I had never heard of the team that placed 2nd in the Resort-wide, and Gak - I can't remember any one in the winners circle of the DCA-only game. Guess I'll have to wait a few weeks till MousePlanet posts the results. :evil:

And I'm in Boston!

Per Adrienne K

Resort-wide:

1- Brother Bears - Masters Team, now retired!! YEAH!!
2- Oswald Returns FKA A buncha cute names, MPinSV, gfy4dland & ReluctantDG
3- SuperStar Losers

DCA ONLY:

1- Pillage People
2- Electric Barbarellas
3- Mickey's Marauders

Best new team: (The Meeples who are friends of Simbas Pride and our own *Nala* )

My day started off well… it was overcast, and seemed we wouldn’t overheat, and the first folks I met were the folks in the lavender Tink outfits.
I had three newbies on my team, and they were all suddenly very impressed they weren’t wearing the wings.
(In case those folks read this, we LOVED your costumes, but my team was still pleased they didn’t need to wear them)

We started in Hollywood, had to take the assistance on the Muppets quest, and once we did, that went tons better.
It was interesting, our first quest was not too bad.. but the muppet one, you solved down to the question How Many Open Doors are there on the Monsters Inc façade?
Well, as many of us know, that’s a trick question… the answer was Ten, and that’s what we answered, but I would like to know if anyone challenged them with 11.

Next we shrunk ourselves to miniscule size, and wandered over to Bug’s Land.

One was to find the number value to a list of items… How many fl oz are in the juice box, how many unbroken popsicle sticks make a bench, how many egg rolls in a box…
Then you too those answers, and used the next page to connect numbers on a grid pattern.
You then turned in the sheet, after you memorized your drawing, and were told to find that which the grid represented.
Well dang it, if we didn’t fell dumb. After wandering around assuming we were looking for a bldg with a chimney… we saw a bunch of people at the kids watering area with the yellow poles?
The ones in the grid pattern? You had to run through the poles as a team, in the same pattern you drew, in order to complete the quest.
Yes, well. Four tries later, and very wet, we emerged. (Try three we think we got right, but no one saw us go through)

Another quest had us ride the Chew Chew… I didn’t know that the rest of my team had never ridden the chew chew… and really? We assumed we wouldn’t have to ride the ride, and turned the quest in wrong at first….
We had to answer a bunch of questions from the Farm area that could be found on the signs, if the answer was this, write this in space 4.
Once you had the list completed, you had to see what the list seemed to represent, and figure out what was missing.
It was a list of the snacks along Heimlich’s route, and you needed to find the missing item. Hence, riding the ride.
The cast member was great, wonderful attitude, pin traded with one of my team mates while we were in line… and that was done.

From there we went to Redwood challenge .. now… why did I say stupid Redwood Challenge?
I asked if there were physical limitations to the day, I was told no.
To me, the suspended rope bridge things, and tons of stairs, are a limitation to be made aware of.

That aside… the second Redwood challenge puzzle for us, was the one with the empty grid and the letters in columns above the grid?
We sucked.. it took us forever… and had we known there was an evil paragraph yet to come, we might have given it up.
We realized sitting there in the shade that the couple not two feet from us, were doing worse than we were. When we finally figured out where to go, I literally told them to come with us.
We had less than 30 minutes, and weren’t more than half way done, what loss would it have been to us? None.
We lost the couple. I have no idea what happened to them, and they were so frustrated, with the puzzle and each other. (I think I found them on MP, possibly sdfilmcritic and partner)
We got that puzzle finally… but it was so stupid I stood there… I looked at my team and said, That answer is SO dumb, it has to be right. No, they said… that’s doesn’t make any sense. Yes, I say, that’s why it’s right. <sigh> the joys of MA.

Three applications of sunscreen, I’m toasty. One team mate, a co-worker, is also burnt, and I am not sure he’s speaking to me. His gf, will never bring him again, and the last gal, was amazed at the entire event.


And GC, yes, I think the Bears are bears, and they are a great group of men.

Fellowship of the Mouse tanked this time around. :(

We botched the first quest (the "Hollywood Squares" one), and then spent over 45 minutes on the stupid crossword jigsaw puzzle. We didn't leave Downtown Disney until after 10:30. :rolleyes:

Sadly, we did really well with the rest, but we still couldn't make up enough of the lost morning time to finish. :(

It was our worst game ever.

I gotta say I'm now a little miffed at the Flik's Fun Faire stuff. We arrived there with 20 minutes left in the game and asked them to pick out the most fun quest we might be able to do in 20 minutes. They gave us the one where, after figuring everything out, you had to ride Heimlich's Chew-Chew train, which had a 30-minute queue.

That was a cruel and unexpected trick (for which I allege no malice). But Bah. Messed up our mojo, because we couldn't complete it. Heheh, we even got yelled at by the Chew-Chew CM for sneaking through the unused queue areas to try and spot the answer.

Once we had gotten into DCA, we started completing all our quests on the first try, with no assistance, and in pretty short order (though I will never comprehend the blistering speeds attained by some of the winning teams). But that last one with the Chew-Chew train really messed us up. Nothing compared to the Downtown Disney games early in the morning, which we botched completely.


I think the truth is that the caliber of the teams has just gotten better over time. My team has aged, but we still play about the same as we've always played ... and what was once good enough for 1st place is now only good enough for 20th. (Geez, I'd be happy with 20th this time around, but I fear we did far worse.)

I'm not Alex, but I believe the recap is supposed to run on Wednesday.

So, we weren't completely shut out of MA, despite choosing to go to Coachella...we got to beta test a few weeks ago.

I'd agree with iSm's observation that the puzzles seemd a little bit more difficult this time around (and I'm the puzzle guy!), but there were some really fun and clever things, and I'm jealous of all of you that got to run it competetively.

Big congrats to the winners, I'm bummed we missed the Brothers Bear finally cross over.

For those that did the long-form one, was there a quest in Disneyland that involved tribute windows? Did you have to go to Toon Town?

From what it sounded like, they cut the Disneyland portion out and only a small handful of teams had to go there.

Oh, GD and CP are in for it now. Because I will never stop needling anyone who Beta-tested that ESPN quest - which had absolutely wrong wording in two sections, resulting in two purportedly incorrect answers when foolishly interpretted using the English language.




Also - I must question the wisdom of using some of the best players ever born to Beta test the game. A certain high-level staffer confided in me after MouseAdventure that the quests were running far longer in reality than they did in Beta, to the point where they even had to cut one quest from the game mid-morning. I don't know who the other Beta testers were, but the likes of GD and CP are not going to provide you with a running time for average contestants!