Inukaza Posted May 12, 2011 Posted May 12, 2011 (edited) So, my mother, brother, and I, who are all self-proclaimed Disney Fanatics, decided we want to put our cockyness to the test! We signed up for the D23's Great Disney Scavenger Hunt. This annual event is now at WDW for the first time, since it has always been at Disneyland previously. Today, we arrived at our hotel, Caribbean Beach, we went to Downtown Disney to eat at the rain forest cafe. I don't have any photos from today, since my camera ran out of batteries. However, Tomorrow, I should have a update with Day 1 of the scavenger hunt. Also, since it's Pixar Weekend at Disney, I should be able to also take some photos of the festivities. Here's a link to the D23 Scavenger hunt, so you can get more of a idea what you will see when I post. http://d23.disney.go.com/expo/05121311_EE_WDWGreatDisneyScavengerHunt.html This will be my homebase for posting photos! Will update tomorrow! See you tomorrow when I update! Edited May 13, 2011 by Inukaza
mwm1444 Posted May 12, 2011 Posted May 12, 2011 You listen to the podcast I do (Castle to Castle: A Tale of Two Disnerds), right? You should totally email us in a trip report to read on the show! If you're not who I was thinking of: but looking forward to the update either way!
Inukaza Posted May 13, 2011 Author Posted May 13, 2011 WORD OF WARNING: Since the hunt is still going on, I'm not going to give away questions and locations of anything that can tip off other readers, if they happen to see. I will also not post any photos of the question booklet in a way where you can read questions. Also, I got into the "Grove" in the hunt and forgot to take photos at some parks, though, I think I got a good amount. Thanks! Alright! First day of the hunt. Let me tell you, it was CRAZY. First thing we did after waking up around 7 was go eat breakfast at our hotel. Afterward, we headed to our first park. Animal Kingdom. Everyone has to start at the one park they are assigned too, and ours was AK. We registered for our lanyards, and were given copies of the rules and prizes again. We have three hours for all the parks except for Epcot, in which we have 4 hours. I have to give major props to the people who made some of these questions, they have you going ALL around the park constantly. it's almost impossible to get every question done without guessing. Around this time, however, we were not aware that electronics and internet were allowed to be used during the hunt, which seams stupid to me, since none really require time. Regardless, after the first park I brought my iPad to the next. Animal kingdom had us going throughout the suffering, Dinoland USA (surprisingly primeval whirl is STILL down, it's been like..... 3 months now?). We were suppose to ride Dinosaur, however, we were running low on time and we had to return our booklet within the 3 hours or it would be be scored. So, afterward, we reluctantly headed out of the park. My team thinks we did very well. However, we were disorganized and overall unprepared. After we finished with the first park we were assigned, we were allowed to pick which one we wanted to go to next. However, by this point, we were hot (Summer is here....), already fighting with each other, and wanted to take a break. So, we took a break to our hotel, and went to the pool for awhile, and got lunch. By now, since the Hunt Closed for the day at 9, we decided to knock out the big puppy of the hunt, Epcot. Epcot has a total of 4 hours to figure out a three digit number of questions. By now, we comprised of a plan to organize our hunting skillz. Let's just say our booklet looked like we totally rewrote it. (We didn't do anything that would conflict with the rules, we just wrote notes by the questions). We also knew by now that we could use our technology and interwebs to help out. So, I was armed with my iPad, which, we didn't really use other than as a flash light on dark rides. (Again, only while we were the only ones on the ride, wouldn't want to ruin the ride experience for others.). I will say we ROCKED this park. Due to our new method we used for our organization skills, we were able to hit "a very high % of the three digit number of questions" for this park. We walked out of the parks, and decided to stop for the day. None of us were tired though. So, we drove over to MGM studios to map out the place, and write notes for the next day. (I should show photos of the maps my mother drew of the roads, they look like jailbreak plans. xD). To be honest, my mother was hoping that Star Wars was soft opened, but it wasn't. Sad. We got a decent amount of notes, and we do believe this will help us tomorrow. It's always a great idea to be prepared. Then, we just got McDonalds, brought it back to the hotel, where I am currently writing this up. Tomorrow we will hit Hollywood Studios, then Magic Kingdom as the last stop. After which a announcement for winners and placing teams will be the contemporary resort. Part two will come tomorrow night! (Also, yes, I'll be happy to write a report for your podcast, it might just take awhile since I'm highly active.) A view across the lake on our hotel prop. It looks almost just like the Coronado Springs resort. :< Arsty shot of the resort. A pretty bad photo of the inside of our hotel. Our first, assigned park. I am the one in the mighty fine TPR shirt. Check in desk Lanyard, they punch a hole through the park logo when you finish and start a park. (Photo taken in car, but belongs here to make sense) We received this when we registered. A bag they also gave us. Exclusive! Mother, studying our book. Entering Asia. Like I said, Since the hunt is still on, I don't want to post photos of anything in depth that can give away where answers are. Safari, we had to look out for a few things here. Making a choice and I'm going to skip most of the photos for this until I get home and have faster internet. Generic Safari photo 1. 2 DinoUSA, Seriously though, is Primeval Whirl still in maintenance? It's been a long time now. I understand that someone was hurt, however, it was determined to not be the ride's fault. Back at the hotel after leaving animal kingdom. Hotel pool. Had to go down the water slide no matter how lame it was. xD Another Artsy shot....you know....it's artsy because I only included half of spaceship earth. Check in at Epcot. Planing what we need to do. To give you a idea of what the question booklet looked like. I altered the photo to make questions unreadable. Nice photo, has a interesting question in that pavilion.... Our handy dandy paperweight proved very used full as a flashlight, and to look up stuff. (Internet is allowed in the hunt.) photo of the cover of the question booklet. To explain this a bit more with times. When you receive a booklet, they write the time on it, where your 3-4 hours start. You MUST bring it in within the time, or your booklet will not be scored. (I believe, or it could be disqualification.) My younger brother, and fellow team member, Tim. At this point, we finished Epcot. We pretty much answered all of the questions for this park. We did go to MGM to see if star tours was soft opened. And, to map out the place. Nope.... Anyway that's all for now, due to slow wifi, it took me 1h30m to upload all of these photos. Not fun. I'll be back to read messages tomorrow morning, and then to respond, upload more photos later in the day. Pixar weekend saturday!
BeemerBoy Posted May 13, 2011 Posted May 13, 2011 Hotel pool. Had to go down the water slide no matter how lame it was. I like small boys in tights.
Inukaza Posted May 14, 2011 Author Posted May 14, 2011 Today, we did our second and final day of the scavenger hunt. We woke up, and, not liking our hotel service, decided to drive over to The Coronado Springs to use our quick service at their food court area. Today, the competition opened at 9am, and ended at 5. The ending ceremony was at 830, however, we didn't go. We started our day at Hollywood, feeling confident, since we had mapped out the place. Dead wrong, we spent our first 20 minutes figuring out what we wanted to do. Since the whole thing is over now, I'm going to post photos of our notes and some of the questions from the booklet, since no rules said we couldn't. I didn't post them previously since the contest was still going on, and it would be considered cheating. Anyway, we headed out towards the muppets/star tours area. Found answers, hit all around the area. From there we just went around the park hitting questions. After, we hit McDonald. If I could tell you how disappointed I was when I saw few teams cheating, talking to other teams over the phone who went to parks they haven't and exchanging answers. We had a big dispute over with the D23 staff about it, due to my mother wanting to argue it. They ended up disqualified since they were proven to be cheating when a D23 member asked to see their phone text and binder they used to write answers in. Remember, play fair, at least when my mother is involved. We drove over to the polynesian for parking, and took the resort monorail line to MK. Magic kingdom was horrible. We had 3 hours at this park, however, I think we could have used about 4. They wanted us to ride tons of the attractions. After reading the questions, we decided that we wouldn't be able to come close to finish the park area. We focused on Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland, then made a round around the park to pick up as many 1-5 pointer questions as possible. Time went by fast, and we were all frustrated. We were happy for it to be over. We were could not decide if we wanted to stay for the ending ceremony at the contemporary resort. It was at 8:30 (3 hours away from the current time.), and we didn't want to stay to see who won. (Since we didn't win.). We headed back to the polynesian where we had Dinner, and where we saw a surprise. THEY HAVE A DOLE WHIP MACHINE! Win. We argued either we wanted to hit the pool or go to the convention center at the contemporary to see what's going on. The D23 Convention starts tomorrow, so they were getting set up while the scavenger hunt stuff was going on. We didn't find anything interesting, and lines were long as hell. As we were leaving, we saw another convention. Mashable Connection, which is the convention of social media site Mashable.com . I'm a HUGE reader of mashable, so I went to check it out, and they gave me a gift bag of awesome things. The coolest thing has to be the portable device charger that doubles as a flash drive. Tomorrow is when most of the events during pixar week start. Depending on if I get a good enough response here will decide if I update again. I'm going to the seminars that high-up pixar employees are giving. Some notes we took the day before for the hunt today. Proved helpful. Keep in mind, we did not cheat. We didn't know what the questions were until we got our booklet at the start of the day's hunt. A mapped out area of the park. Method of organization that we used. We split up the park into color coded areas, then took 20 minutes to go through each question and find out which belonged in which section. As we went by we crossed them out as we reached them. Gertie! Had a few questions involving the dedication plaque over here. Mother looking through our booklet. So far the park is not busy at all. For now, of course. Everyone's hard at work. Still dead. Maybe it's just because the area we were in is just unexplored. The only other humans in this photos are hunt participants looking for the "Up" poster in the painted backdrop. Popped up overnight, pixar weekend started today! This was about 5 minutes later. They need to put a E ticket attraction near the Streets of America section of the park. Question about the monkeys. A very mathematical question. See what I mean, look at the first example. Need to know math for this. Tons of points in One Man's Dream. As much as I love the rides of Sunset, I didn't have time to ride you. By now, we only had MK left. Stopped at MD. Then drove to MK. Sidetracked..... Just want to say... Did you know this was a boat bridge? Roads go under, and the boats from the man made lake go above to get to the other side. I always thought this was amazing.... Back on track now. Had our lanyard clipped, and away we went. The temp walls of the sweets and bakery store are now gone, a new overhead was put in place. I don't mind since it provides shadeeeee. Mandatory castle shot. This is the Floating Marble Globe. It is now missing. My brother and I. Very little work done on barnstormer. Newly tighten corner on Speedway. Looks like it has always been like that. Castle is looking nice. It was painted a little more, more oranges on it then it was before. Construction is now going on the walls around the building, rather then the castle. WE ARE DONE. Walking up to the booth to hand in our final booklet. Leaving MK on monorail. I had a little more photos of the convention center. However, this one describes them all. This my friends, is a line. For what, you ask? D23 collector pins at 30% off. (30 dollars retail value). We saw this and was like, "Forget this shiz" and left. I will say I got this cool portable device charger at the mashable convention.
the ghost Posted May 14, 2011 Posted May 14, 2011 This looks like such a fun time. Hopefully I am doing my first D23 event this year as well... but I am poor, so just one day at the 2011 expo for me. I'd love something like this, though.
Inukaza Posted May 14, 2011 Author Posted May 14, 2011 I decided I will not update this thread for pixar weekend due to a lack of activity. :< Thanks for reading. If I do update, I'll do so with a text review. No photos.
nay Posted May 15, 2011 Posted May 15, 2011 I participated in the scavenger hunt this week too and had a blast, even though it was so exhausting and brutally hot. I wish I took as many pictures as you but we were just too busy running around. I thought we did the best at Epcot and DHS, not too bad at DAK, and struggled quite a bit at Magic Kingdom. According to the results, we came in 94th place out of 520 participants.
Inukaza Posted May 15, 2011 Author Posted May 15, 2011 I participated in the scavenger hunt this week too and had a blast, even though it was so exhausting and brutally hot. I wish I took as many pictures as you but we were just too busy running around. I thought we did the best at Epcot and DHS, not too bad at DAK, and struggled quite a bit at Magic Kingdom. According to the results, we came in 94th place out of 520 participants. We came in 354th place. I hated animal kingdom, too much 'Go here, then go across the park here, and back" Questions.
the ghost Posted May 15, 2011 Posted May 15, 2011 Augh... this so makes me wish I hadn't had work yesterday and gone to gum-ball rally. I'm sure I'll be there next year.
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