Scavenging for Group Sales

Focus: Fun Spot Action Park, Orlando, Fla.

When it comes to scavenging for group sales, the folks at Fun Spot Action Park have turned the tables: They have their group guests do the scavenging—for fun!

It started out as a strategy for attracting corporate team-building groups. But now the scavenger hunts are attracting church and school groups, too.

The scavenger hunts are the brainchild of Mark Brisson, marketing director for Fun Spot Action Park in Orlando, Fla. “Some of the things that we were doing (for team building) were not holding their interest,” Brisson says. “We were blindfolding the driver and having the passenger tell him how to drive, or we’d have groups race each other. We’d have a couple of introduction ice-breaking games and then the go-karts, and it didn’t work. This works far better.”

The scavenger hunts combine a search for clues with a word puzzle that the teams race to solve. To keep it fun, guests spin the park’s prize wheel to determine which team they are on. The teams are then given seven hints for where they will find clues to solve the word puzzle. Each hint relates to an activity at the park. For example, one hint used to read, “It’s a run for the roses as you go around to collect your clue.” Successful teams rode the carousel, on which they would receive their clue from the ride attendant.

Each clue challenges the team to come up with a specific word that relates to the group’s visit. For example, corporate team-building groups working on customer service might receive a clue that talks about the eight-letter word that describes good customer service. That word is “courtesy.”

Once the team has collected all seven clues and identified the seven words, it must then scramble all the letters in those words to come up with a phrase that relates to the group’s visit. To narrow the possibilities, the teams are told how the letters are divided up into word order. The team that collects the clues and unscrambles the letters to come up with the correct phrase is the winner. “We give out fun prizes,” Brisson says, “like yo-yos; mazes; snow globes. We keep it fun even though we are teaching serious subjects.”

Typically, teams spend about 90 minutes doing the necessary activities to earn their clues and about 30 minutes solving the word scramble.

Initially the park tried a scavenger hunt during which groups were sent out to search the park. This resulted in groups bypassing attractions to race through the park, so Brisson restructured the hunts with a lesson plan.

“We are forcing the members from your company to go out and all ride the bumper boats together and all get wet. You’re having fun, so you’re not as obsessed about looking for the clues.” The team knows it will get the clue as soon as it completes the activity, Brisson says.

Fun Spot Action Park offers four different team-building lesson plans for scavenger hunts: keys to good customer service; how to make a good project great; how to close the deal; and a refresher course in sales.

Brisson came up with the lesson plans himself. Then a church group heard about the team-building scavenger hunts and requested something similar for its group. Brisson eventually realized the lessons could also be adapted for school groups, whether the subject be math, English, social studies, or civics.

“The lesson plans are quite adaptable. I know the rides I’m going to send you to, so its just a matter of coming up with seven paragraphs with one word missing that relate to the group,” he says. “If it’s an English class, and you want to learn about Shakespeare, it’s not hard to come up with seven quotes from Shakespeare. The only tricky part is finding the words that will give you the letters you need to come up with the final phrase. That is the only point where I spend a lot of time developing this.”

Fun Spot Action Park offers the scavenger hunts for groups of 10 to 150. The park charges $10 for each participant, plus $200 for the facilitator who leads the lessons. Groups can upgrade to a charge of $24 per person for unlimited rides after the scavenger hunt, and they also have an option of paying $5 a head for a pizza party in connection with the event.

Fun Spot is averaging about two scavenger hunts a month, and it is looking to increase that number now that the park is offering hunts geared toward school groups.

When Brisson first proposed the scavenger hunts, the owner thought “they might be a little too cerebral,” Brisson says. “But that’s not the feedback we’re getting at all. People have really enjoyed them.”

The park is not without obstacles, however. “One of the challenges we have with corporations is people not wanting to play along: ‘I’m not going to go on a go-kart.’ But there is something interesting that happens by making them do it as a team; they have to go along and they become more childlike and have fun.”

—Frank Elliott