SandFest 2024 – Building a New Fortress of Sand

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For the third year in a row, PADT participated in the annual SandFest at the Children’s Museum of Phoenix. It was a great day for everyone, especially the kids who came out in huge numbers to play in their own giant pile. The Sand Guys from Travel Channel’s “Sand Masters” were there again this year. Check out the official recap video on Instagram.

Proceeds from SandFest support the Museum’s Every Child Program, which provides free and reduced admission to more than 75,000 children and families each year who face financial, emotional, or circumstantial challenges.

This year, we opted to keep refining our castle design. After some research, we opted to use cylinders of plastic sheets to create the corner turrets. Here, you can see our pile of sand and the four corners after we filled them with wet sand.

It may have been our advanced engineering skills, or it could have been less grainy sand and a night of rain that got the sand wet, but the building was much easier this year. We shoveled, packed, dripped, and scored through a beautiful Saturday morning as families came by to cheer us on, play in the kid’s sand pile, and visit the museum. It was a lot of fun:

And, we received the runner-up prize this year!

The judges were Phoenix Mayor Kate Galego, the Sand Guys, and Museum Director Kate Wells. The best part was when the Sand Guys looked it over and said, “You guys did a great job, this is well done.”

Join us for SandFest 2025?

We highly recommend this annual event for team building and just a good time. Those with kids brought their families. Maybe your company can join us next year?

You can also check out our creations from 2022 and 2023 to see how we have progressed.

PADT SandFest 2022 Childrens Museum Phoenix f02

Our 2022 Entry was mostly the pile itself

padt sandfest2023 cropped

We did better in 2023, but still building on the pile.

Here are some pics of our creation:

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