we were supposed to be doing and how to navigate a park tied together.

 

…but no worries. I’m sure we’ll have all of those lessons down pat for next year.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, once the competition ended at 12:00am midnight, we met back in Sunshine Plaza to hear the winners announced.

 

Very cool scene, with the float and all.

 

The winners were announced, we applauded, and the night was over. All of the teams slowly headed to the exit, tired to tears, but unwilling to let the night end.

 

Disneyland was completely shut down at this point. I’ve never left DCA to a closed Disneyland before!

 

 

 

A finally “team photo” before calling it a night at Denny’s!

 

Well ladies and gentlemen, that was Minnie’s Midnight Madness. I was some of the most crazy-fun I have ever had in Disney’s California Adventure—truly an interesting experience. Each clue seemed to utilize the park in a certain pivotal way, which made it more than your average scavenger hunt. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the park and definitely made the drive worth it! LOL.

 

And if you went or heard of someone who went and are thinking “Hey! That isn’t exactly what I heard about it!”—well that’s because there are actually 36 clues! So we only ended up sampling about one sixth of the different possible challenges one can face during the competition! Crazy!

 

Anyway, I surely hope that you enjoyed the Photo Trip Report! Thanks for reading this far! I truly appreciate it!

 

-Jahan

 

[TexTitan01]

thats the best idea for a scavenger hunt ever! Not to mention the best time to hold it! I wish there was something of the equivalent on the east coast (there probably is...but I just dont know about it...)

 

Great TR!

[Erik Johnson]

Did the people who won the contest win anything cool?

[wrs28330]

I believe the won "merchandise", and "more merchandise". I was there too, and it is great to see some of the other challenges that I didn't get to do. My team finished 9 out of 10 challenges, and placed 93 out of 364. The toughest challenge for us was the "flight school"; it was out of a bad nightmare. It was like you were late for a final, didn't study for it, and was being quizzed publically in front of the whole class!

 

My few pictures didn't turn out anywhere as good as Jahan's, I was too busy solving puzzles.

 

I too had a GREAT time. I always enjoy things that are a bit out of the norm in DCA at the DLR, not going into DLP, with a bunch of CM's, and not having any rides going 101....

 

(If you were there, you would understand.)

[thefitness]

What a cool event! Even though I absolutely despise High School Musical, it looked like a lot of fun.

[arrowfanman]

Did the people who won the contest win anything cool?

 

Yeah, if you like Disneyland. Mind you, the event is a charity event, so they were all Disneyland prizes.

 

If I remember correctly, they got a nights stay in any Disneyland Resort Hotel, Dinner at Steakhouse 55, Merchandise and more Merchandise as Wrs said, and something else, I cant remember.

 

 

Thanks for the comments guys!

 

-Jahan

[hifalling]

YAY! Minnie's is the best CM event we have at the DLR! It is such a blast! The best thing about it is the fact that we get to share the experience with our family and friends too! I am soooo glad that you had the opportunity to experience it, because I knew you of all people, would appreciate it!

 

Chuck was there too, but he thought he was too-cool for us and joined a different team!

 

How dare you?!?!? Too Cool?! I think that is impossible with how much of a Disney dork I am...NARF! My team always consists of family members, and they get sooo stoked to be involved. I was honestly jealous when I heard who was going to be on your team...and then I thought...they are totally going to beat us...but I remembered it was all about fun for my family!

 

 

While we knew we were nowhere remotely near the winners circle (we ended up ranking 278/350), we were still BLOWN AWAY by how much fun we had!

 

…but no worries. I’m sure we’ll have all of those lessons down pat for next year.

 

YEAH!!! Next year its on!!! My first year I was like 201/400...and needless to say I was very proud of my team this year! Believe me it gets easier!! But next year you guys better BRING IT!!!!

 

Amazing TR Jahan! See ya in a few days for Nemo opening!

 

chuck "15 b*tches!!!" garcia

[bulldogmom]

Thanks for the great TR- this looks like it was really fun. Great captions, too!

[COASTER FREAK 11]

I have not had that much fun in a really long time! It was great, and I cant wait till next year. I was totally blown away by how developed the entire event was. It really is an event that takes a lot of work and preperation. And i just want to say thanks to TJ for being a CM, you made possible for us to go.

 

Aren't you sad you didn't come Mike? ha ha ha!

 

 

I always enjoy things that are a bit out of the norm in DCA at the DLR, not going into DLP, with a bunch of CM's, and not having any rides going 101....

 

(If you were there, you would understand.)

 

That was amazing! and i understood about 2/3 of what he said! I was so proud of myself!

[cfc]

I've always been curious about this event, but never knew much about it--until now--thanks for the pics.

 

I seriously suck at scavenger hunts, so I would've been no help at all.

[Louise]

AWESOME!!!!!

 

Hi Lou!!

 

HAHA!!!! I LOL'd.

 

I love scavenger hunts and puzzle solving sooooooo much, I'd give my right arm to be able to go to something like this. So cool.

 

Really glad you boys had fun! Looks like a great experience!

[arrowfanman]

^ If that's the case, then you're on our team next year!

 

 

 

 

Thanks for all the nice comments guys! I appreciate it, much.

 

-Jahan

[hifalling]

^Yeah! That would be great! Chris and Jahan would be too distracted to solve any problems, and my team would win! I cant wait for the return back to Disneyland too!

 

chuck " Lou, COME ON DOWN!" garcia

[COASTER FREAK 11]

^ nice chuck, nice.