Fantasy Island Trivia
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44 free Fantasy Island trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
For seven seasons on ABC's Saturday night, a seaplane landed in a lagoon, a bell rang, and Mr. Roarke lifted a glass and welcomed his guests to Fantasy Island. The show ran 152 episodes from 1978 to 1984, and its two catchphrases, 'De plane! De plane!' and 'Smiles, everyone, smiles!', are still quoted by people who never saw an episode. This Fantasy Island trivia quiz covers the whole story in 44 questions: Aaron Spelling's joke pitch that ABC took seriously, the network's odd first choice for Roarke, the $50,000 fee, the hints that Roarke was not mortal, the real California arboretum that stood in for the island, the Grumman Widgeon seaplane, Hervé Villechaize's rise and firing, Christopher Hewett's one season as Lawrence, and the three attempts to bring the island back with Malcolm McDowell, Michael Peña and Roselyn Sánchez. It starts with the catchphrases and ends with questions only a devoted rerun watcher would know. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on the series, its cast and its revivals, with the supporting sentence quoted under each question.
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Addams Family actress, once married to Aaron Spelling, guest-starred in four episodes of Fantasy Island?
Carolyn Jones
Carolyn Jones, TV's original Morticia, kept working on the daytime soap Capitol even as she was dying of cancer.
Q 02In Fantasy Island's final season, how did butler Lawrence ring the tower bell?
By pressing a button
By pressing a button: the sedate butler rang the bell from below instead of making the frantic run up the tower that opened earlier episodes.
Q 03On Fantasy Island, what was the name of Mr. Roarke's assistant played by Hervé Villechaize?
Tattoo
Tattoo did not return for the 1998 revival, which gave Mr. Roarke a whole team of new assistants instead.
Q 04On Fantasy Island, what does Mr. Roarke's assistant shout from the bell tower at the start of each episode?
'De plane! De plane!'
'De plane! De plane!' greeted a real seaplane, which sold in 2016 at a collector car auction in Branson, Missouri.
Q 05On Fantasy Island, what does Mr. Roarke tell his staff just before each new group of guests arrives?
'Smiles, everyone! Smiles!'
'Smiles, everyone! Smiles!' sets a cheerful welcome, even though Mr. Roarke often knows a guest's fantasy will not turn out as they expect.
Q 06On the original Fantasy Island, what color suit is Mr. Roarke known for wearing?
White
White was Mr. Roarke's signature, so the 1998 revival had its new Roarke choose a black suit and order all the white ones burned.
Q 07Ricardo Montalbán played a grandfather in which Robert Rodriguez film series?
Spy Kids
Spy Kids director Robert Rodriguez wanted Montalbán specifically for the grandfather role and persuaded him to take it.
Q 08Which Desperate Housewives star reunited with James Denton to play a married couple on Fantasy Island in 2023?
Teri Hatcher
Teri Hatcher and Denton play empty nesters unsure whether to stay married. The island wipes their memory of the marriage, and they fall for each other and marry all over again.
Q 09Which Sesame Street character did Fantasy Island's Hervé Villechaize help perform in the 1970s?
Oscar the Grouch
Oscar the Grouch: when early scenes needed the Grouch to go somewhere, his trash can sprouted legs and walked, and the legs were Villechaize's.
Q 10Which standard did future Fantasy Island star Ricardo Montalbán sing with Esther Williams in 1949's Neptune's Daughter?
Baby, It's Cold Outside
Baby, It's Cold Outside: Frank Loesser wrote the duet to sing with his wife at parties, and she was upset when he sold their party piece to MGM for the film.
Q 11Josie Bissett, Laura Leighton and Daphne Zuniga reunited on Fantasy Island in 2021 after starring together in which 1990s drama?
Melrose Place
Melrose Place: they play old friends whose shared 50th-birthday trip turns sour. When they can't settle it, the island drops them into a funeral for one of the three.
Q 12Who played the Devil opposite Mr. Roarke in the Fantasy Island episode 'The Devil and Mr. Roarke'?
Roddy McDowall
Roddy McDowall played the Devil twice, first coming for a woman who had sold her soul to save her dying husband.
Q 13Years after Fantasy Island ended, what did Ricardo Montalbán reveal he had imagined Mr. Roarke to be?
A fallen angel
Q 21Fantasy Island's Ricardo Montalbán later voiced billionaire villain Señor Senior Sr. on which Disney Channel cartoon?
Kim Possible
Kim Possible: Senior is a retired billionaire who takes up villainy purely as a hobby, and only because Kim's sidekick Ron suggests it.
Q 22Which legendary actor did ABC want for Mr. Roarke before Spelling rejected him?
Orson Welles
Spelling also vetoed the network's idea of a sexy female sidekick for Roarke.
Q 23Which other Aaron Spelling series aired directly before Fantasy Island each week?
The Love Boat
Both shows relied on rotating celebrity guest stars, and characters occasionally crossed between them.
A fallen angel, he said, punished for the sin of pride and sentenced to the island as his purgatory.
Q 14Which actress joined Fantasy Island from 1981 to 1982 as Mr. Roarke's assistant Julie?
Wendy Schaal
Wendy Schaal played Julie in season five, when the Devil returned in 'The Devil and Mr. Roarke' scheming for Mr. Roarke's own soul.
Q 15Why did Hervé Villechaize's time on Fantasy Island end in 1983?
A salary dispute
A salary dispute ended his run, and afterward his career dried up apart from the odd Dunkin' Donuts commercial.
Q 16In Fantasy Island's final season, who played Lawrence, the butler who replaced Villechaize's character?
Christopher Hewett
Christopher Hewett moved on the following year to his best-known role, the title butler of the sitcom Mr. Belvedere.
Q 17What is the real building whose bell tower appears at the start of each Fantasy Island episode?
The Queen Anne Cottage
The Queen Anne Cottage stands not on a tropical island but in a public arboretum in Arcadia, California, where the show also filmed outdoor scenes.
Q 18Fantasy Island's opening titles show a waterfall filmed on which Hawaiian island?
Kauai
Kauai supplied Wailua Falls for the opening titles, but nearly everything else on the island was really filmed in Southern California.
Q 19Fantasy Island's Ricardo Montalbán played circus owner Armando in two sequels to which film?
Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes: in Escape and Conquest, Armando hides the talking chimps' newborn son in his circus and raises him as Caesar, who grows up to lead the ape revolt.
Q 20Which future film star made her acting debut in a 1978 episode of Fantasy Island?
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer: a supermarket checkout clerk at 19, she entered a beauty pageant as her ticket out of retail. It landed her an agent, and her first part followed the same year.
Q 24How did children arrive at the island in two Season 2 episodes, instead of by plane?
By hot-air balloon
Typical episodes featured adult guests, so the balloon arrivals were a rare novelty.
Q 25In the 2021 Fantasy Island episode 'His and Hers', a married couple's fantasy makes them do what?
Swap bodies
Swap bodies: the couple are played by real-life spouses Dave and Odette Annable, and during the fantasy they learn that she is pregnant.
Q 26In the 2021 Fantasy Island series, Roarke's assistant Ruby first arrived as a guest facing what?
A terminal illness
A terminal illness: Ruby arrived as an old woman with little time left, and the island made her young and healthy. She stayed to keep that life while her husband went home alone.
Q 27In 1964, Hervé Villechaize left France for which American city, hoping to make it as an artist?
New York
New York is where the painter turned to acting, first on stage and then in films.
Q 28What was the profession of Hervé Villechaize's father, who spent years seeking treatments for his son's dwarfism?
Surgeon
A surgeon, his father took him from hospital to hospital for treatments, but none of them made a lasting difference to his height.
Q 29In which James Bond film did Villechaize play the henchman Nick Nack?
The Man with the Golden Gun
He was Christopher Lee's sidekick Scaramanga's servant, three years before Fantasy Island.
Q 30After Fantasy Island ended, Ricardo Montalbán played Charlton Heston's business rival Zach Powers on which Dynasty spin-off?
The Colbys
The Colbys: its second season closed with a heroine stranded in the desert walking aboard an alien spaceship, and that cliffhanger proved to be the show's last.