Amazing Race Event

[+Ziggy Crew]

Just a question for anyone who can help.

 

Has anyone ever held an event based on the TV reality show "The Amazing Race"? If so could you include a link here to your event page? I would like to see how someone would run it. I have some ideas myself but I would like to see what others also have done.

 

Thanks to all.

[+ePeterso2]

I helped plan and run one as a team-building exercise for a group of folks at work. It was actually inspired by my love of geocaching and my attempts to recruit a co-worker into this silly hobby ... the co-worker did the overall planning of the event, and I helped contribute to it.

 

We don't have a website for it that's visible outside of the corporate firewall, but I'll summarize what we did below.

 

The goal was to get the team from the office to a nearby Dave & Buster's for an afternoon of food and fun to kick off a major multi-year project. We have held a number of events at D&B's in the past, so we didn't want to just do the same-old same-old thing again. Here's what we did:

 

First, we held a MANDATORY project kick-off meeting. We managed to get the 60 people or so that were part of the project team together in conference rooms and connected them via a conference call bridge. These 60 people are grouped in various sub-teams, and we worked with their managers to define teams in advance of 4-5 people each. The individuals involved had no prior knowledge of the team event nor of their team assignment, but they were grouped together with their immediate co-workers.

 

During the meeting, the team event and rules were announced. Each team would be given an initial clue sheet. The clue sheet would point them to five different locations within a few miles of the office. At each location, they would pick up a game piece. Those five game pieces would point to a final location, and at the final location they would find out the final destination (D&. The first team to reach the final destination would win a special prize ($50 for each team member, I believe).

 

The meeting began at 10am, and they were given until 11:30 to complete all the tasks and get to the final before we just declared an end to the event and told all remaining teams what the final was.

 

When the event coordinator gave the "Go!" signal, he asked everyone in every conference room to look underneath the table at which they were sitting. Taped beneath each seat at each table was the clue sheet to start the event.

 

The clue sheet was a sudoku puzzle - they had to solve the puzzle, then plug the digits from the completed puzzle into clues also on the sudoku sheet. Those digits gave them the addresses and street numbers of the five puzzle sites. We chose an easy pre-made puzzle, and we picked spaces on the puzzle for digits which forced the solvers to complete most of the puzzle. The smart teams used online sudoku solvers ... the weakest team spent an hour solving it by hand.

 

We assumed that each team would pile into a single minivan or SUV (hoping that at least someone on each team had an adequate car). Each of the five event locations were arranged in a 5-mile loop from the office. Because we wanted folks to go to D&B's at the end and we thought that people would end up going straight home after D&B's, we had to have the final location back at the office so that people would be able to split up and pick up their own cars.

 

For event locations, we used two shopping center parking lots, two public parks, and a bowling alley.

 

Event 1: Project Trivia. We wrote a short quiz about the project that this large team would be working on. Once your team turned in a completed and correct quiz, you were given the game piece for that station.

 

Event 2: Info Search. A nearby veterans park has a wall full of memorial plaques for various individuals that served in a number of different wars. Teams were asked to find 8 individuals, then find a particular number on the plaque of each of those individuals (what unit did they serve in, what day of the month were they born, etc.). Then they had to convert those 8 numbers into letters, then use the letters to spell a word. We used a simple code 1 -> A, 2 -> B, etc. and the letters spelled the name of the project. Teams that returned to the coordinator of that stage with the correct word were given their game piece.

 

Event 3: Bowling. The first team to arrive at the bowling alley would have to wait for the next team to arrive. Then each team would pick a bowler, and those two bowlers would bowl four frames head to head. Whoever won that head to head contest would get a game piece; the loser had to stay and bowl again, against the next team to arrive. No team would be allowed to lose more than three times in a row before being allowed to move on.

 

Event 4: Team Chess. A 6x6 matrix was laid out using duct tape in a parking lot. Each team picked two of its members to compete against the other team. As in bowling, the winning team got a game piece, the losing team had to play against the next team to arrive at the station. Each team member would start in a different 3x3 quadrant of the board, in a square of that player's choosing. The event coordinator placed a marker in each square in which a person was standing. The first player (chosen at random) would then move like a chess knight (two, then sideways one) to a new square, and a marker would be placed in the new square. Players could only move to squares without markers ... as more moves were made, less and less of the board was available for moves. Play alternated between players of each team (player 1 on team A, player 1 on team B, player 2 on team A, then player 2 on team . Team members outside the game were allowed to coach the players in the game. When you had no legal moves remaining, you had to leave the board (and play continued). When both of your team members were out, your team lost.

 

Event 5: Cache Hunt. We set up four different multicaches of five stages each in a park. Each team was assigned a different multi to find so that no two teams would be working on the same multi at the same time. Teams were given units with GPS receivers (they're part of the products we build) and told to go to the first stage. At each stage, they found the coordinates for the next stage and a number. When the numbers were put together, they formed the coordinates of the final location (which was a magazine rack at the park office). There were company envelopes in the rack, each of which contained the game piece.

 

The five game pieces were squares of paper, each of which had a number or letter on it. There were four numbers and one letter, and if you put them together, you would get the number of a pole back at the facility (our office is laid out in a coordinate system), which corresponded to a conference room.

 

In the conference room was one of the managers ... if you came to the room and asked him about the game, he'd tell you where the final location was. (The first team to arrive at the conference room got the solution right, stepped into the room, saw the guy working, and left without talking to him because they were afraid of interrupting him! DOH!)

 

It took a lot of work, developing each game, finding appropriate locations, making the game pieces, reserving conference rooms, finding site managers, etc. It took a few weeks of daily planning over lunch hours to develop the event and get the people and materials together. But it was really really really well received ... the folks involved all asked what we were going to do for them next year!

 

Don't know if that helps or not, but it worked for us.

 

Good luck ...

 

-eP

Edited February 26, 2007 by ePeterso2

[+ePeterso2]

Bah. Stupid post-delaying work-firewall ...

Edited February 26, 2007 by ePeterso2

[+Gary and Mary Adventurers]

The 2007 Spring Picnic in Indiana will be having an Amazing GEO-Race during the picnic. We will be limiting the number of players to 12 teams of 2. This competition is not intended to be the main emphasis of our event, just a little fun for the players and entertainment for the rest of the Event Attendees. All the details have not been worked out yet, but we will probably have 3 or 4 legs eliminating teams as we go along. The specific tasks will in some way be related to caching. When a task is completed the players will be given coordinates, and will have to retreive a maker, and proceed to the "Pit Stop" area. The first so many from each leg will go on to the next one.

 

At our fall picnics for the last several years we have had competions like this based on "Survivor". so we wanted to try something a little different.

 

You don't have to be from Indiana to attend, all are welcome and compete.

 

The waypoint for the event is GC10NQ8

Edited February 26, 2007 by Gary and Mary Adventurers

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

Here's a link to the one I hosted, which I will repeat this summer.

 

I have attended several, each one great fun, but a LOT of work to put together and to be done right requires a number of helpers!

 

I will have a team in the Great Smoky Mountain GeoQuest the last weekend of this month, it's very simular, you might read up on it.

 

Good luck with yours.

Ed

[+Ziggy Crew]

Thanks to all who responded so far and for some really good ideas. Anyone else?

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

Here's a link to the one I hosted, which I will repeat this summer.

 

I have attended several, each one great fun, but a LOT of work to put together and to be done right requires a number of helpers!

 

I will have a team in the Great Smoky Mountain GeoQuest the last weekend of this month, it's very simular, you might read up on it.

 

Good luck with yours.

Ed

Correction - Great Smoky Mtn GeoQuest 2 by Great Smoky Mountain GeoQuest2 Caching Crew, et al (GC10EN3) is NEXT month, March 30th!