CARnival Drive Thru Club

Robb Schreiber with San Diego North Young Life

We wanted to bring the camp carnival to our area in a way that all games can be played from the car to help with social distancing. We used a parking lot that wrapped around a building so kids could not see around the corner to what was happening next.

On two consecutive nights, we ran this club for our 2 HS ministries, 3 MS ministries and our Capernaum ministry. We spread out the schools start times by 30 minutes to prevent car lines from getting backed up – more time playing instead of more time waiting in line.

When one MS group was coming through, the leaders from the other school helped with behind scene work so the the leaders could spend all their time interacting with kids from their club. (Think: work crew, summer staff, etc.) We did the same with HS and Capernaum leaders.

We did our club at night, and the parking lot was not well lit enough, so we used one of these lights for each station.

We plan on doing another CARnival for Halloween and for Christmas because it was such a hit! It also helps to share the cost of supplies across ministries.

FIRST STATION: Welcome Ticket Booth

• We wanted a good wow effect so we built a Carnival Ticket booth.
  • It was a lot of work to build and paint.
    • With 2 sheets of plywood, hinges, wood, and paint and letter… we probably spent $150
  • For ease and cheaper, you can buy one.
    • Option 1
    • Option 2
  • This is a fun backdrop to use
• At this station:
  • Welcome students
  • Invite the kids come out for a photo
  • Explain how the night is going to work with games and raffle tickets
    • Raffle tickets can be earned at every station. Winning raffle ticket numbers are emailed to the parent database and posted on social media.
    • Winning kids get lunch delivered to their house. (Our school district is 100% zoom now.) We have leaders delivering lunch – built in contact work!
  • If new/first to Young Life/WyldLife, give parents a clipboard and club card and welcome info. They can fill it out while driving through the club and drop it off at the end.

SECOND STATION: Squirt Gun or Popper Gun

• KEY – You need good quality squirt guns!
• We used both squirt guns and popper guns (listed below.) The popper guns were a lot of work chasing down all of the balls. We had 4 guns so we always had a gun ready for the next car.
  • Popper Gun
  • Popper Gun option 2
  • Popper Gun Option 3 with targets
• Table set up with bunch of red solo cups as targets
• Have x amount of time or x amount of water in gun to clear the table
• # of raffle tickets given based on how fast they clear the table

THIRD STATION: Wiffle Ball Toss

• Here is one video and another video of how to play this game!
• We built our station, hot glued cups, and then put a screw through the cups because the hot glue was not strong enough. The hot glue was very helpful to hold the cups in place when pre drilling holes and then screwing in the screws. We used 5oz cups from Walmart because they are cheap and the right size for wiffle balls.
• Each car gets 6 wiffle balls: 5 white, 1 golden (spray painted)
• After each round balls are placed in a bucket of bleach water, then into a bucket of soapy water, and then into a bucket of plain water to be cleaned for each kid.
• Have 18 balls so that balls can be a cleaned (set of 6 ready for each car)
• 266 cups with different colors
• SCORING
  • 2 Gold cup 100 raffle tickets white ball in cup
  • Gold ball in gold cup $100 dollars off future YL camp
  • 5 Purple cups 50 raffle tickets
  • 10 Blue cups 25 raffle tickets
  • 20 Green cups 10 raffle tickets
  • 50 Orange cups 5 raffle tickets
  • 100 Red cups 1 raffle ticket

FOURTH STATION: Basketball

• Each car gets 6 shots.
• Raffle tickets are based on the number of shots made.
• After each round balls are placed in a bucket of bleach water, then into a bucket of soapy water, and then into a bucket of plain water to be cleaned for each kid.
• SCORING
  • 6 shots made 60 raffle tickets
  • 5 shots made 50 raffle tickets
  • 4 shots made 40 raffle tickets
  • 3 shots made 30 raffle tickets
  • 2 shots made 20 raffle tickets
  • 1 shot made 10 raffle tickets
  • 0 shots made 1 raffle ticket per time they hit the rim

FIFTH STATION- Smoke Ring Cannon

• Here is a video to show the smoke cannon.
• We made these in the past for a weekend camp and have used them in the past for a club game.
• Have them either shoot targets off of a table or the leaders head.

SIXTH STATION- Toilet Dunk Tank

• Video of Toilet Dunk Tank
  • Video 2 – better angle to see how the rip cord works.
• Kids were able to pull the rip cord from the car to flush the toilet
• Buildling the dunk tank:
  • We mounted the toilet on a ¾ inch piece of plywood and lifted the hatch on the side of the scaffolding so we didn’t have to cut a hole in the scaffolding board.
  • You can see to the left of the chair we had a 2×4 going from the board with the toilet to the ground with 2 of these wenches. We also cut a hole in the plywood so a string could be duct taped to the toilet handle, go through the hole through both these wenches and then to the kid to pull.
  • To fill the tank, we used a couple of hoses. We left the water on and inserted one of these in between the hoses so we could turn the water on and off for refilling the tank. We used zip ties to secure the hose to the back of the scaffolding and to the toilet tank so the hose could not fall out of the tank.
  • We bought this scaffolding from Home Depot
    • We didn’t trust ourselves in what we could build and that would be easy to transport. This is built to hold 1100 pounds, so a 80 pound toilet would be safe.
    • We bought a new toilet from Home Depot. For some reason our leaders weren’t too excited to have a used toilet flush on their head. They weren’t convinced that we could clean it well enough. We don’t blame them.
• We had to tell kids not to pull hard. They were VERY excited to flush their leader and thought the harder they pulled the string the more water would come out.

SIXTH STATION- Goodbye

• Give packet of info to parents
  • Calendar
  • Parent Letter with all of YL Area contact info
  • Info on WyldLife permission slip
  • Info on Raffle on YouTube and Instagram Live
  • Any aea info you want them to have.

IDEA FOR EXTRA FILL-IN STATIONS

• If traffic gets backed up leaders can go to cars waiting in line with the following
  • Fun conversation based interactions
    • Trivia questions for raffle tickets
    • Would You Rather Questions
    • Name That Tune for Raffle Tickets
      • Disney Voices
      • Cartoons from 2010-2017
      • Pixar Voices
    • Dad Jokes

LEADER COSTUME IDEAS

• All leaders wear YL shirts
• Carnival Hats
• Other

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