Amazing Race 16th Birthday Party

by Family from Ohio
(USA)

I made invitations that were yellow tri-folded cardstock with an Amazing Race logo in black on the front. Inside was an invitation with the Fast Forward, Yield, Roadblock, etc symbols and the details to the party. This was for my daughter and her friends 16th birthdays combined. They invited almost 50 kids. We ended up with 8 teams of 4 or 5 players. The birthday kids formed the teams to try to put people together that would like to be together and also balance teams.

We had the party at the friend's house. They have a big backyard with 3 zip lines and even a new tree climbing set up like a climbing wall. There is a lake and a beach area in this development we were also able to use for some of the challenges.

To start the game we had balloons with everyone's name written on one. They pulled the helium balloons down from the vaulted ceiling until they found their own name. As soon as everyone on their team (same color balloon) had found their balloon they were then allowed to get their first destination.

We had about 15 challenges. Some were Roadblocks where one person on the team had to complete it. They were given a hint at the challenge but not told what it was. They had to decide who was going to complete the challenge before they got there and found out what it was. These were often hard or yucky! Everyone on the team had to complete at least one challenge (we used the honor system on this).

The rest of the challenges were group challenges. We sent them all to a different challenge and tried to organize it so no one was waiting long to wait their turn on a challenge.

Challenges We Used:

Eat 2 jars of baby food, Catch a fish or eat the worm and go, canoe to other side of lake get 5 riddles that the team had to solve before moving on, finding your team's color of confetti in the sand, zip line course, tree climb/or putting a 100 piece puzzle together in a tiny little clubhouse, whole team play around the world/or drink a gallon of water with straws as a team, eat a pie with no hands, guess 10 mushed up candy bars correctly, Read a verse and put it in order without looking again, Corn Hole Blindfolded (getting 5 in), Giant Slingshot water balloons at target to knock it off, build a boat out of Popsicle sticks and other supplies and float it down the creek, Pictionary/or Wheel Barrow race a pretty long distance.

We had dinner afterwards and then a campfire and s'mores. We did this on a Sunday afternoon starting at 2 and we were eating dinner by 5:30 I think.

We used bandanas to distinguish the teams. It was such a fun day. Took lots of family/friends to run all the challenges.

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