The Gallabel Girl's Disney Fundraising Extravaganza!

My sister, Sarah, and I had just finished The MoonWalk London (our first marathon and something we never thought we’d be able to achieve) and we decided that the following year we would do the Dublin Walk the Walk event. Yup. 100% doing Dublin. It got to December and we were definitely on for the Emerald Isle, it would be my sister’s 40th in 2017 and we were keen to get training and had started investigating all things Irish to help with fundraising ideas.

One day whilst checking the details of the Dublin event to sign up we saw the Disneyland challenge. All change! We are both Disney fans (obviously, who isn’t?) and this was the perfect event to mark Sarah’s 40th in style. Training was hard but we persevered, in The MoonWalk London we didn’t care about our speed as long as we finished, but the Disneyland challenge had a time limit. We found listening to (and singing) Disney songs while training a huge boost, all of our walks with music had much better times than those without. We became closer during our training, early morning sessions in the gym, in the pool and out around our lovely little island on cliff paths.  

As it was a big year for us we wanted to make it a record breaker (for us) so we got our thinking caps on. Our first fundraisers were based on the football cards I had seen – we made Disney themed cards with 100 characters on and charged £2.00 per square. Once the squares were all sold we either scratched off the winner (on the physical cards that we had printed the printers chose each winner at random then covered it with a silver scratch off substance without telling us who they'd picked) or used a random number generator app live on Facebook video (for the online cards). We did various cards including pure Disney characters, Disney Villains, Star Wars & Muppets (both owned by Disney) and we raised £1,000.

We wanted to raise more so we came up with the idea of a Disney themed quiz and karaoke evening. On the day we set the event up it sold out – we had more people that wanted to come along than the venue would fit. The response was phenomenal and we were overwhelmed. We added a fancy dress contest with prizes for the best team costume and the best solo costume. We had 20 teams and only 9 of them were people we knew!

A local restaurant very kindly donated an amazing prize, a three course meal for 2 including 2 cocktails for each member of the winning team (all 5 of them!) Fabulous! We also designed personalised bottle labels with Disney themed pictures on and wrote the name of the winner on, the date of the event and the prize won to go on bottles of Prosecco. We had personalised Disney sashes made for the best costume prizes and we had a most entertaining answer certificate printed. 

We made table name settings with the Disney film name the team had chosen on one side and their food pre-orders on the other than laminated them so they would stand up in the menu holders in the centre of the table. We also got red and black lollipops for each guest with a Disney tag saying thank you for supporting our event. We also made a Disney photo booth at the event! I am a bit of a shutter bug and already had a lot of accessories so we just supplemented them with some Disney ones including oversized Mickey hands and Disney masks. We popped an iPad in a tripod and downloaded a photo booth app which we designed a Disney border for with the event and date on and got a Wi-Fi printer so people could print their pics too.

The day itself arrived and we nervously checked into the hotel (easier to take stuff upstairs afterwards and they gave us a discounted rate) then set up the room. We had help from my niece (an honorary Gallabel Girl as she is Sarah’s daughter and did join us in some of our training walks, albeit mainly ones that ended with a treat breakfast or hot chocolate). We buzzed around tying labels on all 100 lollipops, curling the ribbons on each one, setting up the table names, getting the karaoke gear up, putting the personalised answer sheets on each table, then we went upstairs to get into our costumes.

As we had a fancy dress aspect we thought it only fair that we dressed up too, we didn’t want to be movie specific so we both went as Minnie Mouse with our Disney ears on (naturally).
It was a night full of fun and laughter and the quiz raised £850.00 (a lot more than we had hoped to) and we had a stream of people asking for a follow up that night!

In the days that followed we had a constant stream of messages from attendees and others that had been unable to come along asking for another event. We were keen to take advantage of the good spirit and raise more for the charity so we decided to do another quiz and karaoke night – this time Disney Villains! We did all the same bits as the previous quiz but with a slight twist. Rather than lollipops for each guest saying thank you we had plastic shot glasses with Disney villain stickers on saying thank you and inside was a mixture of green and purple sweets, rather than the sashes for the costume prizes we designed personalised rosettes.

The second quiz was again a night to remember and the costumes were incredible! We went as villainous Minnie (spotty Minnie dresses in green and purple rather than red). It was a smaller event but still very successful and we raised £455.00.

The challenge’s tag line for Disneyland Paris is “Every mile is magic” and it absolutely was! The atmosphere, the course itself and the wonderful group of people we did the challenge with all added up to one of the best weekends of our lives. We had the huge added bonus of knowing that not only had we achieved something we never thought we would and had enormous fun doing it, we had also helped to support an amazing charity help people in need.

Our advice to anyone looking into the Disneyland Paris challenge is do it! If you’d like any further information on how we went about our fundraising events I’m sure the lovely Walk the Walk people would be happy to put us in touch and we would be more than happy to share our experiences.

Jenny & Sarah x

If you'd like to take part in our magical Disneyland Paris Challenge like Jenny and Sarah you can enter here. If you would like any help with fundraising ideas or have any questions about how you can fundraise contact our fundraising team.