So DI just ended once again. If you don’t remember what DI is or this is your first time hearing it, here’s a quick summary:

Destination Imagination is a non profit organization that hosts a challenge that anyone with a group of friends can join. Theres are different challenges that you can choose from, their subjects are engineering, arts, improv, science and technical. Different age categories get scored differently and have some changes to rules.

We didn’t have the option for improv this year so i chose technical since the challenge was to make a working pinball machine sized up. This year we were grouped with the grade 9s so we had to meet them and pretend to like them (thats a joke I loved my group). My group consisted of James Streeter, Max Naiman-Bobroff, Ryan Burnett, and my 1 other grade 10 teammate Keenan Houlihan.

We started working in our groups in mid January, only 3 months away from regionals. We were panicked and didn’t quite know what we were doing, so naturally we put it off until February.

Our story was about a foster child running away and getting lost inside of the labyrinth in Greek myth. As hes walking he encounters multiple different characters, he meets a dying man that warns him about the maze and its dangers. As our main character walks, he meets the Minotaur who starts to fight him. As the main character starts loosing, (drunk) Dionysus enters and splits up the fight, introducing himself as the main characters father. He explains where he has been and then gifts him a Molotov cocktail to use against the Minotaur. Dionysus walks off as the character progresses into the maze as he meets the maker of the maze; Daedalus. He makes a deal that he would let the main character leave after he plays daedalus’s pinball machine. He plays, gets the master sword, and leaves the maze, ending the story.

The roles were:

Ryan as the main character

Keenan as the Minotaur

James as Dying man and Daedalus

Myself as Dionysus

Max as nothing because he couldn’t come to the performance

By the time regionals came around, our solution was barely working. We went into the performance expecting nothing, here’s kinda how it went:

The story was going great but we get to the pinball machine and nothing was working. The ball kept getting stuck and we needed to touch it to get it to work, the silence was loud and we couldn’t get scored on our round because we kept touching it.

That performance was rough but surprisingly we got 3rd (out of 4 teams)

But of course, the story didn’t end at 3rd.

The day of provincials.

our instant challenge was at 11:30. It went really well, we were making the appraisers laugh, we knew we did good.

We modified our machine so the ball wouldn’t get stuck and i modified to sword to look more like the Mastersword from Zelda. Everything went well during the story, i forgot a few of my parts which led to me not being able to give him the Molotov, But everyone was laughing at what i was doing and saying.

The pinball round went great! The ball didn’t get stuck and we had a stick that i would use in case it ever got stuck. Once it did inevitably get stuck, i picked up the stick and called it me “godly powers” pretending to use magic on the ball to get it unstuck. I was narrating most of what was going on and it seemed like it worked really well! Nobody touched the ball that would end the round, and it wasn’t awkwardly silent!!

The scores were in and we were gathered in the gym.

Third place was announced. It wasn’t us. I started getting worried.

Second place was a tie. Oh god neither was us. I lost hope in getting the podium

The best instant challenge. I was crossing my fingers, knowing we deserved it. They called our team and we were ecstatic. We were walking back to our seats.

“First place goes to Labyrinth Legends” what? Mid stride we turned around as they were calling us back. We got first..? We walk back while cheering amongst ourselves. We didnt expect to get anything higher than third. They hand us the metal trophy, mounted on granite.

FINALLY THE SWEET SWEET STRESS RELIEF OF DI BEING DONE!
4-5 long, stressful months of planning and prepping for DI. (If you don’t remember what DI is check out my midway DI post) Now if you want to know how it all went well then keep reading
So, it all started in November when we were told what DI was and put into the groups we would be forced to work with until April. Now, I was put into a Fine arts group. It was going great till the first dress rehearsal where we had absolutely NOTHING done. So we started all our work a week after the second dress rehearsal. In 2 weeks we made almost everything, the backdrop, costumes, final script (yes that includes memorizing the script too) so let me get into the process of them!

Backdrop:there was 2 backdrops, one for a juice-bar the other for a dungeon.

Costume transformation: we didn’t come up with what to do for this until a week before the competition so of course it wasn’t gunna be the greatest thing ever, it consider of a rolled up  red cape tied up with string and when it got untied it unrolled into a full cape.

Illusion: we had a door that looked fake but was real so you could push it away and you could crawl through the sheets. It was used in the dungeon scene.

Costumes: Mine was guards armour made out of cardboard, The Queen (Julia) wore a dress from the drama room. The Jester/Bard (Tom) just found an old Halloween costume from his attic, The Old Trickster/Maki (Makai) wore a flannel and jeans with his arm tucked into the shirt sleeve, The Trickster wore a black hoodie and shorts, and The Mute Painter wore some stained and ripped clothes with an apron.

Props: we had a crown that the trickster was trying to steal and my shield (used as a fan at one point lol)

Story: the story starts with the trickster going to the bar and accidentally bumping into a guard, but the whole reason he went to the bar was because he was struggling with money so he took a risky bet with a retired trickster looking for revenge on the queen, the bet was to steal the crown in return for 1,000 shillings so the trickster did exactly that, or at least he tried to… while he was about to leave the bar he ran into the guard from earlier but the queen was with him, the queen demands the jester sing about the trickster to which he does. After the song the queen tells the guard to make her look dramatic (to which he fans her with his shield) then orders the trickster to a year in prison. The guard drags the trickster into the dungeon and leaves. The trickster looks around and sees an old painter painting the wall so he asks what they’re doing and eventually finds out that the painting was a real door so he pushes the door out and somehow gets out of the dungeon like that. Once’s he’s back in the bar he sees the queen there with the guard so he asks the retired trickster to distract them both while he steals the crown off her head. The queen runs off crying while the guard tries to chase after her and the tricksters drink and laugh and so the story ends there.
Heres a video of it:

DI was so stressful but I think I learnt how to prioritize the project and that I should be helping the group. That doesn’t mean I ever wanna do it again though.

My teammates posts: Tom H Julia D Luca T Makai R Kai M

So the PLP teachers told us we would be participating in a world wide competition of creativity named “Destination Imagination” or “DI” for short. We were put into 4 groups based on what subject we wanted to do. Fine arts, Science, Improv, technical. I was put into a fine arts group with Luca, Julia, Tom, Judah, and Kai. The other grade 8 fine arts team split up so Makai was added to our group. We have a pretty good group, we all have our different strengths in instant challenges. In one of the most recent instant challenge practice we had to make a bridge between chairs with a few resources. We did pretty good on that with Judas quick thinking. For the next one we had to make a tower to hold up a pingpong ball, a gold ball, and a marble. Luca and Judah constructed it while me, Julia, and Tom helped come up with ways to put it together while Kai asked how much time we had left. For the second last challenge we had to make a way to get the pingpong ball from the ground, to the chair, to the table, to the other side of the table. Me and Judah put it together while we were being told what would work and how we should put it together. For the final challenge we had to tell the tale of the things we just made. Toms improv ability helped us with how we should act out what we should do. So he thought we get into pairs and tell the tale of one of the challenges. Me and Kai told the bridge chair story while Judah and Luca told the elevator story and Tom and Julia told the tower story.
sadly i have no photos to show what the solutions looked like but maybe my teammates do! Go check them out too. Until next time!