What do you do to celebrate 10 straight years of bringing folks an annual (and sometimes semi-annual) event? Create the longest, most intense, and most insane challenge to date and call it “Super” of course! On June 2nd 2019, 12 brave teams decided to compete in the marathon of all Disney Challenges. Boy did they have their hands full!
We should first talk about the giant Bantha in the room. A year ago, we picked this weekend as it was far enough away from the rumored opening of Galaxy’s Edge that was anticipated to premier around the last weekend in June. About 3 months before the Challenge, Disney surprised everyone by announcing that they would be opening their new Star Wars Themed Land on May 31st. Guests staying at any of the Disney hotels could make reservations for a 4 hour block to be among the first to see this new (and largest to date) expansion of Disneyland. I’ll be honest…the Event Crew kind of panicked. (Mostly Dave.) Attempts were made to move the challenge to a different, earlier weekend; however, this became an impossibility, and we all decided that we would fight the Force (and the crowds) and let what will happen just happen. Our biggest fear…thousands of rabid Star Wars fans who didn’t read the posts about needing a reservation would just show up hoping to get in, thusly filling the park to capacity and making it a less than fun setting to try to play a scavenger hunt in. Changes to the overall structure of the game had to be made last minute, most significantly was the decision to move the first starting line to Disneyland instead of Disney California Adventure just in case the afternoon crowds filled the park, and they stopped letting our players through the gates.
However, what started out as the worst-case scenario amazingly ended up being the best thing that could have happened. Because of all the hype (and the great job Disney did about getting the word out that NO ONE would be allowed into Galaxy’s Edge without a reservation), the crowds of regular park goers simply stayed away making the rest of the park rather uncrowded. This allowed the teams who already had a shortened window of time in each park, able to complete more of the challenge than we possibly anticipated. We couldn’t believe our luck. To make things even better, Event Crew member Jeremiah Good, who traveled in from Orlando to attend the opening, was able to hang out with us and help run the Challenge.
Crowds aside though, this Super Challenge was still a “Force” unto itself. The game play was a little different than other challenges. The teams would start in Disneyland and would be handed a 50-question challenge with only 3 hours to play. At the end of that round, the teams would be given a puzzle to solve with the answer being the location of the next round’s starting line in Disney California Adventure. Another round of 50-questions and 3 hour game play was concluded with yet another puzzle, leading them to the final round to be played in Downtown Disney. The third round was one last 50-question game sheet and concluded at the end of an epic 9 hour day. (Oh, and did we mention the All Day DINGO game we had them playing as well?) Needless to say, the teams were beyond exhausted when they finally turned in that final packet. (We had several players show us their “step trackers,” and the average team walked between 14-15 miles that day!) The Event Crew was even running on fumes by this point walking about 10 miles themselves.
To make things even more interesting, Event Crew Member Johanna decided to throw in a little bonus challenge the night before the big day. She is notorious for waking up way too early on Challenge days so she decided to put a video up on the Facebook Page asking participants and fans of the page to try to guess what time she would wake up Sunday morning. (Or Saturday night as I joked.) She even bought a prize for the winner. A Disney Snuggie with the words “DC19 Sleepytime Challenge Winner” embroidered at the bottom. The winning guess came from Shelly Balthis from Neverland Flight Crew. She picked 1:45am and Johanna begrudgingly gave up trying to get back to sleep at 1:43am. Shelly, who was playing the Challenge, was awarded her prize at the Award Ceremony.
I have to say in all my years (10 now, plus the 2 when this was a youth group activity) of putting on The Disney Challenge, I have never seen teams step up and play their hearts out like this year. From teams with very young players, to teams pushing strollers, to teams with bodily injuries, everyone rose to the challenge of this year’s Super event. I even saw seasoned teams trying out new strategies to combat the shortened windows of time. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, played to the best of their abilities, and they are all winners in my book. But the winners must be ranked, and so I bring you the top 3 teams and scores. In 3rd place, “Hold My…” had a score of 580 out of 837 points.
In 2nd place, 2-time reigning champions “X-S Tech” crushed it with a whopping 648 points.
However, determined as they have ever been to reclaim their title, “Frankless Weenies” with an unreal score of 665 carved out their place in history as not only the winners of the first ever Super Challenge but the second team to ever “Master Out” of The Disney Challenge.
So what does the future hold for The Disney Challenge? (Not another Super Challenge for a few years…maybe the weekend that Marvel Land opens at DCA…) Announcements were made at the Award Ceremony that the 2020 Disney Challenge will be played on Sunday, June 7th next year, and a yet to be solidified Holiday Mini Disney Challenge is being batted around by the Event Crew to be played in December or January this Fall/Winter. Keep checking back here, and especially on the Facebook Page, for details and possibly a “Date Poll” to help us pick the best day to play our next game. Until the next Anniversary (or Quarter Quell as we referred to it), it’s time to say goodbye to this awesome logo. If it returns in the future, it might just strike fear into the hearts of those who played and survived The 2019 Super Disney Challenge!
Check out the results, team places, scores, and answer keys here
See some more photos here
Behold the new Hall of Fame here
~Written by Dave Mancini – Event Crew Member
