We rode Soarin'. We were so happy that we'd thought to read through all the materials and cleverly head straight there for a fastpass that we didn't even consider checking if it was a puzzle we could solve without the on-ride info. Which, of course, it was. That probably cost us. That and once again failing to read all directions carefully, forcing us to head back into DCA from DtD after we figured we had finished with DCA, subsequently causing us to completely skip both the DtD and the Disneyland Hotel quests.

I'll take the preemptive alternate tack. If I had one knock on this game it was the lack of puzzles/codes/etc. Pretty much everything was, "Go here, find this, write it down." While I enjoy those, I also love the puzzle aspect and I thought that was missing this time around (and I presume that's at least partially due to lack of Alex-influence). The one logic puzzle that was in there wasn't even really a logic puzzle. Only a small portion of it was solvable logically, the bulk of the solving had to be done with brute force guess-and-check. Bleh. Give me some alpha numeric coding or pictogram type puzzles any day over that.

We had a great time at the post-torture dinner as always. One benefit of the registration snafu was that it gave us the opportunity to spend more social time with a few people rather than just catching glimpses of a billion teams at registration and the awards ceremony. We finally got to meet Drince88 in person, which was a treat. Hope she made it back to NO without the delays and hassles of here flight in.

Loved:

More time was spent running around to answer quests then sitting there answering quests. Hollywood Backlot was awesome.
Eye-Spy seemed to be a bit easier without being a cake-walk
Less time was spent trying to figure out what we were supposed to do (a la Enchanted Race)
Multiple MA Centrals within each park and DTD
Having to get our team photo taken by the PhotoPass people (even though we almost forgot)
Not having to go from PP to Toon Town to answer a quest

Liked:
Pre-game trivia - done really well, I'm just not a trivia person

Disliked:
The 2 hours allowed for the awards ceremony. In the future I think it would be better if everyone was told that they were welcome to come back at x time for trivia and the raffle but the results weren't going to be announced until y time. We would have been able to eat and relax a bit more rather than rush back to play human scrabble and group trivia. I also feel that the scrabble was a flop because anyone who wasn't playing was left out. Almost everyone who has played before knows that there is going to be a delay in the results. Why not just have the results announced later?

I'll cross post this over to the Pad as well.

Well, we had already learned the Read-All-Directions-Carefully lesson -- for the most part.

As always, at the starting gun, we went immediately to a quiet corner to review the materials carefully ... even going so far this time as to write a brief synopsis of the quest and where exactly we had to go to solve it, on each piece of game materials. This was a great time-saver bit of strategizing. But, um, the one thing we didn't do ... was compare our game materials with the enclosed inventory sheet - - and, of course, for the first time ever - we were missing stuff. Two entire quests, to be
specific.

We didn't realize it till the game was 3-quarters over and we had our answer sheet only half filled in. At first, though miffed, we shrugged it off ... because we only finished the quests we had with 3 minutes to spare.

Afterwards, however, we discovered that one of the quests was something that we instantly knew the correct answer to, and would have gotten full score (50 points) for in exactly 12 seconds.


And so, we are very happy with the results of officially coming in slightly behind The Happy Haunts, and error-corrected coming in slightly ahead of them. Being back in the running, in non-shameful Masters territory, was a great relief.


Much better than that .... the game was pure fun from start to finish. Sit-around puzzle solving was at a bare minimum, and explore details of the resort in a constant state of happy movement was maxed out. The mix of easy and a tad challenging was also excellent.



I gotta say ... though I accept the reasons for it ... the ballroom elements are absolutely horrible. Sterile, boring, and utterly lacking in MouseAdventure charm ... I felt as if I were at any number of lame sci-fi conventions or other corporate snore events.


The stupidity of seating 500 people in a ballroom, marching them all up two narrow flights of stairs, having them sit around to take a group picture with no We Are There element of either Castle or Park Entrance - - then all 500 back down the stairs to return to their ballroom seats was the stupidest, most lame maneuver imaginable.


The prize ceremony wasn't much better. Ballroom sitting for an hour before the results were announced was just retarded. Why not return to starting the ceremony 2 hours after the end of game, if results are not going to be ready till then? I'm sure most teams would appreciate being able - once more - to grab a meal after the grueling excercise of MouseAdventure.



So, the Zlick score:
Team Logistics of Start and Finish - 2
Mouse Adventure Event - 8

I'm very jealous of all those who got to play.

I was so jealous in fact that I instead decided to get up at 7am to wait in line at Target to buy a Wii - at which I succeeded. I figured if I couldn't play one game, I might as well try to play another.

Then we went to the Star Wars thing up at the science center. We had a good day.

Congrats to all participants! After hearing in your recaps that the puzzle element was limited, I am not feeling sad for missing yesterday's adventure. I got to see Jawas, R2-D2, C3PO, Chewbaca and Darth Vader. We played with robots and starspeeders, then ate at the famouse Philippe's french dip, walked Alvera Street and saw Union Station. A very nice day indeed.

Kudos and congrats to all!

I saw GD & CP yesterday as they motored on by the Columbia, faces planted in a note pad.

I was pushing a twin stroller and yelled something appropriately lame like "Go LoT!"

It was noisy and they didn't hear me but it was good to see y'all.

Ooh, and I don't remember arguing in front of the Columbia so I bet we looked competitive, rather than on the verge of divorce! :D

Wish we'd spotted you, but thanks for the generic well wishes :cool:

Just FYI, the game was not devoid of puzzles. There was a word search, an evil paragraph, a map-plotting overlay, and a not-logical-enough-for-GD logic puzzle. 4 things where most teams would likely sit and puzz.

To me, that's plenty of We-Could-Be-Doing-This-Anywhere for a game whose charms come from being played at Disneyland.


With all due disrespect to Alex, almost everyone I spoke with praised the return to a more reasonable level of puzzledom.

Less puzzling meant I held the clipboard almost the whole time. Organization and reading is more my thing. That was kind of neat. :)

Oh, and I could not believe that they had arranged to have a Photo Pass salesperson actually come to the awards and try to sell us stuff! Thank God they were a no show. Even so, I'm angry that they'd do that to us, just so they could be lazy about photos.

Yeah, I'll post about this at MP when I get a second.

I'm in agreeance with the others - if they won't be ready in one hour, make it two. Year-old calendars make good jokes but NOT good prizes, and it's especially embarrassing now that this is so big and they're still giving away things no one wants.

I posted over on MP about the timing of the ceremoney. Tony and AVP addressed this regarding scoring - but I haven't gone on this AM to see what they said to my suggestion of just holding it later.