To clarify, I would like to use a custom page type just for the contest add on and not the rest of the site.

Hi,
Yes, the contest actually includes its own special page type. Check
out the screencast here for some more information:
http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/contest/screencast/...

Best Wishes,
Greg
concrete5 Team

Right, that doesn't really help. I finally went another route and just created a new theme and applied it to the contest page type.

Now I get an error when I try to edit the block.

Fatal error: Call to undefined method ADORecordSet_empty::GetArray() in /home/backpack/public_html/concrete/libraries/3rdparty/adodb/adodb.inc.php on line 1553

Any idea how to fix this? I can still add a photo and vote, I just can't edit the block now for some reason.

I would start by copying the Contest page types (contest.php and contest_entry.php) up into (your site root)/page_types and editing the html and styles set by those pages to match your theme. It looks like there's a whole ton of custom, contest-specific code in there that won't get called if you take a contest page and apply a different page type.

Thanks Matt. I tried that and it did become a mess. By creating a theme just for that page, it retained most of the custom code that is required. Now if I can just figure out the error that keeps getting generated when I go to edit the block.

Hmm, I'm not familiar with that error and searching both the forums and the text of the contest package itself proved fruitless. I guess I'd take another look at the contest-specific code in the default contest page types and make sure nothing's missing.