Meet the Crew!
The Disney Challenge would not be possible without The Crew. A group of dedicated volunteers whose only reward is seeing happy and frustrated challengers playing our little game and an occasional Thank You from you. We all can’t wait to see you at The Disney Challenge!
Event Crew
Dave Mancini – Producer, Creator, and Writer
Dave spends way too many hours both at the park and in front of his computer gathering, researching, writing and editing all questions, challenges, answer keys and anything else related to the production of The Disney Challenge. He’s REALLY into this!!
Johanna Mancini – Original Inspiration, Co-creator, Webmaster, and Question Gatherer
Johanna takes the blame for inspiring Dave to create this challenge in the first place by suggesting they do something for our youth group after seeing a one page trivia scavenger hunt two people were doing at Disneyland. She is also responsible for finding the nastiest and only six point question each year.
Tony Allegra – Original Event Crew Member and Question Gatherer
Tony has the same sick sence of humor Dave does when it comes to finding questions, and you can be pretty sure most questions from Star Tours or Indiana Jones are written by Tony off the top of his head.
Melissa Prince – Original Event Crew Member and Costume Designer
Melissa has been a part of The Disney Challenge Event Crew since the beginning. Known back then as “Our Secret Weapon,” she was the only person we knew who was an actual Cast Member. Melissa helped us out in 2009 and then took a few years off, only to return as a competitor in 2014. She is now back on The Event Crew for good. In addition, Melissa was responsible for the female Event Crew Members looking stylishly “Disney Chic” at the 2015 Disney Challenge.
J.T. Centonze – Editor and Auditor
J.T. has only competed once in the 2010 Disney Challenge, and his team came in 2nd place. After that, he was hooked and had to be a part of the Event Crew. In a recent survey asking if he was more like Sully or Scar, the answer was almost unanimous…Sully!
Jeremiah Good – Question Gatherer
Jeremiah might be the most knowledgeable Disney fanatic we have come across! Having been part of the first team that has ever won The Disney Challenge TWICE (M3 All Stars – 2010 & 2012), his insane expertise of Disney trivia makes him possibly the most dangerous Event Crew member we’ve ever added.
Jake & Jessie Ball – Photographers
Jake and Jessie join our family as Running Crew members and Photographers, having already competed in our 2010 and 2011 Disney Challenges as part of The Scallywags and Put That Team Back Where They Came From. Their experience and knowledge of how our challenges work make them valuable contributors to the Event Crew.
Rick & Lindsey Kraut – Question Gatherers
After winning The Disney Challenge three times, The Laughing Hyenas were retired from playing. Rick and Lindsey (1/2 of the Hyena’s) decided they could put their expertise to good use on the Event Crew by making The Disney Challenge even more insane for future challengers. Rick has even added a new and improved “puzzle” element to The Disney Challenge. Think they were tough to beat as challengers? Wait until you try to solve some of their questions!
Amber Frieling – Question Gatherer
Amber participated in The 2012 Disney Challenge. After accompanying Tony to Disneyland a few times, he banned her from playing after she started helping him write questions. Since then, she has been seen gathering new questions with Tony and the rest of the crew.
Karen Kraut & Shelly Kraut – Beta Testers
The other half of the now retired Laughing Hyenas, Karen and Shelly have added a much-needed Beta Testing phase to The Disney Challenge process. While we can never write a challenge that will be 100% accurate the day of, Karen and Shelly will help us figure out which questions are answerable and which ones have been painted over.