2007 party
The Mad Tea Party
Theme: Alice in Wonderland; Road Rally
Costumes: Alice, Mad Hatter, White Rabbit (note the White Rabbit was complete with pocket watch)
This year we did another road rally/scavenger hunt. The theme was that each team had to collect items that Alice needed in order to get back home.
Since I dislike the idea of having more than team search for the exact same things at the exact same time, I put the clues in a different order for each team (we had 3 this year). Clues were at a mix of on-site locations in our house and yard, and locations around our town. Given how incredibly busy I was in the weeks leading up to the party, I had to rely on my husband for a lot of help this year, and did not get to vet the clues as thoroughly as I might have liked to have done.
For the 'around the town' portion of the game, teams were given hand drawn maps to follow. Each guest had been instructed to bring a digital camera with them in order to take pictures of some clues. We tried to word each clue so that it kept with the 'Alice' theme. In addition to the basic rally, teams were given the ability to earn extra points by completing 5 trivia questions.
Following is our introductory text:
Alice visits wonderland but on Halloween – so it’s a scary place of vampires and frights in addition to the normal wonderland delights. Alice must not only find her way through wonderland but also survive if she is going to make it back home before dawn.
For the 'at home' tasks, guests had to identity a piece of music ("White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane), find an 'Eat me' card hidden in the back yard under an Alice-In-Wonderland flagstone, and could opt to take their own 'mad tea party' pic.
For the 'around town' tasks teams had perform tasks such as photographing themselves standing by a clock before midnight, getting a picture of themselves by a couple local landmarks, providing Alice with a straw lest she need to drink anything, and also finding a 'red queen.' Here we were being quite clever - the 'red queen' = the (red building) Dairy Queen in town. Two teams got it, one had no clue (I am so punny!!!)
In case you want to use them, here were the extra points trivia questions and their answers:
Additional Bonus Points Questions
1. Who wrote “Alice in Wonderland” – 2 pts for pen name, 5 points for real name. (2 pts – Lewis Carroll) (5pts - Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
2. Your hostess is very fond of jabberwocky since part of the poem contains her name. 10 points if you can quote jabberwocky from “Twas Brillig . . . .” up through the end of the line containing your hostess' name [Unfortunately, hostess' sisters have an unfair advantage with this one]
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.'
3. Fill in the blanks for the name of this video game: “_______________ ________’s Alice”
(American McGee’s Alice)
4. How tall, exactly, is the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland? (3 inches)
5. In what year was Through the Looking Glass first published? (1871)
Overall feedback and What we learned
1. Due to necessity, we Kept It Simple, Stupid. I literally Did Not Have Time to over think this one. The simplicity was nice I think - both for the guests and for the planner. Unfortunately, though, I have this nagging feeling that I did not do enough preparation but - eh - what's done is done.
2. If you have a nagging feeling a clue isn't a good idea . . . . it might not be. See #3 for more details.
3. The police in our small town are pretty friendly. Yes, the police. Our town has a nuke plant . . . one of the planners thought it would be fun to have people get a photo of themselves in front of the nuke plant. I think this was the one clue we did not even attempt to tie in with the Wonderland theme . . . we said "go take a picture of your team in front of the nuke plant" and on the map we wrote NUKE PLANT and drew twin cooling towers. We figured the location was wondrous enough on its own, we didn't need to mention Alice or any mutant talking animals. Well, can you imagine how small town police react to several cars speeding towards the nuke plant at night? Yeah. The fact that our friends were not arrested is amazing. The fact that our friends are still friends with us is more amazing. The fact that our friends came back to the party and laughed their butts off over ALMOST being arrested is just . . . priceless.
4. The kids in our general group of friends are at an age where they should have sitters for an evening party. Which means I'm still not exactly sure what I'm going to do for a party for this year. I was hoping to get parents to leave their kids with me while they went on the rally but - every family is different.
5. Remember to tell people to bring flashlights! Dummy! Read your own rules.
6. It is darn near impossible to find an Alice costume that is not intended to allow you to flaunt your inner stripper. Nothing against inner strippers, but that was not the look I wanted to present in photos with my baby girl. It took about a dozen (I'm not exaggerating) web searches to finally find a 'storybook Alice.' Stripper mad hatter is popular too, which is just strange.
7. Have more dessert. We seemed to have too much 'real' food, not enough dessert. Or maybe folks just expect to eat junk on Halloween.
8. Sometimes, the best party moments are those that are completely unexpected. See again #3.
9. Our prize this year was baked goods, which was much less expensive than previous year prizes. Folks still seemed happy to win. Good to know.
Overall, a fun party, and the theme really helped me tie things together. Being short on time meant I could not invest as much random creativity into this party as I've done in the past, but the theme took care of some things for me. It was nice to have such a broad theme too like 'Wonderland' - we had some trippy images playing on our TV at home which fit in well enough. It also held our little 1 year old captivated too. And finally, we won Major Points with a few people for having a little White Rabbit to take around trick or treating. We did not wear our complimentary costumes when we took her out so she looked a little out of context, but when we saw a couple folks 'get it' - including one girl who must have been about 14 - their faces lit up as they said 'that costume is so cool!' I know I'm bragging but - she's my daughter - I'm allowed.