The Adventure Challenge is sort of the OG when it comes to the date-night box genre. The Couples Edition offshoot features 50 date ideas, organized into sections, with each idea boxed in gray and symbols indicating how much time it takes, how much it costs, supplies needed, and more. Based on the symbols, you’ll scratch off to reveal the date beneath (scratcher-lottery-ticket-style).
I tried this box with an ex-partner (current partner at the time) several times, halfheartedly, throughout our relationship. During New Year's Eve last year, in a cabin tucked away in the Ozark Mountains, we did our own spin on the Adventure Challenge's painting and baking challenge. I will admit, many of these date ideas were a little too cheesy and tame for us. The painting challenge was to encourage you to paint your partner's body to lead into sexy time, but we didn't feel like permanently staining the Airbnb's bedsheets. So, we pivoted and painted self-portraits of each other, like the viral TikTok trend, which was a fun and out-of-the-ordinary experience without being overly cringey. For the next challenge, we didn't have baking supplies on hand at the Airbnb, but we did have a whole lotta booze. We decided to take the baking challenge, which is blindfolding your partner and guiding them as they bake a pie, and turn it into making strange, boozy concoctions for each other. This devolved into taking shots and dancing to EDM. A solid date, if you ask me.
While most of the dates were a little cheesy and not something I'd normally go for, we both found it was a great way to spend intentional time doing things outside the usual. I came to view these more as a great jumping-off point for other date ideas (like we did above). He bought The Adventure Challenge camera (you could also use an Instax) to remember the date nights, and while we didn't do a ton of the challenges, we kept using the camera. This became our favorite way to get more cute partner photos outside of my phone's camera roll.
Date: Jez, 10/10
Box: 8/10