11655

Super Incredible Movie 8yr - Obstacle Course

July 2005

Holly in Dublin, OH USA

Special Mention

Super Incredible Movie Party-8 yr  As a compromise between my son's wish for an Incredibles party and my wishes for a less commercial theme, we decided on a movie themed party where we would show The Incredibles. 

I made the invitations on Publisher, made a black rectangle with white circles along the top and bottom to look like filmstrip with a big yellow oval announcing Jason's Super Incredible Movie Party in red.  The inside was orange with a yellow "pow" shape where all the details were printed.  The party time was 6-10pm. 

We decorated with yellow, red, incredibles green and orange crepe paper.  I let me son get involved in the decorating and he came up with some completely new ideas that looked great.  We also printed off an Incredibles poster from the Disney website and using black posterboard and a print out in a very large font size of the words "now playing" made a theater looking piece to hang in the party room.  We found another poster in an Incredibles coloring book we had and also used some of the birthday boy's own original Incredibles artwork.  We bought the incredibles table cloth for the pizza/cake table and a 2 black table cloths - one for the craft table and one for the concession stand.  

The partyware was a mix between incredibles and plain colored yellow, orange and red.  We used the incredibles happy meal toys for additional decorations on the party table.  It looked great.    We had the Incredibles sound track playing during the party and had a Jack-Jack bubble blower toy going in the back yard as the guests arrived.  I put 407 buttered-popcorn flavor jelly-bellies in a jar and made each child write down a guess on a pow shaped piece of paper with their name on it as they arrived. 

We sent them out into the backyard to play until everyone was there.  At that time, we started the obstacle course which included "flying" on a zip line that we have from our swingset to a tree, walking along a fallen log, going around and through some wooden pallets to represent skyscrapers and jumping over some tree stumps.  We timed each child and kept track so we could announce the winner.  I wanted the final obstacle to be the kids crashing through a wall of cardboard bricks, but my husband said it would take too long to set up for each player.  Maybe next time! 

For the prizes, we gave out different amounts of monopoly money, more for the winner, but everyone got at least $1 for playing.  We told them to keep the money safe because they would be able to use it at the concession stand. We also let the winner of the jelly bean guessing game keep the jelly beans.

The next game was a relay that used plastic grocery store bags and some small neopet stuffed animals that we happened to get in a happy meal that day.  Each team had 2 grocery bags and the first person put theirs on like a backpack/cape.  Each team had one neopet in the bag and when we said go, they had to run down to the end of the yard, around a marker on the ground and back to the next person who was waiting with the bag on their back already.  They then had to transfer the neopet from the first to the second person's backpack and could then take off for the end of the yard.  It was fun to watch them try to get the neopets out of the bags, it was difficult to do it quickly.  The winning team got more $s for prizes, but everyone got at least $1.   

We went inside and served pop rocks while setting up dinner.  They really liked the pop rocks!  While the kids were eating pizza we asked them movie trivia questions like what is the hawaiian word for family, what was the name of Syndrome's island hideout and other questions from kid's movies.  Whoever shouted out the answer first received $1.  I had taped a piece of crepe paper to the bottom of one chair before the party and asked them to check - the one who had that chair got $1.   

After pizza I split them up into two groups, one group came to the filming studio and the others played outside with some rocket balloons.  There were only 4 kids in each group and I let them pick a movie that they had all seen and then decide which characters they wanted to be.  We videod two scenes for each group then switched the groups.  I was so surprised at the range of movies that were suggested.  Everything from The Last Samauri to Fantasia.  It was really hard to find a movie that they all had seen and considered "cool" enough.  After both groups had done their filming, we brought them all in and let them watch the homemade movies.  It was fun and will be a nice keepsake of the party. 

The cake was a larger full-cake version of the family fun cupcake idea that look like popcorn buckets.  We did a circle layer cake with white icing and put red icing stripes vertically all around the sides.  We also put a red icing rim along the top of the sides. 

Next we cut up white mini marshmallows and put them all over the top to look like popcorn.  I painted on a little bit of yellow food coloring to look like butter.  The kids thought it looked sweet.  Ice cream was the preportioned sundae cups- so easy.  We showed the movie outside on our patio using a laptop, an LCD projector, and a sheet hung up on the house for the screen.  It worked out excellently, it was a beautiful night and felt just like being at the drive in movies. 

My son was so intent on getting tiki torches we finally relented and got him some as a birthday gift which we used at the party.  We opened presents while my husband was setting up the movie and took a picture of each child with the birthday boy as he opened their gift.  We always send these out in the thank you notes.  We opened the concession stand which I had set up on our air hockey table, covered with a black plastic table cloth.  We made popcorn in a pot on the stove so we could get the movie theater popcorn smell. 

I had considered renting a movie theater style popcorn popper but it was going to be $45.  I am glad I did not get it because the kids went straight for the candy and the pop and only got popcorn as an afterthought when their money ran out and I was giving it away for free.  We "sold" the big boxes of candy for $5, some smaller boxes for $1-$2, sweet tart rolls for $2, popcorn for $3 and different varieties of caffeine free pop for $1.  I tried to price the candy so that each guest would only be able to afford one big box of candy, but most thought it was too expensive and went for the cheaper kind.  We had leftovers so as the guests left they received additional candy.  We gave out free refills of popcorn and pop. 

The goodie bags were in popcorn bags from GFS.  We included white and yellow crinkly paper to look like popcorn.  The gifts were candy, a microwave popcorn bag, and Incredibles stickers.  All the kids and our family loved it.  It ended up being a great party.

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