Paineland Prize Promenade: Disney-Themed Prize Boxes, Hidden Mickeys & a Week of Winning

One of the biggest hits of our Paineland Teacher Appreciation Week was our Paineland Prize Promenade.

I knew I wanted to incorporate some kind of prize drawing into Teacher Appreciation Week, but I didn't want it to feel like a typical raffle where everyone gets a ticket and we randomly draw names at the end of the week.

Instead, I wanted our teachers to have a little more control over what they could win.

And because we were turning our school into Paineland, even the raffle needed a Disney-inspired makeover.

The result was a long built-in bookshelf transformed into a display of colorful Disney-themed prize boxes, a week-long Hidden Mickey scavenger hunt, and a ticket system that let our staff decide which prizes were worth entering.

It ended up being one of the things our teachers talked about the most!

Quick disclosure: this post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission if you shop through them at no extra cost to you. It also features prizes that were donated to our school's PTO, a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, by outside businesses. A few of those donations were ones I personally requested in exchange for a mention in this post. I did not personally keep or purchase any of the prizes featured here.

The Paineland Ticket System

The Prize Promenade started with the Paineland Ticket Books.

Each staff member received a vintage-inspired Paineland ticket book, and inside were six D tickets they could use to enter the prize drawings throughout the week.

The D tickets were our version of Disney's old attraction ticket books, and they were one of the first details we incorporated into our Paineland theme. If you haven't read the full ticket book tutorial yet, that's where the D tickets (and the rest of the ticket book system) started.

The basic idea was simple:

You choose which prizes you want to enter to win.

Instead of giving everyone the same chance at every prize, teachers could use their six D tickets however they wanted.

Someone could put all six tickets toward one prize they really wanted.

Someone else could spread their tickets across several different prizes.

That little bit of choice made the whole thing much more fun.

And it meant that the prize drawings became something people actually thought about throughout the week.

But We Had a Way to Earn MORE Tickets!

Of course, six tickets weren't enough for us.

We wanted to give our staff another way to participate throughout the week, so we added a Hidden Mickey scavenger hunt.

We hid small Mickey-shaped resin pieces all over our school campus.

And when I say all over, I mean all over. Paine is a large campus, so this wasn't something teachers could necessarily finish in five minutes while walking down the hallway.

We printed additional, smaller D tickets specifically for the Hidden Mickey prizes. These were smaller than the tickets in the ticket books, which allowed me to fit more of them on each printed sheet.

These weren't branded to our school, so I'm offering them as a free digital download if you want to use them for your own Hidden Mickey hunt.

When a staff member found a Hidden Mickey, they could turn it in for an extra D ticket to use in the Prize Promenade.

The Hidden Mickey Hunt Was a HUGE Hit

I honestly didn't expect people to get quite as invested in this as they did.

They loved it.

Some teachers were actually coming to school early in the morning to hunt for Hidden Mickeys before the school day started! It became a little competition to see who could find them.

And our PTO kids loved helping with it too. While we were setting up or cleaning up each day, they would help us hide the little Mickeys around the school.

At the end of each day, we'd take the Hidden Mickeys that had been turned in for tickets and hide them again so they could be found the following day. It gave us a fun way to keep the activity going all week without having to purchase extra individual pieces.

Turning an Old Library Into the Prize Promenade

The room where we held Teacher Appreciation Week is our school's North Training Room, but it wasn't always a training room.

Our school used to be two separate schools next door to each other—one primary school and one intermediate school. When the schools were eventually combined into one large school, connecting sections were built between the buildings.

One of those connecting spaces became a large shared library.

Eventually, the old library was repurposed into meeting and training spaces, but some of the original built-in bookshelves remain along the walls.

They're not exactly the prettiest architectural feature in the room, but they turned out to be the perfect height for our Prize Promenade.

So instead of trying to hide the bookshelf, we turned it into the display.

Covering the Bookshelf

We covered the built-in bookshelf with blue rolls of craft paper that were already being used in the room from the second grade wax museum.

The blue actually worked surprisingly well with our pastel Paineland color palette, so we left it in place.

Then we added:

• Pastel bulletin board borders
• Mickey balloon graphics
• Paineland signage
• Pastel lanterns
• Disney figurines
• Acrylic risers
• The clear prize boxes

The Mickey balloon graphics were actually the ones I had printed on the same large-format banners I used for the Ear Welcome Wall, so no space went to waste.

The Prize Boxes

For the actual prizes, I used clear acrylic boxes.

I loved these because the boxes let our teachers see exactly what was inside—and, even more importantly, they could see how many people had already entered each drawing.

That added another fun strategic element. You could look at a prize and think:

"I really want that!"

But if you saw that only a handful of tickets had been entered, you might decide to put more tickets toward it. Or you could see that a prize was extremely popular and decide to use your tickets somewhere else.

It made the raffle feel much more interactive than simply dropping tickets into an opaque box.

The full bookshelf display was too wide to capture in a single photo, so here's a quick video that shows the whole Prize Promenade in action:

@magpietayleetot PaineLand Ticket Books and PaineLand Prize Promonade during our Disneyland themed Teacher Appreciation Week at Paine Elementary School! All our teachers started Monday morning with picking up Ticket Books the included Amazon Giftcards, Raffle Tickets for the Prize Promonade, Photopass QR codes, QR codes to sign up for chair massages and satin hand treatments at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, and a ticket to shop at the Paineland Emporium. We had awesome prizes donated by: @Birmingham Barons @BirminghamZoo @Kendra Scott @Wrapsody @BamGoodTime @SharkNinja @Alabama Adventure @gorjana @Ashley Mac's Kitchen @Lunar Moth Skin Therapy @nascarhall @Brenna Ferrell - Author @Olive Garden @Magnolia Soap&Bath-Trussville @alabamasawyer @Little Seed Farm @altrdstateclothing @Chipotle @Rock-N-Roll Sushi @Lodge Cast Iron USA and more! #teacherapprecationweek #teachercontest #disneylandtheme #ptomomsoftiktok #taw ♬ suono originale - 40 Fingers

Making the Prize Box Designs

I used ChatGPT to help create the Disney-inspired designs for each prize box.

The goal was to give every prize a fun Paineland-themed name and make the graphics coordinate with the rest of our decor.

Each box received a decorative plaque on the front with the themed prize name. I also created a graphic for the top of each box with the actual prize details, including information about how many winners would be drawn from that particular box when more than one prize was available.

I printed the designs on sticker paper, cut them out and applied them directly to the acrylic boxes.

For more on how I've been using ChatGPT and Canva together to design our Paineland graphics, check out the full breakdown of our design process here.

Working Around Copyright Restrictions

This part took a little creativity.

When I asked ChatGPT to create some of the graphics, I ran into limitations when I wanted specific copyrighted Disney characters included.

Instead of trying to force the entire graphic to be generated at once, I instructed ChatGPT to leave a little blank space beside the words where I could add my own artwork.

Then I found the clipart I wanted myself and brought it into Canva.

For those graphics, I would:

1. Find the character or themed clipart I wanted.
2. Save the image.
3. Upload it into Canva.
4. Use Canva Pro's background remover to remove the original background.
5. Resize the clipart.
6. Layer it onto the prize decal design.
7. Save the finished graphic for printing.

This gave me much more control over the final look while still allowing the text and overall design to coordinate with our Paineland branding.

Maximizing the Sticker Paper

Just like I maximize large-format banner prints, I didn't want to waste sticker paper either.

Rather than printing one prize decal at a time, I arranged three designs together on the sticker paper. That worked out to one and a half boxes' worth of designs per sheet.

Once printed, I simply cut the individual decals apart and applied them to the appropriate boxes.

Our Paineland Prize Lineup

This is where you can really have fun creating your own version.

We gave every prize a Disney-inspired name that tied it into a character, attraction, location or other part of the Disney universe. We ended up with 36 different prize boxes, and I had so much fun finding a Disney connection for each donation. Some were obvious matches, while others required a little more creative thinking!

Our Prize Promenade included:

1. Mulan's Mahjong Mats — 2 Gorgeous Mahjong mats donated by Bamgoodtime.com
2. Red Panda Game Night — American Mahjong set
3. Genie's Game Pack — Mah-Jinn set for young players
4. Bibbidi Bobbidi Clean — Magnolia Soap & Bath
5. Vampire's Spook-tacular Spa — Vampire Facial from K2 Restorative Med Spa
6. Let It Go Relaxation — 1-hour massage from Ace Massage
7. Raya's Dragon Rolls — Rock-n-Roll Sushi gift certificates
8. Pooh's Picnic Picks — Ashley Mac's gift card
9. The Three Caballeros Cantina — Chipotle gift cards
10. Tony's Spaghetti Supper — Olive Garden gift cards
11. WALL-E's Garden Revival — compost bin donated by Alabama Sawyer
12. Rapunzel's Tower Defense — Lodge Cast Iron set
13. Colors of the Wind — Bladeless tower fan
14. Radiator Springs Pit Stop — oil changes
15. Mater's Maintenance Shop — free tire rotations from Mavis
16. Zero to Hero — Vulcan Tire gift cards
17. Diamond in the Rough Jewels — $150 Gorjana gift card
18. Treasures from Ariel's Grotto — Kendra Scott necklace
19. Snow White's Fairest of Them All Bracelet — Enewton bracelet from Wrapsody
20. Simba's Serengeti Shades — Gigi sunglasses
21. Maui's Wayfinder Shades — Spy Cyrus Sunglasses
22. Olaf's Summer Shades —Bolle Fenix Sunglasses
23. Edna Mode's Designer Frames — Gigi sunglasses
24. Marie's Chic Shades — Invu ladies sunglasses
25. Casey's Grand Slam Seats — Barons tickets
26. Zootopia Family Adventure — Birmingham Zoo family 4-pack
27. Park Hopper Adventure Pass — Alabama Adventure / Alabama Splash Adventure
28. Ohana Adventure Pass — OWA & Tropic Falls
29. The Great Mouse Detective — autographed book
30. Three Fairies' Farmstand Finds — Little Seed Farm prize pack
31. Mystery Mousekatool — We gave away approx 20 prizes from this box
32. Madame's Enchanted Wardrobe — Alt'rd State Giftcard
33. Harmony Barber Shop — A couple free mens haircuts and shaves
34. Autopia - Nascar hall of fame tickets
35. Cruella's Couture Shades — Dolabany sunglasses, $250 value
36. Magic Mirror Glow Ritual — 1-hour glow facial from Lunar Moth Skin Therapy

Each box had its own themed front decal and prize information on top.

I especially loved that the prizes didn't just look like random donated items sitting in clear containers. They looked like they belonged in Paineland.

And that was really the goal with the entire week.

The Mystery Mousekatool

Eventually, we had a little problem.

Donations kept coming in. Which is a wonderful problem for a PTO to have!

But sometimes we received a donation after we had already finished designing the boxes, or we had a prize that wasn't substantial enough to justify purchasing another entire set of acrylic boxes.

Enter the Mystery Mousekatool.

This became our catch-all prize box for anything donated at the last minute or anything that didn't fit neatly into one of the existing categories. We selected approx 20 winners from this box who won Visa giftcards, throw blankets, and more!

It saved us from having to buy additional boxes just for one or two extra prizes.

And, honestly, the Mystery Mousekatool was a pretty perfect name for a miscellaneous Disney-themed prize box.

All of Our Prizes Were Donated

One thing I'm particularly proud of about the Prize Promenade is that we didn't purchase the prizes.

Every prize was donated.

Our PTO fundraising chair, April, deserves a huge amount of credit for this. She's amazing, and she reached out to local and national businesses asking for donations for Teacher Appreciation Week. April actually shares a lot of her tips for scoring donations like these on her TikTok, @leelirpa — worth a follow if you're planning a fundraiser of your own.

A handful of the donations were ones I tracked down myself, and I promised these businesses a shoutout in return for their generosity. Huge thanks to SharkNinja for the Shark TurboBlade bladeless fan used in our Colors of the Wind box — if you haven't tried one of their products, they make genuinely great home appliances. Bam Good Time donated the American Mahjong set and mat. Our teachers are obsessed with mahjong, so if you're in the market for a set, their shop has some seriously high-quality options. Brenna Ferrell donated a signed copy of her book for our Great Mouse Detective box. And Magnolia Soap and Bath donated a gift pack of their handmade soap and bath products — their Bitty Bum Bum scent is my personal favorite.

Every donation described in this post went to our PTO, not to me personally, and I did not receive any compensation beyond featuring these businesses in this post.

Because our PTO is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization, we were able to make donation requests to businesses that might not otherwise be able to participate.

Then I got to have fun figuring out a Disney connection for everything we received.

A donated product wasn't just a donated product anymore. It became a Paineland prize.

That was one of my favorite parts of the whole process.

Decorating Around the Prize Boxes

Once the boxes were filled and labeled, we still had some empty space to decorate.

I used acrylic risers underneath some of the boxes to create different heights rather than lining everything up in one flat row.

I also pulled out some small Disney figurines I'd saved from when my kids were younger. I've always been the person who keeps random little decorations because surely they'll be useful for something someday. This was finally their moment! They became tiny decorative accents throughout the Prize Promenade.

I also had several black lanterns left over from a Teacher Appreciation Week event from years ago. Rather than buying new decor, I spray painted some of them with pastel spray paint colors that coordinated with our Paineland palette and used them around the prize boxes.

Again, it was a good reminder that you don't always need to buy something new to make an event look completely different.

The Paineland Prize Promenade Signs

I also created signs to help direct everyone through the Prize Promenade.

Using ChatGPT's help, I designed:

• A Paineland Prize Promenade – Enter Here sign
• D Ticket signs explaining where staff could use their tickets
• Directional signs pointing toward the beginning and end of the prize display

I printed the signs at home, cut them out and attached them to simple tabletop balloon stands.

I didn't even use the balloon part of the stands. I just used the base and the single pole, which gave me an inexpensive way to make the signs stand up.

I placed one at the beginning of the Prize Promenade and another at the end, with arrows directing people through the display.

I'm offering both signs as a free digital download bundle. The D Ticket arrows aren't branded to our school, so they're ready to print and use as-is. The Prize Promenade "Enter Here" sign is Paineland branded, so treat it as inspiration — hand it to ChatGPT and have it design your own version with your event's name and colors.

Reusing the Acrylic Boxes

One of the things I liked most about using acrylic boxes is that they're reusable.

Once the event was over, I removed the stickers. Some peeled off easily.

For any stubborn stickers, I wash the boxes with dish soap and water first, and then use Goo Gone to remove any remaining adhesive residue.

After they're clean, they're ready to be used again for another event.

One Little Problem With the Locks

The acrylic boxes did have one downside.

Each box came with a lock, but the keys were unique to each individual box.

With the number of boxes we had, I absolutely did not want to spend Friday afternoon trying to figure out which key went to which box.

So we made it simple. We taped the key to the back of each box. That way, when it was time to open them, the correct key was right there.

Sometimes the easiest solution is the best solution.

And Then There Was the Temu Hack

The acrylic boxes were another example of how I stretched our PTO decorating budget.

I purchased the boxes through Temu, and thanks to the credits and coupons I earned through other Teacher Appreciation Week purchases, all of the boxes ended up being free to our PTO.

Funny enough, when the boxes actually arrived, the packaging showed they had shipped from Amazon rather than directly from Temu, so here are the exact acrylic prize boxes if you want to grab the same ones.

I'm also going to have an entire upcoming post about how I save money on Temu purchases, including how I earn and use credits and stack them with coupons — it ties into a lot of the supplies in this series, plus a couple of other posts I have coming up. If you're planning a large event on a PTO or party budget, you'll definitely want to check that one out once it's live.

Drawing the Winners

We set up the entire Prize Promenade on Monday morning.

That meant teachers had the entire week to browse the prizes, decide which ones they wanted to enter and drop their D tickets into the appropriate boxes.

The Hidden Mickey hunt also continued throughout the week, giving everyone opportunities to earn additional tickets.

Then came Friday.

We drew the winners at lunchtime on Friday. Drawing the winners at lunch gave us the afternoon to organize the prizes and get everything ready for delivery. It also meant our teachers still had the excitement of finding out who won while there was enough time left in the school day to actually get their prizes to them.

Why I Preferred This Over Last Year's System

The year before, we had also done a prize giveaway, but our system was very different.

We had hidden prize "spell pages" inside Grimmerie books, and the prize someone won was essentially determined by whichever book they happened to pick up.

It worked, but there wasn't much choice involved.

This year, I really loved that our teachers could choose their own prizes. They could look at the entire Prize Promenade and decide:

"That's the one I want."

Then they could decide how many of their hard-earned D tickets they wanted to risk on it.

That little bit of control made the giveaway feel much more personal.

Final Thoughts

The Paineland Prize Promenade ended up being so much more than a collection of raffle prizes.

It became a week-long activity.

Teachers hunted for Hidden Mickeys. They came in early looking for them. They strategized about where to spend their tickets. They checked the boxes to see how many people had entered. And they had fun choosing which prizes they actually wanted to win.

That was exactly what I hoped would happen.

The Disney theme wasn't just something we put on the walls. We tried to incorporate it into the experience of Teacher Appreciation Week—from the ticket books to the Hidden Mickey hunt to the Prize Promenade itself.

And the fact that we were able to create the entire display using donated prizes, reusable boxes, repurposed decorations and a little creativity made it even better.

The Prize Promenade was one of those Paineland projects that looked complicated when it was finished, but was really just a lot of small, manageable details put together.

And isn't that basically the secret to all good event decorating?

More From Our Paineland Teacher Appreciation Week

• From Disneyland to Paineland: Designing a Custom Teacher Appreciation Week Theme with ChatGPT and Canva
• Paineland Ticket Books: Turning Teacher Appreciation into a Disneyland-Style Adventure
• Our Paineland Ear Welcome Wall: A Disney-Inspired Way to Display Mouse Ears
• How I Made a 7-Foot Mickey Ferris Wheel Backdrop for Less Than $15
• DIY Disney Teacup Photo Prop: A 4-Foot Foam Board Standee for Teacher Appreciation Week
• DIY Paineland Cast Member Badges for Teacher Appreciation Week

**I have included affiliate links to the products I used and can receive a small commission if a purchase is made after you click on a link in this tutorial. The craft supplies and decor items linked in this post were purchased by me. Some of the prizes featured in the Prize Promenade were donated to our school's PTO by outside businesses, and a few of those donations were ones I personally requested in exchange for a mention in this post.

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