Long Beach businesses, history, trivia, games and prizes come together for the third annual Discover Long Beach scavenger hunt . For 35 years, Leadership Long Beach (LLB) has worked to empower community leaders to create a better future for Long Beach through leadership programs and fundraiser events like Discover Long Beach.
“Discover Long Beach is a perfect manifestation of our mission in action as we bring people together to learn about, participate in and connect with Long Beach in fun new ways,” Executive Director Sean Devereaux said.
The idea for Discover Long Beach was born from a previous annual event that LLB hosted, a Putt-Putt Golf event. The Putt-Putt Golf event brought awareness to LLB, activated local businesses and was enjoyed by the community, but it was contained 5to specific business districts. With Discover Long Beach, participants travel all around the city.
In this “Amazing Race” style event, teams of three to five will be given missions that may require photos, participating in social media challenges or answering trivia questions among other things. Discover Long Beach Mission Control will also send out random pop-up challenges to keep participants on their toes.
“Some challenges are worth points, others may be connected to prizes. Contestants won’t know about the pop-up challenges until they are unveiled in the race app,” Alumni Committee Co-Chair Justin Simon said.
Participants will be required to download the Goosechase app which will reveal the challenge information on the day of the race. The information will include the challenge location, trivia questions and how many points each challenge is worth.
Teams will need to strategize to determine which challenges they want to do. The Goosechase app will also have live leaderboard updates.
Mission Control is made up of volunteers who will be continuously interacting with participants throughout the event. They’ll provide feedback for missed missions and have awards for stylishly completed missions.
Most importantly they are available to offer counter missions to participants who are unable to complete a challenge due to limitations they have. While the challenges are designed to be completed within a few minutes, there are times when a team needs a different challenge. Accordingly, teams are allowed to choose which challenges they do.
“Last year’s event had participants as young as eight and folks into their 60s. We anticipate a broad age range again this year,” Simon said.
“The physical challenges can be modified to meet any participant’s individual abilities and needs, and Mission Control stays in constant communication with teams throughout the event and can adjust on the fly as needed.”
While sponsorships and ticket sales help cover the hard cost of larger events, volunteers bring it all together.
“We are also reliant on over 1000 hardworking volunteers annually to deliver all of our programs and events, Discover Long Beach included,” Devereaux said. “Leadership Long Beach is powered by volunteers.”
Upon completing the race, every competitor will be given a raffle ticket for a chance to win gift certificates from participating businesses. With Discover Long Beach being a race, the three teams that earn the most points will receive gift certificates to local Long Beach restaurants, cultural activities and other Long Beach-based prizes.
Discover Long Beach is set to take place on June 22 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is open to people of all ages. The only requirements are for the team to have five members or less and for one member to have a driver’s license since traveling will be required to complete the race. Registration is still open on the Leadership Long Beach website at an early bird price of $40 until May 22.
Teams will be required to fill out liability and photo release waivers while completing registration. As a bonus for registering, teams will be given access to half-price tickets to Beer Fest and LB Beer Lab.
LLb hopes for Long Beach locals and non-locals to enjoy Discover Long Beach and appreciate the history, businesses and community Long Beach houses.
“Looking ahead, LLB is always looking for more ways to share our love for our favorite city in the world. Every year it gets bigger and better,” Devereaux said. “We hope that other community leadership organizations like ours will produce similar events in their own cities and we would be happy to lend our expertise. But our efforts are singularly focused on making Long Beach the best that it can be for the benefit of all of us who live and or work here.”
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