How to Host an Amazing Race Event
The Amazing Race is one of the worlds longest running and most popular game shows, and with good reason. The mix of travel, teamwork and themes appeals to a wide variety of ages, interests and abilities. Amazing Race parties have the potential to be the most unique and memorable event you or your children have ever attended, but they require a significant amount of planning and preparation to test even the most organised and creative hosts.
The biggest challenge in running your own Amazing race is in adapting the format in a way which is recognisable to fans of the show, but works for your location, intended age group and dynamic. Strained relationships created under the stress of world travel, tight deadlines and difficult tasks might make for fantastic viewing, but they unfortunately don’t make for a great birthday party.
Kids Clique have run hundreds of Amazing Race events across Australia and Europe and we have plenty of advice for you to consider when planning your party. While all of our parties come with a host guide and planner with specific advice to help you get organised, we have attached some general considerations below.
Theme:
You can create an Amazing Race event without a theme, and a series of unrelated tasks might be fun, but using a strong theme to align your challenges creates extra appeal and gives your event purpose.
Themes can relate to topics or values you wish to teach, personal values, interests or facts regarding the person/s whose event is being celebrated.
Format:
There are a few main aspects to consider before choosing tasks for your party.
1. Will all teams follow the same route in the same order?
We would generally suggest that social events such as birthdays and bachelor parties keep all teams following the same route in the same order to maximise social interaction and ensure a fair competition. This means that challenges need space and equipment to accommodate every team at once if necessary and requires careful planning and supervision to avoid cheating.
Events with an educational purpose have more flexibility for teams to conduct different challenges in a different order and utilise more game elements. This style of play allows for more creative use of equipment as each task only needs to accommodate one team, but also requires careful organisation and supervision to ensure the planned routes allow for sufficient time to reset between parties.
2. Will the tasks be held across one or multiple locations?
Events held along complex routes, such as across neighbourhoods or cities will require more planning as you may need to coordinate with opening hours, local transport providers and location specific requirements. Multiple location events are most suited to older teenagers and adults.
Events in a single location, such as children’s birthday parties or baby showers need to consider the location size and space available.
3. What is the event timeframe?
We generally suggest allowing for around 10 minutes per year of age for childrens parties (including the meal break), up to a maximum of 2.5 hours for adults. It is always better to finish earlier and leave your guests wanting more. Events that go for too long can lead to exhaustion, boredom and negative memories of the event.
For children this generally translates to around 3–5 normal challenges, 1 roadblock and 1 detour, leaving out the more complex elements of the game.
For adults we suggest choosing 5–9 challenges, using a combination of roadblocks, detours, intersections and standard challenges, plus a fast forward option, and including other game elements such as yields and u-turns.
Individual Challenge Considerations:
When it comes to children, we recommend ensuring every challenge you select is geared towards fun, and don’t include activities that could be difficult or frustrating. Try to avoid using challenges with set answers if possible, as it becomes easy for ‘losing’ teams to copy answers from those in front of them. There’s nothing worse than a party filled with arguments about who is and isn’t cheating!
Try to have one challenge towards the end geared for catching up — this could mean a challenge type such as a pinata, where the earlier teams take more time to prepare the challenge for later teams, or a challenge where later teams can learn from the techniques of earlier teams, who complete much of the trial and error such as a stacking or building challenge or similar.
The below graphic lists some considerations when choosing challenges.
Food and Decorations:
Our printable sets include elements designed for decoration, including place cards, cake toppers and labels using the style guide as shown below.
The main colour theme is black and yellow, plus red, blue, pink and/or green.
Prop suggestions
- World maps and Globes
- Road signs and symbols
- Photos or illustrations from around the world
- Suitcases, filled or unfilled
- Postcards and stamps
- Flags from around the world
- Old or fake passports
- Finger Foods from around the world
- Models of famous monuments
- Transport themed toys or models
- Bikes, wagons or scooters
Use a world map stencil to turn the top of your cake into a world map, or have your local bakery print one of our designs in edible ink.
Check out our pinterest board for a variety of decoration ideas:
https://www.pinterest.com.au/kidscliqueincursions/amazing-race-themed-events/
