Wilderness Explorers Questions

[jlhmom75]

I'm planning a trip for 12 of us including grandparents, parents and grandkids for this June. I'm trying to find ways to make the whole day interesting in different ways - lots of personalities. I'd like to plan to do Wilderness Explorers on our AK day. We're staying onsite and planning to arrive as early as possible (pre-rope drop). My understanding is that the Wilderness Explorers "station" isn't open until later. Questions for those that have done it:
Do the booklets change?
Is there any way to get the booklets ahead of time? It looks like they are free so I don't think I can get them online, correct? (I'd be looking for 3 or 4 (one kid is 15 - not sure if he'd want a book himself or will just help the youngest who is 4).
In this post-COVID world, is it still fun?

All of the kids in this group are huge animal lovers and are interested in them so I think this would be fun. Thanks for any info you can give me.

 

[hpsalb]

We’ve done Wilderness Explorers twice in the last few years. I don’t believe the books change, or if they do, it’s not frequent. They don’t send them out in advance, the kids get their booklet and do a pledge/oath when they get it.

Once we did it casually, only got some of the badges (stickers). Last summer one of my boys was determined to get them all. That was honestly pretty challenging. Some of the stations were harder to find and there almost isn’t enough time to get to them all. Don’t be afraid to ask a CM nearby for help finding a station!

 

[Mango7100]

My daughter finished her book this past summer, and the book had changed slightly from when she started over Christmas 2019. The badges were the same, but the page numbers to find each badge were different and a few stations had moved slightly to a different location

 

[CaptainAmerica]

We’ve done Wilderness Explorers twice in the last few years. I don’t believe the books change, or if they do, it’s not frequent. They don’t send them out in advance, the kids get their booklet and do a pledge/oath when they get it.

Once we did it casually, only got some of the badges (stickers). Last summer one of my boys was determined to get them all. That was honestly pretty challenging. Some of the stations were harder to find and there almost isn’t enough time to get to them all. Don’t be afraid to ask a CM nearby for help finding a station!

My daughter finished her book this past summer, and the book had changed slightly from when she started over Christmas 2019. The badges were the same, but the page numbers to find each badge were different and a few stations had moved slightly to a different location

Are the books able to be completed right now, or are there stations that are closed because of COVID? I believe some of them in the past required talking with members of the cultural representative programs from Asia and Africa, and those programs are currently suspended.

On our next trip, my immediate family is coming in a day earlier than the rest of my family, so we're going to use that day to do this.

 

[Mango7100]

We were able to complete it in July 2021, so I would think that still holds true. But we had already had some badges done pre-covid. I believe we did have to get some of the cultural badges in 2021 and were able to do that

 

[hpsalb]

In theory we were able to complete them all enough to earn each badge in July 2021. At some stations just listen or finding the station earned that badge. I believe one or two stations handed out more than one badge. They said not to tell anybody but sometimes a “recovery badge” is an option if you couldn’t find or missed a station or it closed early.