20 Educational Activities for Soarin’ Across Disney Parks
Ready for takeoff? Explore these little beauties of hands-on activities that blend the vistas of your favorite Soarin’ attraction with mathematics, history, and creative storytelling! Whether you’re going on a scavenger hunt around the Disney parks or setting off on an at-home adventure, learners can hone their research and persuasive writing skills, practice making observations and hypotheses, or even pretend to be their own travel agent!
Soarin’ Over California
Idea 1 - Scavenger Hunt Bingo
IN THE PARKS: Find something to represent each Soarin’ Over California location around the Disneyland Resort (e.g., Golden Vineyard to the right of Wine Country Trattoria to represent Napa Valley; Autopia traffic jam to represent Los Angeles traffic)
Here’s Soarin’ Over California bingo cards you can use to randomly get 9 of the 13 locations to see who in your party can find locations fastest.
Idea 2 - California Cooking
AT HOME: Bake or cook something using quintessentially California ingredients (e.g., oranges, avocados, almonds, grapes). Find a recipe and make a budget for the ingredients.
Soarin’ Over California Attraction Entrance at Disney California Adventure Park
Soarin’ Around the World
Idea 3 - Resort Scavenger Hunt
IN THE PARKS: Find something to represent each Soarin’ Around the World location around the Walt Disney World Resort (e.g., fireworks above Spaceship Earth, animal native to India in Animal Kingdom).
Use these Soarin’ Around the World bingo cards to randomly get 9 of the 13 locations to see who in your party can find something to represent all 9 fastest.
Idea 4 - International Cuisine
AT HOME: Bake or cook something inspired by each country represented. Find a recipe and make a budget for the ingredients, including gas mileage if you need to go to a grocery store you might not normally visit.
Soarin Across America
Idea 5 - Inside the Mind of an Imagineer
IN THE PARKS: Without spoilers, predict the locations that you think will be included in Soarin’ Across America. Compare your predictions to the actual locations and hypothesize why Imagineers might have chosen different locations than you (e.g., feasibility of filming, appealing to tourists).
Idea 6 - Patriotic Song
ANYWHERE: Argue for which American locations match best with locations described in a song about America of your choice (e.g., America the Beautiful) and which scents would best represent each of those locations.
For Any Version of Soarin’
Idea 7 - Best Location Wins
Craft an argument for which of the Soarin’ locations is the best location, choosing to define best however you would like.
Idea 8 - Travel Agent
Create a budget and itinerary for traveling to one (or more) of the locations.
Idea 9 - Take to the Skies
Investigate the training required to become a flight attendant or pilot where you live or for your favorite airline.
Idea 10 - Frequent Flyers
Research an important flight attendant or pilot (e.g., first Black American flight attendant, first pilot to go solo across the Atlantic) and summarize their journey and accomplishments.
Idea 11 - Composer Comparison
Write a biography of one of the two composers of the Soarin’ score (e.g., Jerry Goldsmith, Bruce Broughton) and identify three similarities between the Soarin’ score and another piece of their music.
Idea 12 - Musical Analysis
Compare and contrast the music between scenes, describing what musical elements make that scene feel distinct.
Idea 13 - Soarin’ Sounds Quiz
Randomly order clips from each scene and, without looking, guess which scene the sound clip is from.
Idea 14 - Route Efficiency
Identify each location on the map and calculate the most efficient route (e.g., fewest miles, least amount of time, fewest flight legs) between locations.
Idea 15 - Technological Advancements
Write an essay summarizing the most important advancements in flight technology.
Idea 16 - Local Contributions to Flight
Summarize one city’s or one country’s most important contributions to advancements in aerospace.
Idea 17 - Museum Exhibit
Visit a local museum that has an exhibit related to flight and summarize three things you learned on the visit.
Idea 18 - Capacity Calculations
Calculate the ride capacity of Soarin’ (# of total riders per hour) based on number of riders, ride length, load and unload time. Use this to calculate how many people would be ahead of you in a queue that’s 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes long and adjust for whether there are one, two or three theaters operating simultaneously.
Idea 19 - Smelly Observations
Recreate the scents from your favorite version of Soarin’ by collecting items (or smelling candles in a store) that represent those smells and blowing air strongly over them in different ways. Set up experiments to determine what attributes makes the scent smell most strongly (e.g., wind speed, distance from fan, liquid versus solid smelly object).
Idea 20 - Create Your Own Soarin’
Select the locations that you would use for Soarin’ over your hometown or another place of your choosing. Film the actual locations yourself as cinematically as you can. Then, decide how to sequence these scenes, animate transitions between scenes, choose smells for each scene, and create slight modifications to the songs to go with each of your scenes.
Soarin’ Attraction Entrance at Epcot at Walt Disney World Resort