I Produced a Game Show Inside Disney World. Here’s What It Was Like.

Over on the AllEars YouTube Channel, we’re constantly trying out new games and challenges that combine exploring Disney World and showing you how you can have the best vacation with entertainment!

Throughout just the past year, we’ve done a second Last to Leave Disney World Challenge, attempted to ride everything in Disney World in one day (on MORE than one occasion), played lots of rounds of Hide and Seek, Uno, Gamemaster challenges, and so much more. But what really goes into planning one of these games? Last year, I produced a version of Cash Cab in Disney World, and while I’m super happy with how it turned out, bringing it to fruition definitely wasn’t easy!

Before anything can be filmed, we have to come up with the idea for the video. Even though I’m often the one developing ideas for the channel, these ideas do still have to be approved to make sure they’re possible for us to do, and do the standard we’re aiming for.

Emma and QIduring the Price is Right Challenge

For Cash Cab, that started out with heading over to Google to look up tons of different game shows and see what could be adapted to fit in Disney World. Even stuff that sounds impossible to do in Disney World, like Cash Cab, can be adapted to be fun!

Something you may not know is that just like a real game show, the cast usually knows very little before they arrive to film a game show concept! I do briefings at the start of a game day, but often there are plot twists and rules they won’t learn about until later, just like what you’d see on a TV show. For example, Emma and Sage were familiar with the show Cash Cab, but it wasn’t until we were in Disney World to film that I explained to them how OUR Disney World version of the show would go.

Some of our team, plus some DFB friends!

Even the easier game shows we do still take a LOT of prep work before we even step foot into the park. To find the trivia questions for Cash Cab, I got the Weird But True! Disney: 300 Wonderful Facts to Celebrate the Magic of Disney book and scoured historical references and our own AllEars site for harder trivia questions! Easier questions I usually come up with on my own, but for any ONE challenge/game video, we usually need at least 100 questions, so you can imagine how long that took!

And even MORE prep goes into international videos!

In some game shows, there are challenges for the host to complete as well! For example, I panicked when I couldn’t read my phone to give Sage the trivia on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, or when the PeopleMover separated us. In case you haven’t seen that blooper clip, it’s below — looking back at it now, it’s hilarious, but in the moment, it definitely threw me off, because it meant that we would have to ride the attraction again to actually film what we needed to.

We’re not only filming a video for the YouTube Channel though — we’re also creating social media promos, taking site promo photos and thumbnails, and more! Plus, we have to keep track of anything that happens for our editors, so they know how to navigate the footage. Nothing is worse than getting four hours worth of footage only to find afterwards that only two hours is usable.

It’s never just filming — there’s a lot going on!

I want to make it clear too that when we’re filming these fun, exciting challenges, we’re never disruptive to Cast Members or other guests. While our main goal is to create entertaining content, that never comes at the expense of the experience of the guests or Cast Members around us. If something appears like it’ll be too disruptive, we scrap it immediately and find another way around it. That’s why, even in the most intense challenges, you won’t see us running through the parks! Running isn’t allowed, and even if we’re feeling the pressure of time, we won’t break a rule.