Would anyone be willing to share their gumball rally strategy? I would love to go and just try it out myself, maybe with some friends. If anyone has a form or something they follow that you're willing to share, I would really appreciate it and would be happy to take notes on it, etc.
Basically, just go study each ride. The questions are random, so there's no way of knowing what will be on the sheets this year.
Well, as someone who did the Gumball Rally for the first time last year, I'll tell you this: No matter what strategy you come up with, prepare for it to fly right out the window and come up with a new one on the spot!
I'm not even joking. No matter what amount of preparation you do or how much you study for the Gumball Rally, there's just too many factors that'll set your plans awry. You just have to go with the flow. I believe last year the DLR faced some record attendance that day. I have NEVER seen Disneyland so crowded before. I think it had a lot to do with the just announced ticket price hike and everyone going to the DLR to purchase their AP right before the new price took effect. I was also told by a friend later that a famous Korean pop group went that day and a lot of people went to Disneyland to stalk them. Whatever the reason was, it was super crowded and it caused lots of problems for Gumball Rally participants. I believe Indy was down for most of the day, and that caused a lot of headaches for Gumball Rally-ers.
So the best strategy I can give you, as cliche as it sounds, is to just have fun! Gumball Rally is just a fun little competition, and you're supposed to have fun with it. My friends and I had a BLAST last year despite losing very badly. But it didn't matter because the important thing is we had fun. I am 90% sure that we are going to do it again this year.
So if you're thinking of doing it this year, just do it! You won't regret it!
Last edited by KiMcHeEfOrLiFe; 01-27-2013 at 10:41 AM.
I'm not worried about the questions, as those are things you're supposed to answer while you're there. I'm more curious as to if anyone knows where I can find the list of what rides are worth points? I'm not very familiar with the Gumball Rally and how it works, but I believe that E tickets/rides with a usualyl higher wait time are worth more, right? I would love to be able to do a couple runs around the park seeing what kind of points I can collect on an average day just to see! It would give something for my friends and I to try on our next visit, too.
You won't find the list anywhere as they don't release the info until you're at the Rally. Also, we won't know what attractions will or will not be on the list either. You're pretty much blind until you get the pamphlet with all the attractions and questions. The ultimate goal in the end is to ride ALL the rides in the fastest time, if not, the most rides/points in the fastest time. If you want more info, you can find it here: http://micechat.com/rally/Originally Posted by KellyMcG86
I'm not worried about the questions, as those are things you're supposed to answer while you're there. I'm more curious as to if anyone knows where I can find the list of what rides are worth points? I'm not very familiar with the Gumball Rally and how it works, but I believe that E tickets/rides with a usualyl higher wait time are worth more, right? I would love to be able to do a couple runs around the park seeing what kind of points I can collect on an average day just to see! It would give something for my friends and I to try on our next visit, too.
It also has some trip reports of the Rally too. My advice? Don't worry about it too much! Just sign up and get ready for a full day of fun with your MiceChat friends
Ohhhh okay. Well maybe I'll just go an challenge myself to see how many rides we can get on in one day just for the fun of it! Thank you so much for the info!
I can't emphasize how much this should be your worry. We got EVERY 4 point question wrong and we are still perplexed as to where those "correct" answers came from. Whoever graded our booklet must have thought we were big time cheaters, but we really don't know what we could have done differently. It was especially heartbreaking to get Indy wrong, since we were lucky enough to get fast passes in the morning before it broke down, and we thought that would give us a boost.
This year we've decided on trying to break our actual score (rather than our estimated tabulated score), and not worry about the competition otherwise. Once you've gone once, you can have that personal goal in mind.
I agree about the crowds last year; I've never seen it so busy. It was difficult adjusting and making compromises, as it was stated prior to the start that they were expecting a lot of teams to finish every attraction in the booklet. However, I think that statement was made without the realization that the park would be so packed. Halfway through the competition, we were feeling pretty down because we weren't close to finishing and we had an impression that most teams would finish. However, the reality was that everyone was struggling with the lines that day.
I think the biggest question for this year is: where do we start? Go to DL and get a bunch of rides done early? Go to DCA and get RSR fast passes? This is our big debate this year.
Despite some bummers and disappointments, it was the most fun I've ever had. You should have seen the awesome blisters on our feet! Battle scars! I look forward to it all year, and I even made sure I'd have my baby (I'm seven months pregnant) with plenty of time so recover and be there.
Do you guys write extra notes next to each answer? Does that help? We are so concerned about getting the questions wrong and not getting credit.
Team Captain
No Time for Snack Bar
Go ahead, wait in line for that Pineapple Whip. I won't stop you.
Oh man, Big Thunder still has us scratching our heads. I felt like that one was almost impossible to answer. How did you find out which questions you got correct/incorrect? I wasn't aware that we could find out. I'm really curious what questions we got wrong since we thought our score would be a lot higher. Oh well, maybe I shouldn't worry about it since it was last year. I should really worry about this year's Gumball Rally and how my team can improve 8)
I wonder where the Gumball Rally will be held this year. I hope it'll be at just one park so I won't have to purchase a park hopper since the tickets are more expensive. But we won't find out that information until a little later in the year.
Ah yes, the battle scars. My feet felt terrible after the Rally. It was pure torture just to stand! It really sucked too because after we turned our answer sheet in, my GF (at the time) had to upgrade her AP before the price hike took effect and we had to stand in the long line at the ticket booths because the whole world was at Disneyland trying to buy APs. It was ~40 minutes of pain and agony standing there. We were also very sore for a few days D: Stairs were my enemies!
Anyways, really excited for the Gumball Rally this year! I expect some good competition! BTW congrats on your baby!
Blank game booklets with answer keys were sold in limited numbers right after the competition. I bought two, one for each of us, and I remember getting an crazed text message from my sister about all our wrong answers when her booklet arrived in the mail. Thunder Mountain was the worst. As we exited the tunnel, we both looked at each other like "I hope you counted correctly!" and neither of us had a clear answer. There were some near-tears after that ride because we just did NOT have time to ride it again. We did end up picking the right one on that just by guessing the most reasonable answer.
We counted the number of handrails wrong in the hallway of Space Mountain. We didn't count the emergency door, but we did count the handrail after the opening to the pictures/bathroom area. The question wasn't clear on where to stop counting.
We counted the number of lanterns wrong on Indy. This is still the most confusing for us. My sister went on it a week later, and still counted one. I've watched a bunch of youtube videos and I count....1. But the answer key said two. Where is the second latern?!
We counted the amount of fish at the end of the ride of Nemo wrong. We saw Dori and the whale. The answer was two, but we decided to only count Dori. Maybe we were suppose to count the whale as a fish?
Prior to getting the books in the mail, we thought we had 76 points, but we only got 61 points correct according to the answer key.
We were quite upset with ourserlves after seeing our errors. This time, we've decided just to have a different goal and attitude, and just compete against ourselves. So, our goal is a minimum of 77 points and a great day. I'm looking forward to our final march to the McDonald's for a chicken mcnugget binge at the end!
Best tip? Pack candied pecans to eat. We brought in some subway sandwiches, but with the heat and our exhaustion, we couldn't finish them. Pecans were the perfect snack!
Team Captain
No Time for Snack Bar
Go ahead, wait in line for that Pineapple Whip. I won't stop you.
I can see the questions are important, but can you really study ahead of time? Based on the questions you're describing, it sounds like unless you memorize the blueprints of the ride, there's really no way to prepare. And boy, those sure sound like some tricky questions! I would be rather irritated to lose points based on things like that.
Anyway, I really appreciate all of the tips and info!!!
The questions are designed so that they are "easy to answer" but hard to guess without actually riding the attraction. It's the "proof" that you rode the attraction. There aren't any trick questions; they are usually simple and straightforward. For example, a question could be how many times does the centipede show up in the bug room in Indy. Nobody knows the answer, but when you ride Indy and are in the bug room, you can easily count how many times the centipede appears and answer the question. The questions tell you what you have to look for on an attraction so you can then answer the question.
MiceChat does a lot of research in creating their questions. Sometimes though, between the time the questions are finalized and the actual event, something could've changed about the attraction and your answer won't be on the answer sheet. Or sometimes the questions aren't exactly clear or a little bit confusing. It happened last year with a few of the questions. MiceChat will set up an area where you can talk to the people working the Rally and talk to them about any questions or issues that may have came up during the event.
There's no real way to actually prepare. You just have to be the most efficient team to ride the most rides in the Rally. Other than that, there's not much that can be done until the day of the event.
Last edited by KiMcHeEfOrLiFe; 01-29-2013 at 12:05 AM.
My girlfriend and I did the GB rally for the very first time last year and it was insane in the parks that day! We were one of the few teams that got on Indy and it actually went down while we were on it and had to get EVACd which was fun! But anyway I bought an extra blank book and looking at it the high point rides from last year were the DLRR, BTMRR, SM, Splash Mount and the medium point attractions included Captain EO, Autopia, ST, Dumbo, Peter Pan, HM, POTC, Tiki Room, RRCS. Hope this gives all those newbies an idea of how rides are given point values!
Yes!!! This is exactly the kind of information I was hoping for!! Thank you so much!
Ok, so my thinking on the questions is correct in that you can't prepare for them. I'm actually kind of excited about the questions, it will give me new things to look for on rides!
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