Disney Themed Trivia Night Ideas!

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Every year, my church hosts a Trivia Night fundraiser for their school. It has become quite the event for our parish. Groups of 8 purchase a table and come up with a theme. They go all-out and put up massive decorations and dress up in accordance with that theme. Our group decided to participate a few years ago and put together a whole Disney-themed set up. Check it out!

Our group was rather large so we had to purchase 2 tables. We were told it was fine that both tables had the same theme since we were one big group, but each table had to play the trivia game as a separate team.

Since they called our tables Disney 1 and Disney 2, we think this ended up disqualifying us for the Best Theme prize. I assumed they couldn’t decide between the tables thinking of them as separate units instead of a whole.

It was sad we didn’t win a theme medal. There was so much effort and money put into our table, but we still had a blast and it was all for a great cause!

First off, I owe so much to my mother and my best friend Jen for helping me pull this all off. They were by my side and spent numerous hours helping to bake, color, and design decorations and shop for supplies. Without them, this wouldn’t have been possible.

Theme

After deciding the theme would be Disney, my mind instantly went to work. There were so many possibilities of what we could do, it was overwhelming. I decided I wanted to base the theme off of the parks and bring in elements such as Cinderella Castle, the monorail, and the entrance sign.

If I was handy with power tools, you can bet I would have built a life-sized version of these things for sure. Sadly, I had to aim a bit smaller, but I still loved how it turned out.

Decorations

We started off with the tables. I bought two white tablecloths from the Dollar Tree. I then printed out some of my favorite Walt Disney quotes in Disney font, traced the letters and colored them in with black sharpies. Doing this to 2 tablecloths took hours to do, but I loved how they turned out!

After the quotes were done, I took multi-colored sharpies and filled in the rest of the tablecloth with character signatures.

I happen to know how to sign many of the character signatures from the parks already, so this saved a ton of time instead of having to trace them all.

We bought Disney themed plates and napkins, and everyone at the table got a paper FastPass!

I knew that our table would be located in the back of the event room and we would have access to a wall for hanging decorations. I bought a white rectangular tablecloth and carefully drew the massive entrance gateway to Walt Disney World onto it.

My mom, my friend Jen, and I spent numerous days and sharpies coloring it in. I will say at one point we had to walk out of the house because were overcome with the sharpie fumes.

Instead of trying to draw a giant version of Cinderella Castle, I thought it would be easier, and more delicious, to make a cake instead. I bought the Wilton castle cake set and two round tier pans.

The cake tiers were a basic Funfetti cake that I iced with grey colored icing and then used a toothpick to draw the lines of the “bricks.”

The cake itself was a huge project that needed multiple hands to complete and had to be assembled at the event site because the turrets kept falling over. Jen luckily came with me and helped me decorate the rest of the cake.

There was a kitchen in our parish center where we were able to assemble and refrigerate the cake prior to the event. By this point, I was at the end of my rope, creatively.

Jen saved the day by taking charge of the turrets and icing a basket weave design all around them. She also outlined the clock tower area while I iced the roofs of the turrets in blue icing.

Once the cake was done, we attached gold pipe cleaners with gold Christmas bows on them to look like the massive Wishes fireworks.

No trip to Walt Disney World is complete without a ride on the monorail, so I knew we had to incorporate it somehow. That’s where our toy monorail set came in!

When my brother and I were kids, my dad bought us the Monorail Playset, including the Contemporary and Spaceship Earth add-on pieces.

For many years, it was set up all around my dad’s office, but eventually it was moved to storage because the sunlight from the windows started to discolor it.

I don’t know if the old track pieces were different than the ones sold today, but there was no good way of making a perfect circle with these pieces like I have seen people do around their Christmas trees.

The track was so big we had to set it up to go around and cross over both tables. Luckily, there was a long rectangular table in the corner of the event room that no one was using, so we pushed that in between the two round tables for the monorail track to sit on.

Snacks

It is customary for each table to bring various snacks and drinks to these events, so I knew that I wanted to incorporate some Disney themed snacks.

Jen baked up her amazing chocolate cupcakes and we make the Grey Stuff recipe from Be Our Guest for the icing and added Oreo Mickey ears. They were delicious!

I also bought a large black punch bowl, filled it would green Hawaiian Punch, rainbow sherbet and apples to make the Evil Queen’s Poisoned Apple Potion.

Atmosphere

To add to the ambiance, I comprised a playlist of Disney music from the theme parks and played that through a bluetooth speaker one of our group members brought in.

We also used a digital picture frame to display landscape pictures from the parks during the event.

The middle table with the monorail and cake needed something else, so I grabbed one of our white Christmas pillows and a sparkly silver dress shoe to represent Cinderella’s glass slipper.

Complications

We were allowed to arrive early in the morning to get it all ready for that night. I am so glad we did, because we had some complications that arose.

One of them being with the monorail. As previously mentioned, the track was too big to fit around one table so we had to put a rectangular table in between the two round ones to make it cross between them.

When we put up the Walt Disney World entrance sign, we noticed just how empty the archway looked on the white background.

We quickly ran out to our local Party City and grabbed a “life sized” Mickey Mouse Balloon to fill in the space.

While we were there, I found some adorable Disney party favors, including bottles of bubbles and confetti that we sprinkled around the table.

Costumes

After everything was set up the way we wanted it, we went back home to change into costume. The plan was for everyone in the group to dress up as a specific Disney character.

Some people took their costumes into their own hands and went all-out like our fabulous Fairy Godmother.

Everyone has their own level of dress-up comfort however, which is totally understandable.

For those that wanted something more comfortable, I bought different colored t-shirts at A.C. Moore and decorated then to fit certain characters.

Some characters I was able to create by cutting out pieces of felt and gluing them on with fabric glue like Mike, Sulley and Minnie Mouse.

Others, I had to draw by hand, which didn’t always work out the best.

We had a couple of sublimation printed costume t-shirts from Etsy that I brought too including the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat.

I pulled out my trusty Frozen costumes and dressed as Anna, while Jen borrowed my Elsa dress. My Mom donned her Olaf costume and hat.

The Event

The Trivia fundraiser was so much fun! Everyone really did a great job with their tables. There were some really creative ideas, such as a Mary Poppins chimney sweep table, a safari themed table, a Biergarten table and one table even painted themselves gold from head to toe to look like trophy toppers.

We didn’t come anywhere close to winning the trivia contest, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was we had fun and we supported a good cause!

I was proud to say I got the answer to the question “What is a group of parrots called?” due to my frequent visits to Animal Kingdom. The answer? – A Pandemonium!