Reveal tips for surprise trip for group of high school seniors

[calicarma]

Hi, everyone. I'm brand new here and have been looking around the site, but don't see anything like what I'm asking...

I work for an Upward Bound program, which helps low-income high school kids get ready for college. Most of our kids will be the first in their family to attend college. They come from tiny small towns, most of which don't even have a McDonalds. We have quite a bit of money in our budget left over this year, so we have decided to use it for a trip for our seniors. We have 20 or so we will be taking to Disney World in April. Most of these kids have never been out of our state (Kentucky), so this will be a REALLY big deal for them.

Now, my question: The reveal. We have told them we are taking them somewhere, just not where. We will reveal the trip to them the next time we have them all together (January 19th), and we want to make it very special. Right now I'm trying to leave very vague clues on our Facebook page, such as "you will need this for our senior trip" with a picture of sunscreen. The kids have no idea even what state we are going to. I'm running out of ideas to take it from vague to more specific, though. Any ideas there?

Also, what about for the big reveal when we are together? I have seen the box of balloon ideas, and that's an option, I just wondered if anyone had any other truly spectacular ideas.

Also, anyone have ideas for groups at Disney, or can you point me somewhere that has planning advice? We are doing all the planning ourselves.

Thank you!

 

[maddiemacsmommy]

This sounds like so much fun! I think a scavenger hunt would be great fun for the kids. You could leave clues that lead to the big box of balloons. Or they could search for the clues that would tell them the location of the trip. Be sure to incorporate lots of Disney music. You could split them into groups and give them tongue in cheek names that would double as clues as to where you are headed. There is so much you could do! Have fun with it and have a wonderful trip!

 

[js]

You can purchase 20 shirts and each one have a letter on them that spells out "You are going to Disney!" I believe that is 20 characters not including spaces. You can mix up the shirts tell them all to pick one, put on, and have
them try to figure out what /where they are going? Have fun and let us know what you decide to do.

 

[Robbi]

We did this for our daughter and her friends. I made our dining reservations and mailed them invitations from the characters associated with the restaurants. They were calling each other and when they realized it was at Disney World, they called my daughter because they know that I'm the Disney nut. I wish that I would have recorded the whopping and carrying on. They were all so excited. We had a fantastic trip!

 

[rutgers1]

I love all of these ideas. As I was reading the original post, I was thinking "scavenger hunt," but the t-shirt idea works great, too.

You could also do one of those puzzles where they have to answer questions, with one of the letters going into a "secret code" at the bottom.