Synopsis

In the dead of night, a caravan rumbles into town. The traveling carnival has returned! But this is no day at the park. Behind the lights and the laughter, the carnival harbors a dark secret. Buy a ticket if you dare, but beware — once you enter, you may never be able to escape the Monster Carnival!

For walkthroughs on Monster Carnival Island, scroll down.

Note: This island is only available with Steam or AS3 Flashpoint.

carnival
Released: February 21, 2014 (for members)
or March 20, 2014 (for all)
Common Room: Lazy Sundae Ice Cream
Preceded by: Mocktropica Island
Succeeded by: Survival Island

Resources on this page: Island Extras | Synopsis from Poptropica | Video Walkthrough | Written Walkthrough | Album Photos | Trivia


Video Walkthrough

For a written walkthrough with pictures, scroll down on this page!


Written Walkthrough

Walkthrough written by Samwow5 & Slanted Fish
Special thanks to: HPuterpop & White Ice

Welcome to Monster Carnival Island! The carnival’s in town, but it’s not all fun and games. From day to dusk and through the night, get ready for a wild time!

Daytime: Get the Carnival Ready

Upon arriving, head right and talk to the young man, Edgar the carnie trainee. He doesn’t think the carnival will be ready in time!

Follow him right into the carnival area. Go further right to the rides and talk to the guy in front of the Ferris wheel, who will tell you that the lever is broken. Go right to the next area, where you’ll find a Lever on the ground. Return to the Ferris wheel guy and give him the lever. The wheel will be fixed!

Next, head left and talk to the lady by the fried dough stand. She needs some sugar and will hand you a Sugar Formula.

Head left back to Main Street and go inside the Apothecary’s building (basically an old-school pharmacy). The apothecary up front, Dr. Dan, will ask you to make him some sodium chloride.

To do so, you’re going to mix sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. Hop up to the chemistry set at the top left. Click on the bottles to the left of the machine to put them in, then click the machine to get it going.

Move the controller with your cursor and click to blow bubbles, which will break apart the original compounds so you can make new ones. For this formula, you’ll want to match the light blue to the dark blue, and light yellow to the dark yellow, which can work by blowing at them to direct movement or waiting for them to find each other. Once they’re all properly paired, you’ll have the Salt

Give it to the apothecary, and he’ll let you use the chem lab to make sugar for the carnival. Go back up and grab the two bottles to the right: fructose and glucose. Follow the same procedure as before, and you’ll make sucrose (Sugar).

Once you have it, give it to the lady at the fried dough carnival booth. She’ll thank you with some Fried Dough — Edgar’s favorite!

Now it’s time to find a hose for the duck game booth! Go back to Main Street and enter Honest Gabe’s Auto Repair. Tell the worker you need a radiator hose (not the other options!), and she’ll let you take the Hose from the top of the shelf. Bring it to the duck game guy, and his booth will be good to go.

With that, the carnival is ready to open!

Dusk: Capering ‘Round the Carnival

You’ll skip ahead to late afternoon at the carnival. Try a game at the “Pop the Balloon!” booth, and you’ll pick up a Blunted Dart — no wonder no one’s winning. Take it to Honest Gabe’s Auto Repair and use the dart on the metal sharpener to the left to get a Sharpened Dart.

Now return to the carnival and play “Pop the Balloon,” and this time you should be successful. You’ll win a Souvenir Cup!

Next, hop up and let the guy with the scale guess your weight — he’ll be correct. To trick him, you’re going to want something heavy.

Head to the Apothecary and talk to Dr. Dan, then click on the little orange box beside him. Open the contents and take the Vial of Osmium.

Now, go back to the weight guesser. When you outsmart him, he’ll give you a Super Bouncy Ball. This will help you with another trick — go right to the next area and find the Test Your Strength game booth. Sneak the bouncy ball underneath and you’ll win a Hammer!

Find the Ferris wheel guy on the left, who now needs oil to get the ride moving again. Go back to the fried dough lady and use the Souvenir Cup to get a Cup of Oil from her. Give it to the Ferris wheel worker to grease the gears.

When the teens come down from the Ferris wheel, they’ll go into the Tunnel of Love ride. Talk to the worker there, and he’ll give you a Flashlight and tell you to go to the Haunted Lab (to the right) and get a mask to scare the teens.

With the flashlight, you’ll be able to see through the darkness of the Haunted Lab. Inside, go up the stairs, heading right until you find the Human Fly Mask.

Put it on, then head inside the Tunnel of Love and ruin the romantic moment…

That’ll teach them to keep their hands to themselves! Or… maybe just scar them for life. Anyway, they’ll run off, and it’s time you make your exit too.

Outside, a couple of townsfolk will mention that all the carnies ran off into the woods, so let’s investigate! Head right and into the woods, following the trash trail. (The directions are different every time, even though it looks like you’re in the same area.) Eventually, you’ll find the carnies… being hypnotized by a cloaked figure and turning into monsters!

Night: Haunting Adventures

Night will fall, and you’ll head back to the carnival. Watch out for monsters! Jump on the barrel in front of the Haunted Lab to avoid the hunky cat monster.

Follow Edgar into Ringmaster Raven’s tent. Raven says there’s a formula to reverse the hypnotized carnival workers from monsters back to normal, and it’s in the Ferris wheel guy’s back pocket. That’s our next stop!

At the Ferris wheel, equip your Hammer and press the spacebar to stop the ride. The monster will fall to the ground. Pick up the ticket with a Secret Message.

Edgar will mention there are black lights in the Haunted Lab we can use to see the special paint on the ducks from the game. Inside the Haunted Lab, a monster will chase you — no big deal, just turn on your flashlight and run away! Once you reach the top, climb up the shelf and click on the box of black lights. Use the Black Lightbulb to make your flashlight emit black light.

Now exit and go left to the duck game booth. Fish them out in the sequence of the secret message: GORY, or Green, Orange, Red, Yellow. That will give you a Mystery Formula. Time for more chemistry!

But the Apothecary is closed. To get inside, you’ll have to go through Honest Gabe’s Auto Repair. Inside, hop onto the furthest pedestal and click the red “up” button. When you get close to the top, click open the vent and jump inside. Then follow the path and go left out of the vent.

You’ll be on the Apothecary’s side. Blocking the vent are a stack of newspapers, which you can read to learn more about “Bird Boy”… who looks a lot like Ringmaster Raven. He was an orphaned carnie who was blamed for arson at Honest Gabe’s, and eventually exiled out of town.

After clearing the newspapers, you can enter the lab. Inside, grab the three remaining containers — the yellow bromopentane, red sodium sulfidosodium, and blue ethylmalonic ester — and put them into the machine. Now you can make Sodium Thiopental.

Once you’ve got it, bring it to Ringmaster Raven’s tent. Upon entering, Edgar will kidnap you and put you in a chair — turns out he’s under a spell, and Raven is the mastermind! Raven — aka Bird Boy — is taking revenge for the way the town treated him in his childhood by hypnotizing everyone to work for him.

To wake Edgar up, use the Fried Dough in your inventory. He’ll release you and Ringmaster Raven will escape, running off into the Mirror Maze.

Follow him and you’ll find him hiding behind one of the mirrors. Equip your Hammer and smash it where he’s hiding. He’ll continue to run from you — watch where he goes and keep smashing the last mirror he appears in.

Eventually, you’ll succeed in cornering him into getting hypnotized. Under your spell, you’ll instruct him to never hurt anyone again, and to ensure that, he’ll have to be your friend!

The Next Day

Fast forward to the next morning, and the carnival is all packed up and ready to roll out of town. Everyone will be relieved that the madness is over, with a couple of townies expressing regret for bullying Bird Boy all those years ago. When you get to Edgar, he’ll say they’re headed for Super Villain Island.

He’ll also give you your Island Medallion as Ringmaster Raven looks on nearby, locked in a cage. Congrats, you’ve saved the Monster Carnival from its monstrosities! The trucks will drive away, leaving you mumbling to no one, “But he’s my…” … well… see you around, friend.

Bonus Quest (members only)

The town is safe, but now a prominent citizen is missing. Has the monster carnival claimed another victim, or is something else behind his disappearance?

Dr. Dan is missing! Run right and enter the forest. When you get there, you’ll find Dr. Dan, cowering and telling you to stay away.

He’ll run away from you. Follow him up the rollercoaster, and he’ll say he’s hiding because he’s a monster, afraid after what happened to Bird Boy. He’s been working on a cure and hands you a Chemical X Formula to make in his lab.

One of the ingredients is close by. Run past Dr. Dan, jump off the roller coaster, and pick up the Wild Mushroom Extract on the ground below.

Next, visit Honest Gabe’s and take the Pickle Juice on the shelf.

Now go inside the Apothecary to the right. Click on the soda pop machine for the last ingredient: a Cola Soft Drink. Then go to the chemistry set and start working on the formula. When you finish, you’ll have Chemical X.

Go back to Dr. Dan, and let him drink the formula, which causes him to grow horns. He’s just about to leave town out of shame when a whole bunch of townsfolk show up. To his surprise, they want him to stay!

So he gives Chemical X back to you. When you use it, you’ll transform into a mean goblin! You can use it any time, but the effect wears off when you exit a scene, and you can’t save it to your costume closet. Enjoy!

Looking for more walkthroughs? Check out our Island Help page! 🏝


Album Photos

These pictures appeared in a former feature known as the photo album.


Trivia

  • Monster Carnival Island is Poptropica’s 37th island. It was released for members on February 21, 2014 with a demo for non-members. The login screen featured the usual running Poptropicans, followed by a cart for Ringmaster Raven’s Circus of the Bizarre trailing slowly behind. MC Island was released to all on March 20, 2014.
  • Monster Carnival Island was re-released with a new ending on Steam on May 25, 2022.
  • Up until 2014, Monster Carnival was considered the island that never was. It appeared as “coming soon” on the Map back in early 2008, but mysteriously disappeared one day to be replaced by 24 Carrot Island. (Otherwise, MC could have technically been the 4th island!) You can read all about it in the PHB article titled Mystery of Monster Carnival Island.
  • Common room: Lazy Sundae Ice Cream (a play on the phrase “lazy Sunday” and sundae ice cream) — the phrase “I scream (you scream)” on the wall is a pun on “ice cream.”
  • According to the first copy of the newspaper you can read by talking to someone on Main Street (The Standard), the current year is 1956. Older issues of The Standard can be read later on in the quest.
  • Honest Gabe’s Auto Repair has a sign that says “PPTRPC HQ” – “Poptropica HQ” with the vowels taken out. Poptropica HQ plays a major part on Mocktropica Island. There is also a sign that says “the best Krpata motor oil” – a reference to Poptropica Creator Mitch Krpata.
  • “Honest Gabe” is a play on “Honest Abe”, the nickname of the 16th US President, Abraham Lincoln. However, the auto shop worker tells us that Honest Gabe (the store’s founder) was hardly honest and is in fact serving a prison sentence for defrauding customers.
  • If you talk to the woman on Main Street when you start the island, she will show you a newspaper with the news of the carnival on it. To the side of the paper, it says “Butter Contest, only 25 cents”. Later in the quest, when you discover the old newspapers telling the backstory of Bird Boy, the side banners says things like, “Apple Pie Eating Contest, only 15 cents”, or “Two Headed Pig, only 15 cents”. Obviously, the price went up between 1936 to 1956, referencing inflation.
  • Betty Brownie from Reality TV Island can be seen in one of the Bird Boy newspapers (The Standard).
  • The old newspapers also make references to The Hunchback of Notre Dame — one article’s author is Esmeralda Modo, after the story’s gypsy, Esmeralda, and the titular hunchback, Quasimodo. Another article mentions Bird Boy hiding away in a bell-tower, much like Quasimodo.
  • Other names of staff reporters in the newspapers can be seen as references: Joe Merrick is the webmaster of a Pokémon fan site called Serebii.net, Rex Ralphitt may be a play on “Wreck-it Ralph,” Dean Hogarth borrows its names from two characters in “The Iron Giant,” Edward Scands seems like a shortform of “Edward Scissorhands,” and Frank Stein is a play on “Frankenstein.”
  • The carnie trainee, Edgar, may be named after the poet Edgar Allan Poe, famously known for his poem, The Raven — again hinted by the infamous Ringmaster Raven.
  • Dr. Price, the mad scientist behind the Haunted Lab, is a reference to the famous horror film actor Vincent Price, but not a real character on Poptropica (confirmed in this tweet).
  • The young girl calls her brother “Bubby”, sort of like how Manny from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books calls his brother Greg “Bubby”. (Diary of a Wimpy Kid is by Jeff Kinney, Poptropica’s founder.)
  • In the ending, you cannot see the Ferris wheel packed up with all the other trucks of carnival gear.
  • The calendar in the apothecary building displays the year as 1956, but the car outside of Honest Gabe’s is a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air – a car manufactured a whole year later than the island is supposed to have taken place.
  • In 2017, after a fan’s call-out, Poptropica modified the dialogue of a Black townie who had originally talked about being nicer to people so they didn’t try to “enslave us” into not trying to “take revenge.”
  • The ending originally had Ringmaster Raven become a clucking display titled “The Incredible Chicken Man,” with townsfolk smug about his humiliation. Fans have since expressed concerns over this character’s treatment, which has led to the Pop Creators auditing the island.
  • In 2022, when the island was re-released on Steam, the ending was slightly modified to have Raven become your character’s friend, only to be caged and carted off to Super Villain Island, presumably to be jailed there. This time, townsfolk were also sympathetic to Raven and regretted bullying him.
  • Bonus quest (members only): The town is safe, but now a prominent citizen is missing. Has the monster carnival claimed another victim, or is something else behind his disappearance?
  • Previously, members would get an additional Monster Carnival gear pack, which included the Ringmaster costume, Hypno-Powder item, and Raven Swarm power. The Ringmaster costume was only available until the end of Early Access.

Step right up!

By Luakit_