1st Annual Scavenger Hunt - 2010

With all the photo scavenger hunts I've been doing over the past year I had an idea to try and put on a real life scavenger hunt.  A hunt where people have to collect items, rather than photograph them.  This thinking all started over the winter... and took place on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010.  So, how can you make a scavenger hunt interesting and get people to play along?  You create cash prizes!  I charged $5 per person, you must pay up front to receive your list of items.  You can play in teams of 2-4 people.  So you end up with $10-$20 per team just to play.  Then depending on how much cash you end up with... you split the money amongst the winning teams; at least a 1st and 2nd place prize (more if there is enough money).

I started out by giving each team 10 bonus points if they brought a re-usable "earth friendly" bag to collect items in (and EVERY team did!!) I also gave 5 bonus points if people took a plastic bag and collected a bag of litter while they were out; a way to help clean up the planet and get some extra points!

So all the teams came and met at a central location; we met at a park in the city, so people had lots of resources to find their items.  We met at 1pm, I collected money, handed out the lists, and said "GO" at about 1:15pm.  Everyone had to be back by 4pm or they were disqualified and their money remained as part of the prize money.  We ended up with $150, which tells me there were 30 people who were playing!  Great turn out for my first attempt planning something like this.  We decided that we'd do a 1st place prize of $100 and a 2nd place prize of $50.
There were rules of course, but not too many.  Here is the sheet I handed out for people to read while I continued to collect money:

(I think if you click on that you should be able to read it better (???))

So... round about 4pm we all met back at the park.  The day was a windy one... so it was near impossible to go through peoples stuff while at the park.  Since the plan was to head up the road afterwards for a 'social hour', we decided to head up there and add up points.  People had bags upon bags of stuff!  I was absolutely overwhelmed...
With so much stuff I didn't know the best way to figure stuff out.  So I had people add up their points and asked if anyone had over 1000 points and there were 2 teams!  I think there were about 171 items on the list and the total possible points were 1584.  So it worked perfectly that there were 2 teams with over 1000... we went through and added up the points again, to verify and to make sure they really did collect all the items they claimed to.  Both teams were spot on with only one point being taken away for something that didn't quite fit the bill (the item on the list was 'a tape or CD that teaches another language' and they brought in a CD of a German band claiming that if you listen to it enough you'll learn the language).
While we counted and double checked we opened the floor up to anyone who wanted to share a story about their day or show off anything they found... it was a confusing and chaotic chunk of time, but for a first time hunt, I'd say it went pretty well!

Notes to self on things I'd do different next year:

1. Don't allow people to go to their homes, everything has to be found outside of a home.  I think almost every team went to a house, which they had plenty of time to do and it wasn't against the rules, but I think it took a lot of the fun away from trying to hunt for the items.
2. Don't assign a point value, have it be based on number of items found.  We spent probably a good hour adding up points and having other people add them up to confirm the totals.  Way too time consuming!
3. Call the bar/restaurant before hand and let them know to expect a large group.  I had no idea how many people were coming, so I didn't know what I should do, but I'm sure any advance notice would have been nice for them.

That's really all I can think of off the bat.

It ended up being a fun event... there was a great turnout and everyone {told me they} had fun!  A few minor tweaks to next years hunt and it should be a good time for everyone and much easier to determine a winner.

Now... who wants to see the list of items?!  I scanned this into a .jpg, so hopefully you'll be able to read it clear enough... remember you can click on it to make it bigger.