Tournaments

It’s hard to describe the excitement and fun of a DI Tournament, the ultimate celebration of creativity! After the weeks (or months) of work on their Team Challenge solutions, teams bring their efforts to a sanctioned Destination ImagiNation Tournament. At the Tournament, teams present their Team Challenge and Instant Challenge solutions to teams of Appraisers. A-PRAISE-rs are friendly volunteers who award points for meeting the required Challenge criteria.

At DI Tournaments, the emphasis is on celebrating each team’s accomplishments. It is a competition in that points are awarded and at the end of the day, teams are numerically ranked. It is much more than a competition, however. The prevailing focus is on making sure the process (what the team went through in crafting their solution), not the product (the Presentation itself), is what is valued. Appraisers spend a few minutes after each team’s Presentation to ask the team about the solution and how the individual parts were created. Appraisers seek to validate the efforts of the teams, regardless of how “successful” the team’s solution may have been.

There are three “levels” of Tournaments: Regional, Affiliate Finals, and Global Finals. Most, but not all, Affiliates host Regional and Affiliate Finals Tournaments. At each level of Tournament, teams who receive the highest numerical rankings advance to the next level of Tournament.