At the camp mess hall, Donald and Talia incite a riot with the campers, and they all run into the woods in body paint and attack Adam, Pixel, Wichita, and Wendy with condoms fashioned into water balloons. The next day, as Wendy and Pixel prepare to leave, Wendy notices that half of her family photo from Mount Rushmore has been torn off, which Wichita had taken and eaten to dispose of. As the campers and counselors prepare to leave, the children confess how much they meant to them. On the bus ride back, Wendy is forced to sit next to Wichita. Donald takes a photo of them with a camper in-between, asking them to smile for the photo, which appears on the cover of the following year's camp staff manual. "Happy Campers" was shown at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2001. However, it did not receive a theatrical release; instead, it was released straight-to-DVD by New Line Cinema in 2002. The film received a 57% positive rating based on 7 critics' reviews on the film review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes. Jeffrey Anderson of "Combustible Celluloid" gave the film a positive review, writing: "This hilarious little gem from Daniel Waters, the screenwriter of Heathers, went straight to video because the distributor couldn't figure out exactly what to do with it. In this vicious, odd summer camp story, everyone wants to be like cool counselor Brad Renfro, every imaginable disaster comes to light, and the gorgeous James (Jaime) King frolics half-naked by the lakeside. Before long, this will be a cult favorite and people will be quoting lines at parties. Don't miss it." Nathan Rabin of "The A.V. Club" called the film a "cross between "Wet Hot" ["American Summer"] and "A Midsummer Night's Dream"" and deemed it "a worthy followup to [Waters'] "Heathers"."