For statistical purposes, the high temperature was 85 F and the low was 69 F, both above average. It was hot enough that teams were definitely appreciative of the many opportunities they had to work in air-conditioned spaces.
Teams met up outside the entrance to the park at 9 a.m. in the morning for a kickoff, and then received their packets for the morning portion of the event in World Celebration/Nature/Discovery. Five quests, an eye spy, and a hidden quest filled the morning until 1 p.m. when teams turned in and had a one hour break before the afternoon portion in World Showcase.
At 2 p.m., teams lined up on the island between the UK and France to receive their second packet of the day, containing six more quests and trivia. Game play ended at 5:30 p.m., and teams went off to relax and eat while the Third Gate Games team graded and scored. A post-game recap at 9:30 p.m. offered players the chance to ask questions and mingle before the top teams were announced.
World Celebration/Discovery/Nature Quests
Universe of Energy (30 Points)
The facade of CommuniCore Hall reminds us of the old rotating screens from the preshow of Universe of Energy. Teams were tasked with surveying the upper facade that faces toward the EPCOT entrance and comparing it to a grid letter-containing triangles provided. Wherever an open-sided triangle occurred, teams would use the letter in that triangle for the final question.
- Final Question: Everybody agrees Mickeys ears are black but what color are they in the mural next door at Mickey and Friends
- Final Answer: Purple (we also accepted other shades of blue)
The unused triangles spell out the hidden quest, starting from the bottom to the top and reading backwards.
The Deluge (40 Points)
This quest was all about how far people would go in order to solve a MouseAdventure challenge. Players were pointed toward the Journey of Water attraction to identify signage containing the thumbnail images provided. Numbers next to each image were used to count the words and letters on the sign to spell out instructions.
Once all the data was found it spelled out a directive: GET THIS PAGE WET. What better place than a water-based attraction for teams to soak the page? Once the quest page encountered liquid, the final question would appear. If teams quickly checked out the Water Cycle sign, they'd see the clear answer here.
- Final Question: Moana saved her people by
- Final Answer: Protecting and healing nature
Some teams answered "Get this page wet" on their answer sheets. If we were able to catch it at turn in (and if there was enough time left for them to try), we sent them back to Moana to get the page wet, and find the answer. Several teams' answers seemed to reference the Moana film, but MouseAdventure never works that way - all answers are expected to be found in or near where the data was collected.
Right Amount of Earth (40 Points)
Inside The Land, teams had a welcome respite from the searing heat of a late winter Florida morning: the Awesome Planet movie. The quest page provided a selection of still images from the movie and asked teams to put them into the correct order as they appear. Each image was associated with a column of 4 letters.
Having put all the movie thumbnails into the correct order, teams wrote the letters into the grid provided to spell out the final questions. Wandering out of the theater, teams could find the answer down in the Seasons restaurant area where the four cold cases are labeled and somewhat themed to the seasons via color scheme.
- Final Question: If market items sweets and refreshments are three of the seasons what is the fourth one
- Final Answer: Health & wellness
One of our written rules on the Rules & Instructions page is "Players may not use external lighting of any kind inside of theaters or attractions." Unfortunately several teams were seen using flashlights or smart watches to illuminate quest pages during the show. The EXIT signs in this theater are very bright and cast enough light to be able to solve the quest.
Fountain View (50 Points)
Around the corner from the Starbucks counter in Connections Eatery, there are display cases that contain a large array of coffee and tea equipment. Some are quite fancy pieces while others are more mundane. Along with the quest sheet, teams received perforated paper with images of equipment from the case on one side and letters on the reverse.
Armed with this array of little tiny reproductions of all this equipment, teams had to arrange the images in the same order as the items in the cabinets that they depicted. A few of the included images were reversed or otherwise made incorrect representations of the truth to increase the challenge.
Once assembled in order, the paper squares were flipped over one at a time to spell out the final question using the letters on the opposite side from the images.
- Final Word: What is part of the exam in Germany to become a Konditormeister or Master Pastry Chef
- Final Answer: Creating Baumkuchen
Captain Saltyhinder (50 Points)
For this quest, teams headed to The Seas with Nemo and Friends to search for sets of words grouped together on signs throughout the pavilion. The quest page provided a description or clue to each set of words followed by numbers in parentheses that indicated the number of letters in each word that made up the set. For example, (5, 6, 7) meant there were three words in the set, with the first having five letters, the second having six letters, and the third having seven letters.
Once all those sets of words were found, teams indexed (counted) into each answer a certain number of letters to decode the final question. Searching the amazing Manatee exhibit would reveal to teams the names they were looking for.
- Final Question: These two graduates were both rescued as babies and released as healthy adults
- Final Answer: Plantaina and scampi
If you've never heard of Captain Saltyhinder, you're missing out. Check out this blog to get the details on this bit of weird EPCOT history.
Some teams were concerned that entering the building via Seabase meant going in through the exit, however, when they consulted MouseAdventure Central they were assured that they were technically entering a shop. There was then a lively discussion at MouseAdventure Central about how the shop is the exit, but that was quickly quashed.
WorldKey (60 Points)
Guest relations can mean many things to many people, but somewhere somehow, there are still courtesy telephones dotted around the park. In researching this quest, our intrepid writers just stumbled upon the pair at the Imagination pavilion, and a tiny little spark was seeded that sent people all around the world.
Teams were provided with a long list of phone numbers and had to eliminate each number as they found a phone to identify the odd one out, which is associated with the Play! Pavilion (currently located in another dimension). Phones are located throughout EPCOT, so the answer space for this quest was associated with the second half of the game.
- Final Answer: 4217
Some teams tried calling some of the numbers to find out if they existed or not, much to the surprise of a Disney employee who answered their phone.
The traditional Florida lunch break started at 1 p.m. Teams had the choice of eating and hydrating, or continuing the quest for telephones and eye spy answers.
Meeting back at Terrace des Fleurs on the island between the UK and France, a 2 p.m. start meant that all the teams turned in their Adventure Cards once again and began a new set of quests around a portion of World Showcase.
World Showcase Quests
Makin' Memories (2 Points Each, 25 Points for a Perfect 11)
Third Gate Games is lucky to have a ton of people who help us with our games, and this time out we had Mrs Kris and Mr Chris join our regular Florida volunteer, Chelsie in the Japan gardens for a game we call Attractionary. We call it this to avoid lawyers. The game involved a set of cards with old EPCOT attractions listed, a dry-erase marker, and a dry-erase board. One member of the team had to draw what they saw on the card and the other team members then had to guess what it was.
Some examples of the items listed on the cards include:
- Ellen's Energy Adventure
- Maelstrom
- Magic Journeys
- Body Wars
- Listen to the Land
- Kitchen Kabaret
One team got all 11 correct, but the mode score was somewhere around 3.
Impressions de France (30 Points)
Looking through the perennially crowded streets of the France pavilion, players had to find text that had been removed from provided images of signage. Numbers next to each image indicated the letter needed from each set of missing text to spell out the final question. The answer to the final question is in the corner by the entrance to the Ratatouille ride, where players can find Collette's cafe racer bike and Linguini's scooter.
- Final Question: Red scooter license plate
- Final Answer: 111 BLK 75
As initially written, MouseAdventure writers wanted teams to make a rubbing of the license plate, to take an actual impression of France.
Oh, Canada (40 Points)
For Florida MouseAdventure, we try to offer teams as many chances for air conditioning as we can. However, with another theater-based quest the specter of external lighting once again reared its ugly head.
Teams were given a list of lines from Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy's dialogue in the "Canada: Far and Wide" film to put in order. To make it more challenging, they then had to select the line that followed each of those lines from a list of provided options. Each of these second lines was associated with a block of letters. When the blocks of letters were entered into a grid in the correct order, they spelled out the final question.
- Final Question: Tsimshia Artisan who hand carved totem poles in the pavilion
- Final Answer: David Boxley
Cherry Tree Lane (40 Points)
There's a varied selection of framed artwork around the UK pavilion if you take the time to look. Teams received a page of zoomed in sections from a selection of these pieces along with a set of questions. One twist for this quest was that the teams had to determine which image corresponded to the which question.
Once teams filled in the answers into the spaces provided, certain letters in each answer were associated with a unique kite icon, playing off of the theme of the unrealized Mary Poppins attraction. Teams used the associated letters to decode the final question, which was written in this kite language.
- Final Question: Twining that served shortest term
- Final Answer: Mary
Two of the images are located inside the Rose & Crown pub, which had a long queue during some parts of the day due to opening weekend festival crowds.
World of Motion (50 Points)
We at MouseAdventure love a pavilion museum. Since our previous event at EPCOT, the museum in the Morocco pavilion has been updated to feature an exhibit on desert travel and survival. Teams located answers to a list of questions from around the exhibit, and then located the answers in a word search grid. In each word in the grid, one letter was replaced by the World of Motion symbol.
On the opposite side of the page from the word search, teams navigated through a maze, collecting the replaced letters along the maze's path to spell out the final phrase.
- Final Phrase: Didi nickname
- Final Answer: Desert Lioness
Food Rocks (50 Points)
The Regal Eagle Smokehouse features a wall of decor that highlights the contestants in Sam the Eagle's cook-off, preparing regional American cuisine. Teams received images replicating sections of the wall, along with a set of stickers. Teams recreated the wall by placing the stickers in their correct places.
Once the stickers were in place, teams arranged the wall sections as they appear from left to right and, starting at the upper left sticker, counted forward or back in the alphabet by the numbers on each sticker to spell out the final question.
- Final Question: Sam's centennial cook-off salutes mostly what
- Final Answer: Barbecue
Eye Spy (5 Points Each)
Teams had the whole day to locate the ten eye spy images located throughout EPCOT. Each image had an associated question that team's answered to verify they had located the correct source.
- World Traveler, from the store sign near the International Gateway
- Samaki Ni Marafiki, on the canoes along the lakeshore in Equatorial Africa
- Dessert exquis, along the shore in France
- Symbiosis, on a sign at The Land entrance
- 50833, on a poster in Equatorial Africa
- Magic Photo Studio, inside Imagination's ImageWorks
- Golfeur, on the doors of Souk-al-Magreb
- Homo Neanderthalensis, inside The Toy Soldier shop in the UK
- HSA, on the fountain outside Hacienda de San Angel in Mexico
- Behind the Seeds, on a poster next to the check-in desk for the Behind the Seeds tour in The Land
Hidden Quest (20 Points)
The hidden quest is like Fight Club. The first rule of the hidden quest is that we do not talk about the hidden quest. Not every MouseAdventure has one, but when they do, it’s always exciting to see how many teams are able to find and solve them.
In the Universe of Energy quest, the triangular sections not used for the final questions spelled out the hidden quest, starting at the bottom right and reading backwards from bottom to top.
- Final Question: It's the hidden quest. Based on the plaque "From Our World to Yours" what is presented as a gift from the Nova Corps
- Final Answer: the Starblaster
Results
Full results are available on the MouseAdventure website. The total possible points for this game was 624, including the hidden quest, which 1 team answered correctly.
The best all-new team (not otherwise placing) was team Puzzlehop scAvengers with 540 points, who placed 8th in their first game.
The top 3 teams were:
- Lazy River Professionals - 592 points
- Jussst A Dinosaur!! - 584 points
- The Central Short Liners - 570 points
The Masters
- Goof! There It Is - 606 points
- Heffatooies - 412 points
A Masters team is a team that has placed first in 3 events, and has been retired from competition. Although not eligible for any prizes during non-Invitational MouseAdventure games, Masters teams return to set the bar for other teams to compete against. They play mainly for bragging rights and the thrill of the puzzle hunt.
Lazy River Professionals
The Central Short Liners
Jussst a Dinosaur!!
Puzzlehop
Candid Photos
We try to capture the fun of every event by catching photos of as many teams as we can during the game. This time we even got some video of teams drawing! All the images we took are in our Third Gate Games candid gallery.
Thank You!
Thanks to our awesome teams for coming out and playing the game. We'd also like to thank Chris, Kris, and Chelsie for assisting with check in and running our Attractionary station. Trivia was once again written by the fantastic Shoshana!
If you enjoyed the event, please share with friends you think might like to play in the future! Our next MouseAdventure at WDW will likely be March 6, 2027. Hope to see you then!