Ladies and gentlemen, penguins and penguins… welcome back to your favorite section: Behind the Journey, our ongoing peek behind the curtain at how Club Penguin Journey’s parties come to life. This time we are bringing a full lineup of all kinds of parties, from the memorable Winter Party to the crazy April Fools, there’s a little bit of everything here.
We are pretty sure there is at least one secret you have always wished you could peek behind. Well, this might just be your chance. Let’s get into it folks!!
Winter Party
The Mouse Incident 🐭
Ah, the Great Mouse Incident of 2026. Not even considered an event, this was a spontaneous story arc that made its way into the game for no reason other than to be silly.
It all began with a Reddit post and a handful of penguins joking that the Pizza Parlor had a rodent problem. We love seeing users coming together to create role-play stories… so we joined in and escalated the situation. One of our developers enjoys adding a puzzle aspect to the weekly pins, so this was their time to shine!
First came the Cheese Pin. To obtain this, penguins had to investigate the newly-formed mouse hole, then get some cheese to lure out the mouse by playing Pizzatron3000. However, the mouse was smarter than anticipated and refused to appear, so the cheese became that week’s pin instead.
Uh oh! By the following week, the Examiners of Pizza Facilities (with very suspicious initials) had heard about the new Pizza Parlor resident and quickly boarded up the hole, leaving behind a notice on the wall of the Parlor and in the newspaper.
We created the Mouse Pin by repurposing the Wind-up Mouse hand item and originally planned to have him stay in the Pizza Parlor. However, it’s likely the “EPF” would have moved him along, so he was relocated to the Coffee Shop instead – much to the horror of the manager!
Although the incident only lasted two weeks, traces of the tiny troublemaker lived on. The Wind-up Mouse returned in the February 2026 Penguin Style catalog, the Mouse Pin appeared in the 2025-2026 Yearbook, and the mouse even placed an ad searching for a new home in the April Fools’ newspaper.
Rooms
The return of this party after three years was something truly unexpected! From the introduction of the beloved Pufflescape to breathtaking rooms, this party went all out. Let’s take a look at what went on behind the scenes!
”Quite different, huh? Making the TourHQ into a log cabin was a last-minute decision that we’re quite pleased with! It’s a very cozy addition to the party, and I am in awe at my fellow designer for bringing it to life! Otherwise, this sketch is pretty much how the actual room ended up being. We tried to keep this party tame so that we could focus on our upcoming anniversary, so we hope you enjoyed the quaint vibes!”
”Here’s another version of the room as it was being built. The angle of the water maze under the fish ended up looking a bit off, so a fellow designer went in and fixed it up! I think it turned out way better, though I’m still happy I made an attempt! Now you all get to see it in this blog anyway, mwahahaha”
”This one is another late sketch of a room but this time it was to not spoil Pufflescape! 
Here’s the original sketch of the Puffle Park from when we released it back on the Puffle Party with a few things different, you might notice we relocated the pond and had some burrows we originally thought as a third activity for puffles but ended up scrapping to have more room to waddle around”
”This is an early sketch of what we wanted to do for the dock, making it some sort of mini ski hill using the piles of snow we saved up from the Holiday Jam!”
”And as some might have recognized we recreated Fast Freeze from Club Penguin: Game Day! in the Ski Village with the intention of penguins playing by waddling around! …if only we included some quick instructions on how to play… Anyways! Here’s a discarded version of the banner that was meant to keep that game day spirit! Too bad it didn’t match well alongside the Winter Party colors”
In Detail: Winter Party
Third Anniversary
This party was, without a doubt, filled with nostalgia and secrets! We brought back lots of fan-favorite rooms from past parties and celebrated our anniversary the best way we know how! Let’s see what some of our team had to say about it.
”Hi there, I’m part of Aunt Arctic’s editorial team. I had lots of fun creating the party-teasing polaroid photos that you saw in issue #75 of the newspaper, and even more fun seeing everyone try to work out what they were!
Now that the party’s over, we can finally share what some of these photos were hiding. For example, did you spot a Valentine’s Pink penguin in the ‘pretty lights’ photo, hinting at its return? And if you noticed the light blue party hat peeking out in one of the pictures, you may have also seen this colour in the blurred photo… which was actually of the cake in the Coffee Shop!
Thank you for celebrating 3 years of waddling around with us.”
”We had a subtle sleek feel this year which I initially struggled to incorporate with the colorful and fun themes typical of an Anniversary Party. In the end, I decided to add lots of fresh fruit and chocolate embellishing for a more mature dessert.”
”Many of the TourBots scattered around the island had glitched dialogue this party. Still, I wrote out all of the trivia quips exactly as I would’ve under normal circumstances before going through and mangling them for the sake of ✨The Plot✨. As such, uncorrupted versions of all trivia questions, including ones that were incomprehensible in-game, exist. Here’s a peek at one of them.”
”Originally, players were meant to play alongside the mascot performers as another team in a Battle of the Bands situation. This was far too much music power for one concert! In the end, the stages were separated and players could instead host their own concert when the main concert was inactive.”
In Detail: Third Anniversary
Valentine’s Day, Pancake Day & Lunar New Year
Seeing all of these mini-events together, you might think we’d lost our minds (and yes, we did). With Valentines Day on February 14th, Pancake Day a few days after, and Lunar New Year thrown into the mix, we were up to our beaks in party decorations!
Whether cooking or eating them, we all definitely enjoyed some warm pancakes with looot of syrup. It was incredible seeing how much everyone loved it, especially those showing up dressed as pancakes!! Not to mention the surprise reactions when Valentine’s made its return rising from the ashes. Simply amazing. Let’s take a look together at what went on behind the scenes!
Items
”For the Candy Heart pin, I wanted to create something sweet and nostalgic, inspired by classic Valentine’s conversation heart candies. Its pink color and rounded shape give it an authentic candy feel, with “CPJ” replacing a traditional phrase to show love for the game and the community.”
Sometimes the best ideas pop up while we’re working IRL! We always find a moment to jot them down wherever we can, this one actualy started as a sticky note at work. That’s commitment at its peak!!
”i love the antennae head items in game, so when discussing our valentines event, i decided to throw out the heart antennae idea! after a quick sketch on a sticky note, our design team snagged it up and created the heart antennae!”
Rooms
We knew the perfect room for this mini-event was the Pizza Parlor from the Penguin Play Awards. With a little extra atmosphere added, lots of hearts, items, plenty of pink and red, it turned into the perfect Valentine’s themed Pizza Parlor!!
Here we’ll take a closer look at the Town and how it came together!
”Originally, the plan was to only decorate the Coffee Shop! I couldn’t help myself, though… Here’s what it looked like originally!”
”This was done on 02/14/26, and over the next few days the rest of the art would be done. This was a rather quick turn-around time than usual, but we really wanted to do something special for the occasion!”
”I struggled to fit the word ‘Pancakes’ in the sign…”
”Here’s an in-progress version of the Coffee Shop!”
”For this room, I really wanted to capture the essence of a bustling diner. The floor is actually from the Winter Fiesta party, but i slightly tinted it for the actual pancake/LNY event! This is definitely harder to showcase, since there aren’t many sketches for the rooms. A lot of it was done on the fly!”
”Here’s a silly doodle made during production to make up for it, though”
Catalog
In Detail: Valentine’s Day, Pancake Day & Lunar New Year
April Fools
Firstly, we wanted to highlight how creative our whole team is. April Fools is a true ”anything goes” party where we can freely explore the craziest ideas and bring them to life, it’s always exciting to see how far we can push imagination. We also had plenty of concepts that didn’t make it in due to time constraints, maybe you will see some of them in the future! For now, let’s take a look at how everything came together…
Todd
While we were putting together ideas for this party, on Jan 7 (which we could say is Todd’s birthday), this (big) penguin first came to life. He originally had a different name, but we felt that ”Todd” fits him perfectly, so we decided to stick with it.
We held a staff vote to decide which special guest would be included in the party, and surprisingly, Todd won with 43% of the votes. It was a close one, another very fun duo almost took the lead, missing out by just 5%!!
From that moment on, our jokes started revolving around him, and the ideas just kept getting better and better, like Todd taking over social media/newspaper, or even Todd being in charge of Discord messages!
Remember that painting hanging on the right wall of the Book Room? Here’s the full, uncut version of the Rareware Todd.
Rooms
There were two rooms that were hand-crafted. Can you guess which ones they are? Exactly, the Town and Ski Village. Soooo many hours were put into them, with every single detail carefully polished to make them feel accurate!
The person who lovingly created the Town has shared the following:
”Hi there! Can of Worm in the house!
I’d like to talk about the construction paper Town that I created for April Fool’s. Originally, I made a joke about making a room for the party, but I never took on any serious design aspects in the game, as a moderator, but then the idea continued to brew in my mind until I decided, “yeah! I can do this!”
I started to work on the town constructed of paper in late January, I sat on the floor in various rooms of my igloo and began to work with heaps of paper piles surrounding me. It slowly began to take form, but I didn’t document anything until I had a basic shape of how it was going to be, so that’s when the Coffee Shop, Night Club and Gift Shop started taking shape, basic cut-out pieces of paper, the background of the sky, building shapes, creating a room in a minute tedious scale.”
”I was going on a good streak, really proud of my progress on the Coffee Shop, so I took a break!! … and then that break lead into a rush… BUT it was okay, I knew how I wanted to build the town, so for countless nights I sat on the floor, surrounded by the pillows, papers, glue sticks and my handy xacto blade, and some entirely too small safety scissors. I put many hours into cutting out tiny little shapes like circles, little shirts, snow piled on the roofs and trees, teeny tiny little letters spelling out the building names. I collected all these little bits and bobs in a binder until I was ready to assemble.”
”During the assembly, I kept the background separate from the props, you may see it in a photo or two where all of the secondary items are on a flat sheet by themselves. The reasoning for this was ease for development, and so you can correctly stand behind/in front of them in the actual game! It was hard to picture those items not sitting flat on the background, so they were the final pieces to actually get glued down to their sheet, so I could reference and take photos of how things were already looking so far!”
”Once I finished everything, I began to line the different buildings and props to give more detail, so everything looked less flat, but still hand made. I think this was a wonderful choice, and I hope you think so too! You can see some of the imperfections with my lining, as outlining bulky paper was sort of difficult!
After a couple accidents, glued down pet hairs, a few tears, and lots of joy and encouragement from my team, it was done. Paper Town was finished, created with a medium of construction paper, cardstock, an ink pen and lots of love.
Overall, I am super proud of my own creativity and my entire team for pulling through on some super wacky, incredible features of the April Fool’s Party, and I will forever have a unique piece of CPJ art with me forever!”
I hope you’re enjoying this BTS so far, it’s packed with a lot of information! Next up, the mind behind the duck-filled Lounge will tell us how it all came together:
”I had so much fun transforming the Dance Lounge into the Duck Lounge for the April Fools’ Party! As part of the moderation team, designing rooms is not normally something on my to-do list, so it was exciting to challenge myself to something new.
My original plan was to hide 100 ducks around the room, inspired by social media videos where people hide dozens of tiny numbered ducks around someone’s house to be found. But I soon realised 100 is a big number, so I started giving them accessories… which quickly became creating duck versions of mascots! It was my favourite part of the design process, and I loved some of the smaller details too, like the duck-ified Mona Lisa painting.
I was a bit nervous about taking on a design task, so I intentionally chose a room that doesn’t usually get many visitors.However, it seemed to be well-received by the team as it inspired the Duckie Background, the Rubber Duck transformation, and even a rubber duck-themed music track for the room!
Our designers were incredibly supportive of both me and our wider team experimenting with making our own rooms and I can’t thank them enough for the guidance they gave us. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the work they pour into creating rooms for dozens of events throughout the year!”
”Designing the room also meant thinking beyond what players would actually see – I had to consider trigger placement, how items should be sorted (whether they layer above or below penguins), and ensuring assets were organised and converted ready for our developers.”
The people who designed the Ski Village, the Town, or the Lounge, weren’t actually designers, they are part of the Trust & Safety team! But as we have mentioned before, there’s no challenge we don’t take on! Every single person of our team absolutely nailed it! From transformations to rooms, nothing was left looking anything less than perfect crazy.
Now it’s the Party Lead’s turn! Let’s see what they have to tell us about their process and what they did:
”In this party the main focus was having fun, both us making it and you guys playing it. So a lot of the time we’d just sit down and think about what silly or goofy stuff we could add. Sometimes just a joke, sometimes figuring out what style to go with. April Fools IS the party to go crazy, and that’s exactly what we did.
Some rooms were just small name changes, like “ice pond” becoming just “pond” or “Old Boiler” – oh wait, “New Boiler.” Others took way more time, like the pizzeria, or the ski hill… or the cove… because why use AI when you can edit the same fish image over 100 times right?”
Backgrounds
Transformations
”There’s not always a lot to work with for these, so making a bunch of them in one batch was something we decided to go for, some were simple like the round penguin or the flat one, others showed up as we built certain rooms like the rubber duck or the 16bit one, and some were just… whatever came to mind first. Thanks so much for loving the penguin bread as much as you do.”
”(and we’re showing you some that didn’t make the cut… but who knows?)”
”It was a really fun party to make, and even though some ideas didn’t make it in, maybe they’ll come back in future years… or maybe not…
May the April Fools spirit never leave you! ciao ciao! ”
In Detail: April Fools
Wrapping Up…
Thanks for sticking with us until the end! We really hope you enjoyed it. If you did and would like to share some kind words about what you’ve seen or the BTS as a whole, feel free to do so! It takes us quite a bit to put together, and we reallyyyy enjoy reading your thoughts. We love our beautiful community!
Commercial Break! If you like what we do, applications to join our team are open! If you’re interested, you’ll find all the info here!
When things feel quiet or normal, it’s often because we are cooking behind the scenes! Thank you everyone for your support during these parties, and special thanks to the team (who will also be reading this) for their hard work, it’s been truly special. Here’s to more super exciting parties together!
Until next time…Waddle On!
The Club Penguin Journey Team
