An Epic Adult Easter Egg Hunt Part II - Logistics + The Hunt
Oh, there were practicalities.
But the feedback was something along
holy shit that was so much fun!
which was a relief because that meant it was all worth it.
I've had a lot of people asking how our Easter Egg Hunt turned out, [you can read the intro to it here], and so here's how we actually made it work.
Step 1: Make team eggs
I cut out Easter Eggs from different coloured paper, one set per team (12 eggs. A dozen eggs! Get it? Don't worry nobody else did either)
we sent this photo out so everyone would know which egg belonged to them. We had about 10 mixups anyway.
Step 2: package Team Eggs with Chocolate Eggs
And we put one egg and 2 or so chocolates (eggs, Lindt, mini eggs) in a Ziploc bag.
Why a Ziploc?
Well,
- we needed people to collect their egg and get chocolate so that kept it together.
- We thought it might rain and that would protect it
- it would take longer for a rogue dog to get the chocolate
- added bonus, it made hiding them kind of easy and fun because they mostly just looked like garbage poking out but were immediately identifiable to our hunters.
Step 3: Create a set of photography based clues + a map
The photos
A few days before the big event Kyle and I took the day and explored our neighbourhood, taking photos of murals - we wanted it to be super cute and fun and instagrammable - and so we had to stop for some coffee.
Kyle then plotted every mural we stopped at (16 of them) onto a map and each team got a "random" selection of 6.
I say random because which mural you got was kind of random, but Kyle also made sure that each team had to walk about the same number of metres, so the longest distance was 5,628m and the shortest distance was 4951m between murals.
He's a nerd. Don't worry, this part it totally unexpected.
He literally makes a living making maps of things like this.
Like, you can run a very succesful hunt and just be like you get 3 down there, 3 up there, done, done and done.
Step 4: Make the 2nd Round of Clues
Inside each bag we also hid a clue to an additional 6 locations. There were 8 clues, so again people would be all mixed up and had to go to different locations. Here's the 8 clues if you want to try and solve them. The answers can be found here.
The boundary for these clues was only about 8 blocks instead of the earlier 20.
the clues
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when I'm thirsty
Here you can pay $125 to fast for 3 days
Camomile rubs, acupuncture and Xanax for the hipster dog
Get schooled on beers here
Get a celestial brew here
I said Brrrr it's cold in here! There must be whiskey hazelnut in the atmosphere!
Another name for primary. Another name for street. Another name for place where they make brewskies.
That's it!
Step 5: wake up early and hide all the eggs
It took us 2 hours with a car to hide 96 eggs at 24 different locations.
Fun things about running this in East Van is things like, huh, that place we thought would be a great hiding spot is actually full of needles. Lets put it beside this rock instead.
The feedback was that we did a really good job of hiding the eggs. They were obvious but not too obvious, you had to look but you could always find them. Except once. I'll explain below.
Step 6: Meet everyone and send them out into the wild.
We met everyone at Dude Chilling and handed out their individual maps (with a 13th sample egg) and really explained all the rules.
no cars! (transit ok)
Leave other people's eggs alone!
If you give it a really good try and just can't find your egg, send us a photo of yourself in front of the location. We realize this is east van. Eggs mayyyyy go misssing.
You don't have to crawl or climb to find your eggs.
Everyone was too excited and each team misheard their own set of rules.
Here's some examples:
One team came back after finding their 6 murals. We explained they had to actually go to the places on their clues as well.
We told one team their eggs changed from blue to green. We told a different team their eggs changed from yellow to pink. So of course the blue team took the pink eggs and they had to meet up to do an exchange.
Step 7: Wait for people to complete the hunt
Kyle and I waited for everyone at Brassneck. We figured it would be the most chill 1.5 hours of our lives.
IT WAS THE LEAST CHILL 1.5 HOURS OF OUR LIVES.
We kept getting
"our eggs are missing"
"we're in Dude Chilling but there's no eggs"
"I need a hint"
"here's a photo of me bouncing"
etc, etc. text messages
The time flew by. It was epic.
Step 8: Send out a million text messages reminding people the end is near
People literally ran around. One team came back with like 30 seconds to spare and we could see them sprinting up the hill.
People reported they could see other teams racing around the neighbourhood.
So fun!
Step 9: Hand out the prizes
there was a two-way tie for first on the egg collecting- which was 9 eggs. The tie breaker was one team came in bunny ears and the other did not.
First prize was a bag of Beta 5 melt-away chocolate eggs, 2 freaking cute bunny butt cream puffs, mini eggs and cream eggs.
Step 10: Party for the rest of the night!
Now here's the photos from the hunt!
These were sent to me by the competitors, and you can see more on #TheMcHoweEasterHunt
they called this pose "the Kyle"
Here's a funny thing that happened
Marie + Tash got to Earnest and they couldn't find their eggs anywhere.
Some folks sitting outside eating their ice cream said,
"Hey, is that an everyone Easter Egg hunt, or like, specific?"
"It's specific"
"Oh"
And they took out all of the bags of Easter Eggs out of their pockets, having eaten all of the chocolate and handed them over.
Ok. so many points here.
1) Why did they confess?
2) Hey kids. If a stranger leaves chocolate on the street, don't eat it! Who the hell knows what kind of psycho has been hiding chocolate with glorious metallic paper inside???
no but actually.
Easter Magic!
Basically though, this was such a success that it was worth the shit ton of work that's required.
You should totally do one.
Can’t even wait to start wearing my metallics and sequins and match them with red lips - but before I treat myself to another shade, I reveal my tried-and-tested hottest tips for picking your bold red lip this holiday season. You’re going to want to rush out and buy some for your holiday party too.