When we started adding themes to our company’s portfolio of interactive mystery parties a few years ago, we decided to add a holiday party. But it quickly became clear we had a problem if we were going to use this for our corporate team building events.
Talking about a murder over the holidays in our improv events just didn’t seem right. Our solution for our mixing and mingling mystery parties was that we didn’t have to do a murder mystery – the mystery could just as easily be trying to find the person who committed a lesser crime. So we created a mystery focused on finding the person who stole something from Santa Claus.
Since our parties can go up to 100 people, we realized even with the reindeer and elves, we could never reach 100 players. Eventually, we came up with this solution for our theme, which has worked well:
Scenario: Every year, Santa Claus throws a big end-of-the-season party for his administrative staff as well as the elves in the workshop and the reindeer. That was still not enough characters, so we created the nearby town of Frigid.
We decided that, in addition to his staff, Santa needed vendors with expertise the toymaking elves didn’t have, like Harry the Heater Guy who lives in Frigid and fixes everybody’s heaters. The Frigid community also gives guests the opportunity to play characters that don’t require them to wear anything special – they can be Frigid city commissioners who come to the event in business attire.
The kicker to the party is Santa invites all his imaginary friends – the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Goldilocks and many other storybook characters.
It works, and it has been a big hit for groups that are looking for “something different for the typical holiday party. So if you are looking for a company holiday party that also doubles as a team building event in the Tampa Bay area (including Polk County, Sarasota County or Pasco County), please give us a call at 727-430-5908.
