MouseAdventure Wrap-up, Results, and Everything Else
 

I woke up with sore calves and that can mean only one thing - time for the post-MA thread!

I don't have a ton of time to post on weekdays anymore so I'll try to keep this less than rambling...

Congrats to the LoT teams! FEJ, Ralph Wiggam, and the P.O.P (featuring NirvanaMan) took 4th, and the SuperStar Losers took 2nd! <Cartman> Kiiiiick ass! </Cartman>

GD and I, the Happy Haunts, would have taken 5th if we were not Masters. Pretty respectable, eh?

We met some great new teams and really enjoyed the quests....but details later.

For now, here are the shirts:
Back of mine
My front (breast pocket style)
GD's back
GD's front (breast pocket style)

For comparison, here are the original prints - Frontierland and Adventureland.

More later...

Cute shirts CP!! :)

I likes the chicken.
:D

Adding to the glory of the LoT, our newest Swanker, Phoebe33 (aka nursemelis on other boards) was on the winning Sunday-only team!

You know, if I remember correctly, the Denton Affair also would have been 5th in their first post-retirement run. Hmmm, does that mean 18th is in our future?!

Actually, it ocurred to me much later that there was one other time recently that we didn't place in the top 3...and the weather was mild and cool then as well. Our stamina is one of our HUGE advantages. Take away the 85-90 degree heat, and suddenly our ability to power through the sweat and dehydration is no longer a factor.

But a big congrats to all those that played and placed, of course. I had a ton of fun. Despite being a bit overwhelmed by the seeming volume of puzzles on Sunday, I was thoroughly entertained. Some great quests this time around.

Mouse-a-whatnow?

Dang! You are good for knowing that I am nursemelis! I just found your boards last week and they are so cool! Thanks for the shout out! We can not believe we actually won!

Congratulations, phoebe33. Awesome job!

Sweet congratulations to zapppop and his team, moving up the ranks quite nicely to come in 2nd in the two-day competition (by odd coincidence, my namesake crew, Team Zlick, came in second in the one-day competition. Kudos to them as well).

More congrats are in order for FEJ/P.O.P/RalphWiggum and featuring Nirvanaman team for a cool 4th place finish in the grueling 2-Day.

And a tip of my hat to the Happy Haunts for their unofficial 5th place finish, but yes - 18th is in your future. It's all downhill from here. Masters, Schmasters ... we're Retired! Bah.


Despite our dismal 18th place showing (our worst performance ever), we conversely had one of the best times. I thought the daytime version was very well-thought-out in involving Disneyland exploration, Disneyland fun, and concentration on 50th anniversary decorations and additions - such as the Cast Member window, the Opera House displays, the map of hidden fifties, and the photo mosaics in the Small World mall. The quest on Tom Sawyer Island (communicating thru the squawker phones) was particularly fun. We even had fun in the (brief) rain, trying to protect our thousands of pages of materials from the downpour. There was a heck of a lot of stuff handed out, and I really miss the days when they would hand you one land's worth at a time.

I don't think the nighttime version was nearly as well thought out. Only the Main Street lightbulb sign patterns was clever, and involved a nighttime-only feature. The blacklight postcard revealed on Winnie the Pooh was the highlight of the evening, but other than these two things - I think the night version fell flat. To my team, it seemed like too much of it was puzzles that could be done at home. There were puzzles on Sunday as well, but it seemed that 90% of the game required - ya know - being in Disneyland.


And though they managed to pull it off, I don't think the MouseAdventure staff was quite on top of their game this time. But I did appreciate the way they scrambled to improvise for the forgotten protractors, the forgotten trivia questions, the shortage of maps, and the usual suddden park changes since Beta testing took place that inevitably affect some of the quests. There were no big mishaps, only small inconveniences, and I think everyone had a terrific time.

For those that don't know - it's a reference to a years-ago quest in MA where Lani wore a chicken hat and wandered the park, and we had to find her.

I have to admit I always forget about Team Zlick until they're announced during the awards ceremony. :D Congrats to them too.

Phoebe33, have you guys played before? I just found out at MP that the team that tied for 2nd with SSLosers for the 2 day was a brand new team! :eek: Craziness.

I felt bad for the Brother Bears, who are on the cusp of Masterhood, but it seems they only win when it's in DCA.

Damn. No more time. More tonight!

I cheated just a bit, being an admin and seeing your email address when you signed up. ;)

The list of calamities that Alex and crew had to deal with was pretty staggering. Severe time underestimates in preparing the materials, forgotten components, insect invasions, UV-burnt retinas, "missing" spouses (if by "missing" you mean too busy playing WoW to pick up a phone), Disney being late in setting up the things they'd paid for, etc., etc. And on top of that, they seemed very short staffed in comparison to previous events. So in light of all the went wrong, it was quite a feat that so much went right.

My team had a very fun 2 days. I have no idea how competitive we were - we usually do better when there is a mix of trivia and straight puzzles. But, we had a blast. Of course we got NO sleep on Saturday night (we were catching up and then I was being an insomniac) but I had energy to spare on Sunday. For me in my post diseased state, it is all about how I hold up. MA really tells me where my energy level and stamina levels are at. I was fine this time around. I was even leading the pack a few times. So, personally, it was really satisfying.

We seemed to do OK on the puzzles, but I just find them tedious without a mix of other activities, plus Miss "I do puzzles" is now STAFF - hrumph - and I had to actually do puzzles on my own! The agony!!!!! The 2 eye spys were evil and wonderful. I could do eye spys all day long.

So, I'm looking forward to the results to see just where we are at. As it stands now, I have no clue.

Congratulations to all of the LoT Winners! And to the non-LoT winners as well. Good job one and all!

Congratulations everyone!

Damn! If only I could have been there to join one of the teams. I'm sure I could have helped any of the LoT teams to finish in 18th place or even lower! Sorry I missed out.

Congrats to all who participated. Plus a :snap: :snap: to everyone that worked to run the event.

Thanks for all the congrats! I feel so special to be congratulated by all you MA stars! This was not our first time, but our highest finish was around 27th!

We noticed a ton of teams just before 3 attempting to return their packets to the picnic area. I kind of felt bad for them and stopped a few to tell them they were going the wrong way. I too enjoyed the Tom Sawyer Island quest and the uniform eye spys were a twist on that game. A welcome twist, as our team hates those and usually only finds one or two!

Yeah, with the scramble to deal with the fact that their tables hadn't arrived to set up in the Esplanade, the staff seemed to be spread very thin in the morning (picnic are to check people in, bag check to redirect people to the picnic area, esplanade once the tables finally arrived, and mini Space Mountain for the group photo). Because of that it didn't seem like they were able to communicate as effectively as they normally do, either with each other or with us players.

BTW GD- I love your avatar! I saw the story about it on Best Week Ever.

I didn't know that Lani was a WoW player. It truly HAS taken over everyone's lives. ;)

CP: Get a laptop, and steal some WiFi. :p

Heh. No Wifi at work :( and even if we do get it there's no way I can do that while on the clock.

I have to say this was by far the most fun I've had playing MouseAdventure. It seemed like everyone was in good spirits all around. My team was eager to play but we also took a brief time out here & there to pose for photos and have a little extra fun. Getting second place was the icing on the cake, and damn if it ain't sweet! Glad to play along with everyone! If it weren't for good competition our victory would be hollow.





hehehe, and now for a few pics:


Before we met up with Andrew & Richard on Sunday morning, Nicki and I decided to go out for breakfast before our big day.




What do winning MouseAdventurers eat for for breakfast ?



Why pancakes of course!





Aaaahhhhhh! That hit the spot!


After the game began & the rain started to fall, we visited a friend of ours from under the sea.





Hehehe. Did I mention how much fun we had ?

:D

I think I mentioned it to you after the first time this happened... ;)

Glad to have it confirmed, though....

And that's what breaks/lunch are for. ;)

Pancakes? Ingenious! :D

Grats to everyone!

Yummy pancakes

I think we may have caught some of the staff off-gaurd:

I think you misspelled Steph. ;)

Hey, I think she's just going to be happy it's not her ass!

I don't know about that - she was wearing her "Gee my ass looks terrific Jeans" - and it did ;)

Crazy Legs took this terrific shot of us:

Spooky! Sort of Blair Witch-y, that photo. :eek:

Congrats, zapp, on your team's win. I fully expect you guys to start taking some firsts though next time around. No pressure, though. ;)

And a special shout-out to NA for her fabulous good sportmanship on the shooting gallery. NA, if it's any consolation, during the evening, I kept pumping quarters to try my luck at the targets -- I've yet to hit anything at the gallery. LOL

zapppop - did you guys buy those shirts, or make them? They're great!

I'm going to try to find a couple of "New Orleans" shirts to wear in Disneyland this weekend - unfortunately, where I park in the Quarter is all full of construction trailers and travel trailers, so I have to find a place here in the 'burbs that's open for something like that.

I'm glad everyone had a great time!

What a flattering photo. :rolleyes: Perhaps next time we can recreate the infamous ass shot for a before and after comparison. ;)

It was great to see everyone. Next time I plan to have more time to spend, but at least I did get on some rides. Congrats to all the teams. :)

Wow what a great weekend. I still can't believe we tied for 2nd place!!! :eek: I agree with Zap, Our team was eager to play and we had blast just hanging out together. It was so nice for not to rush home right after the game & hang out with everyone at the "AP" Lounge.


See you March!!!

I've posted quick and dirty explanations here.

If you have general questions it would be best to ask about them over there, but if they're more specific to your team, feel free to ask here and I'll eventually get back.

We've decided that the Spring 2006 event will, simply because we are running out of gimmicks take place entirely under water. The first task will be to quickly (since you'll already be under the water) build a sufficiently long string of straws so that you can breath and the last will be tickling the feet (from below) of Lisa's favorite swan.

I'll bring the Gillyweed.:D

But will there be basketweaving? It would sure be nice to finally put my college education to use.

Look for a new poster with a familiar IP address with the name 'Fraid Not. :evil:

The first question will probably be "Who is General You?" ;)

But first, you must figure out wheich one is the favorite - the boy or the girl and then figure out which one is which. Extra points for what the proper names for male, female and baby swans are. (Gotta have that trivia in there somehow.)

The proper names are Churro, Chimichanga, and Oyster Cracker respectively, right? ;)

No! Those were the name 2 pair ago!

Bah, be careful what you wish for. I asked Alex to post the answers on the Pad, and - though he said he wasn't going to - he did. Now I see the full extent of how unbelievably crappy we did. Some benchmark!!! Frelling 18th. Bah.

I'm sorry if that sounds like sour grapes, but that is such a bad ranking for us - - our first time out of the top ten ... and now that we are supposed to be exemplary Masters setting some sort of benchmark, I feel awful having set such a poor example of non-excellence. Thank goodness the Happy Haunts and themouse.com provided good benchmarks, or the entire Masters system would have to be called into question. Heheh.


So many stupid mistakes on our part. OMG, am I ever rusty after missing three games and not playing for a year and a half. Maybe I should stop having so much fun (I enjoyed Sunday's event more than I had enjoyed many a mouseadventure), but I'm not willing to give up pleasure for points. Bah.

Since "Fraid Not has a undeniably good heart, I am posting this here:

The other option for us seemed to be "Take Three Shoes" so I asked Jennifer for her shoes. Luckily, she knew I was being silly and didn't ding me (I did correct myself).


So, did the shots count for points? Like Sheila said, I got 100%! ;)

Tells you what kind of men I play with when I get to be the one shooting. :rolleyes:

Curious though. Were there points for solving the flag puzzle? The option was given to simply go straight to the Shooting Gallery without solving that puzzle. I don't quite understand what the heck was up with that.


Also, I challenge anyone on the Mouseadventure Staff to show me the 1899 (or whatever year it said on the sheet) award in any of those Frontierland windows.

I believe the award was in a picture. Although, I didn't do this quest. Part of our time issues with this game.

yeah, that was odd. It said it would be "helpful" but not necessary. But when we tried to go up to the gallery without doing it, we were turned away.

It was on the SIDE of the display case, near the top, hidden by glare and practically invisible unless you caught the right angle and right lighting.

I just walked up and said, "Is it Vodka?!"

Yeah, I'm with GD
You had to standing to the right of the Annie Oakley case, staring at the left hand wall of that window, and looking UP.
I missed it, it was between that and the branding iron. I spotted it as Cordae and I were standing there arguing which was the most likely thing we didnt spot.
We had assumed Annie was done winning in '98

You shouldn't have been turned away. The advantage of doing the flags was that it would allow you to take three shots at each target rather than just two if you didn't do it.

oh, well then that didn't hurt as at all - - as our contestant was a crack shot who hit every target on the first try .... grrrr, except for that one that was hit one split second before she shot at it. She could easily have claimed it as her own, but we do not cheat - - - unless, of course, Alex insists on it.

Of the targets I hit, I hit them all on the first shot. The only one I missed, however, was a complete failure, two-fold in nature. First, I misidentified the target. It was supposed to be "One-eye Dan". I didn't see that, but saw another Dan, so assumed that was it. I then proceeded to miss that one 3 times in a row! Had I hit it on the first or second try, I suppose I might have gotten a "you missed the target, 2 shots left," but no. How I missed a grave stone that was right in front of my face, and then proceed to nail the back wall and the train in one shot I'll never know.

we got it right, but I'm not sure if we put our team # on any of our papers.... :blush:

Really? I thought you were asking me if it really would be helpful and I thought I said it would be. I apologize if it seemed like I was pushing you off - I just wanted you to get all the benefits possible. Ironically, of course, I don't think you probably needed those extra shots after all....

So did some sheets have team numbers on them, and some didn't? Because we didn't number any sheets, since we saw that they were pre-numbered.

EDIT: Never mind, I see that was part of the dreaded Getting Mathematical quest.

I've sent out information to the mailing list of MouseAdventure teams about accessing team photos and result information (the official recap and results are delayed a day - another MouseAdventure tradition continued).

I'm not willing to publish the links publicly (non-players can wait a day) but if you are on a MouseAdventure team and do not receive the email, for whatever reason, send an email to mouseadventure@mouseplanet.com and I'll send it back with the information.

I do ask that others not publish the links just because the pages are in rough form and could use some beauty rest before going on full display.

Yeah, everything was prenumbered except for the papers handed out on the fly during the game.

Steve, you comments on the nature of the night game are penetrating and reflect my feelings on it as well. When we started designing the game it was all about making use of night-only elements of the park. It turns out there aren't so many as you'd think and most of them are just too local to be of much use. Various factors (such as not knowing how much we had to balance keeping players out of the densest crowds with getting to use involve the coolest stuff) tended to push us away.

By the time we were done we found that the night specific element of the game was more focused on strategy and time management (when do things close? when should we try to do this quest in Adventureland such that it doesn't make us walk upstream against Fantasmic traffic) and less on "here's a bit of the park that is only noticable during night."

For example, the original black light quest used the Haunted Mansion photomosaic, but it turns out that whatever light they use for that does not react to our ink, so we had to move it something a bit less themed to the night.

We were also really very timid at times because, just as it was new to you, it was new to us. Some of you may remember the first puzzle I helped create on my own after Kevin left. It ended up being way too hard and complex, since I didn't know how the immensely different traffic/visual/timing issues would effect things I was wary of moving too far away from game mechanics I was certain of.

We're always surprised by a lot of things, though, no matter how much time I spend mapping it all out. We went into the Sunday game worried that it would be too easy, and it was perhaps a bit too hard.

WOW! I guess there was a good reason I was not exhausted! Lackidasical Lawyers will be our next team name.

Clearly, we need someone on out team who does puzzles - I think we hit our lowest ranking this time around

Well, you two were operating under some constraints.

If it will help you next time I can fire Steph for you. (Actually it was great having her on board and I look forward to her input on future games; your loss my gain.)

Yes. Lowest ranking EVER! And this was the same team make-up that got first a while back. Slackers!

Yeah, we did have a few issues that effected us but damn, my physicality wasn't one of them this time!

Yeah, and if we continue to be this puzzle intensive, we might demand her back. STEPH DOES PUZZLES!

I'm going for three in a row!

Thank you, Alex, for sending us all the email with the results. I've been wondering where we were at and had no clue. (I think I was better off clueless.)

And, thank you and the entire MP staff for yet another wonderful event. It's always so much fun to play MA and it is always a great challenge. I appreciate all of your time and effort - especially with all of the fiascos this time around! MA rocks!

Of course this time we didn't leave town the night before - next year we'll have to go someplace in another timezone - Singapore might be nice?

I do puzzles! All you have to do is fly me down there, get me park admission, and I'm all yours!

ok

And, you don't need a plastic bubble to stay at our house! And, I bet some nice CM can sign you in.

Hmmmmm, If only you lived in another time zone...

I'll start my training now...

How are you with Berets?

If you think the Bar Exam is going to be tough, just try to become one of OUR lawyers! Berets, Turtlenecks, Crab Hats........You have to be willing.


Hey, we'd actually have REAL legal representation!!!!!!!! Cool!

I saw something this MA:

I love Physical Puzzles, puzzles where I look at things, and manipulate around objects to find answers. (a la Myst) So I was right at home with the Photo Mosaics [1st Favorite], Johns vs. Janes, Map Doodling [A close second Favorite], and a few others.

Pure Logic Puzzles, and fill-ins are my demise. Getting Mathmatic, Crostic, and others are what really hammers my brain. Glad to see a balance of both.

Post whore

:D You also didn't have me yelling at you "We don't have TIME for that NOW!"

Did I mention that I have my own navy wool beret, to which I affixed a Soviet era military academy pin?

Wow, just 5 points behind Donaldsons and Guest for 4th! Heck of a close race for 2nd between them and the 2 teams that tied, too. Awesome.

As I thought, we did far better at the night portion than the day. We missed the "To tell would ruin it", but other than that, we got all but 15 points!

And for the first time, everything we THOUGHT we got right, we DID get right.

Hey, what about the eye-spies? We only got a few. We were so overwhelmed with the amount of puzzles, that we ended up paying the least attention to them ever. We only got 3 of each.

OMG, I just noticed the team name "Blew By You." Love it!

You are so in - Does JetBlue fly by you?

Technically it does, but there aren't any flights south from here. I'd have to fly to the east coast first. (eeep!)

And the San Diego Mouse Catchers left all of us in the dust!

I love that we're always neck and neck with FEJ etal...and beating each other is one of the best bragging rights that we've traded back and forth. :cool: That said....five lousy points! :eek:

We actually won Saturday only...a testament to our crowd control skills and the advantages of a two person team.

Check out The Grandaughters of Blackbeard - they're a Sunday only team yet beat over half the two-day teams.

There are some great team names out there!

Team Whateverland
Nightmare on Main Street
Electric Barbarellas (including a "Barbafella", cracked us up at the awards)
Thirteen O'Clock
Admiral Boom
Fantasmic Four
The Happiest Team on Earth
Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Screwey
Shiny Happy People - loved the shirts, TheatreTech and BTD!
Hook's Hands (what a wonderfully creepy one!)
Smells Like Pirates

I can't wait to see the pics.

Sixth. SIXTH! (Well, 7th including the masters teams - Happy Haunts were the only ones to finish above us).

:cool:

Speaking of teams... I thought Parrots of the Carribbean was cute - they even had a little Pirate to put on their shoulder!

I'n so ronerey. :(

Ok, I have a year now. What do I have to do to participate in this thing? Invitation, secret password, what?

I mean, I can't believe no-one's ever asked me to do this. Harumph. I'd stick my tongue out, but I don't want to look like a pu$$y.
;)

CRAP!

1) You have 6 months, it's a semi-anual event. 2) Just keep your eye on MP, or look for the subtle clues around here that it's coming. Very subtle, such as threads titled, "MouseAdventure Registration is Open!!!!!!!!!" 3) Again, I can understand your confusion with cryptic threads such as "Looking for a MouseAdventure team?" or "I need a MouseAdventure team mate". :evil:

I can't understand where the Commodore has been these last, oh, 4 years. ;)

Well, I only got to know you guys around a year ago - shortly before the exodus. Prior to that, I mean, well, have you SEEN these Disney geeks?

And GD, you're right, damn you.

Aww. It was nice to meet you, however briefly, this weekend though. :)

He comes to Disneyland for Disneyland, dammit, not to play some confounded game!



Now having seen the dreaded rankings and the dreaded answers, I can see how abysmaly dismal my team performed. Aaarrghgh. We got something like a third the points of the actual winners ... and by ranking 18th with such a gap between us and first, I can only extrapolate that the vast majority of teams did really poorly. I think that means that, yes, the quests are too hard.

Perversely, I thought the Saturday Night quests were really difficult, and we did pretty well on them. I thought the Sunday quests were fairly usual, and we did horribly. We got right all those quests we thought we got wrong, and got wrong all those quests we thought we got right. We thought we did well, and we did poorly. It was a very topsy-turvy experience.

Nothing will change how fun it was, though. I'm glad Alex realizes that the night version was a bit off the mark in concentrating on nightime crowd and closure logistics rather than on nighttime Disneyland elements (such as the Main Street sign patterns ... ironically featuring a big error making half the quest moot, since it was the only quest to really take advantage of the "theme.").

I also hope Alex and the M.A. staff realize that Sunday's quests were a hit and well-conceived, full of fun Disneyland exploration and concentrating on 50th anniversary additions to the Park. If there is a nagging question about difficulty factors of quests ... I would only point out that the work product to get to the final question was often not particularly difficult and usually very fun ... only to have the final question on which all the points depend be really, really hard. Oftentimes there were ambiguities in the final question that led to time-wasting confusion, such as 'does lemonade count as a soft drink if iced tea does?' or 'is that shirtless Small World doll a boy or a girl?'

Sometimes it was the preliminary stuff that was hard (i.e., the Roger Rabbit Car-Toon Spin bonus quest) and the final quesion easy (i.e., the number of Autopia cars in the 1955 Disneyland model) - - but usually it's the other way around, meaning lots of time spent on quests that are ultimately never solved. From an overall standpoint, I don't think this ratio is necessarily a bad thing .. but from a player's standpoint, I'd rather have the hard stuff up front, as in Roger Rabbit, so that a bunch of time isn't wasted in a game where every moment counts.


And speaking of wasted time, that protractor/map thing was out of control. We wasted tons of time waiting for the map, coming and going back and forth to Fantasia Gardens - - only to have every team credited for the quest whether or not they completed it or even attempted it. Bah. It's sorta like the time every team was credited for the Sleeping Beauty Walk-thru quest when it suddenly closed forever as the U.S. attacked Afghanistan on MouseAdventure Day, after our team had spent time actually completing that quest. Of course, we were phenomenally glad that we were prompted to go thru the Walk-Thru one last time (sniffle, sniff) ... but all we got for the map time-waste was a little protractor experience. Not something we are going to cherish for a lifetime.

Oh well, them's the breaks. I'm not gonna be crying in my spilt milk about it. We had a complete ball, and we are not eligible for prizes anyway. Benchmark, schmenchmark. Now we just play for fun. (Though a comeback would be nice). However, unless they change the rules again ... The Denton Affair is always going to be the only team that won First Place FIVE TIMES (and placed seven times), a record that will live in infamy, never to be broken. Mwah hahaha haha!

Yeah, this was one of our HUGE downfalls. We went the FG the first time to see a long list of people waiting and decided to come back. We came back to find an even LONGER list of people waiting and decided to stay as we were going to be losing one team member to the Mouse promptly at 2:00. So, we waited and did our puzzles until about 1:55 when we all had to go back to MA Central to get our numbers changed. We went directly back to FG after that. We were gone 7 minutes tops.

In that 7 minutes, our team number had been called and we were SOL on the puzzle adding our name, once more, to the growing list. At some point in there, Ales came in and kicked butt and got people moving and then paired us up with another team to do the map thing. So, once we got moving, we were fine. But, the time lost doing that prevented us from completing 3 other puzzles that really should've been done.

Oh well.

But, it was much more enjoyable wasting time drinking Mochas over at DCA on Saturday ;)

Allow me to interrupt your maniacal cackling with this: Masters are allowed to compete in the Invitational format. Your record can be broken!

We'll be true competitors once more - next fall. That'll be the real test to see just how much prizes actually matter. (and hopefully you'll have scraped all the rust off of yourself by then ;) )

Speaking of which, I do admit that being Masters seemed to affect our game somewhat. I'm sure we moved less fast than we usually do - my usual mind-over-matter insanity didn't kick in as much. And I KNOW we argued less. Both are fine by me, because not only did we have more fun - my legs have healed, and it's only Wednesday! :D

The blame for the map and protractor thing is all mine and I'll fess up to it completely.

That said, three different people did the map portion of that for me, and none (including myself) took more than three minutes to get all four locations. So it was an extreme shock when Kevin put out the call for help saying that it had turned into a huge bottleneck. I don't know if I'm just and idiot savant at such things (as are my three acquaintances) or if something about the environment made it much, much harder. In the end it would just have been better to have never found any rulers/protrctors and given people credit for showing up at Fantasia Gardens.

I'm also suprised at how difficult people are saying the math code that led to Fantasia Gardens was.

It would never have occured to me that the Roger Rabbit one was so difficult (at one point I had someone test that for me over the phone (while I was listening) and they got it done in about 10 minutes). I don't intentionally put quests into the game that only 1.5% of the teams get right.

I don't think the score distribution is too far off from normal (though definitely a bit lower). The problem we hit when everybody plays together is making a game that is not too easy for the top 25% of teams (we don't want a nine-way tie for first with each a perfect score) and yet still accessible to everybody else. It's a hard balance to hit.

Well, regardless of all the second-guessing I'm doing this week, I'm glad that you (and apparently almost everybody else) had a lot of fun.

Congratulations to all the winning teams, high-placing teams and even the low-placing teams that played.

A memorable quest: Counting the dolls coming out of the it's a small world clock and trying to figure out if there are more Janes or Johns. Who knew that the iasw dolls looked so androgynous?! But we got the answer rigtht! There are more boys than girls.

Here are a few photos:

The Happy Haunts (Ghoulish Delight and Cadaverous Pallor) were kind enough to let me take pictures of their shirts. If there was a MouseAdventure category for coolest shirts, I think they would win each time.



DCA Adventurers (Monorail Man, Bornieo: Fully Loaded, DisneyDaniel, TigerLily) shortly after finishing the game. Yes, we looked a little tired after hurrying back out to the Esplanade to turn-in the game packet, only to learn that we were suppose to return them to Carnation Plaza Gardens instead. So, after getting back in line, going through the entrance gates again, Monorail Man made a dash for the end of Main Street weaving through crowds of people waiting for the parade.


Anticipating the awards ceremony to begin inside the Festival Arena.


Where I was sitting, there was a lot of good-hearted cheering by those who did not win one of the raffle prizes, which included items from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Bear in the Big Blue House, Disney Mania, The Cheetah Girls, etc. However, the real prizes for MA winners looked pretty enticing.


Frodo Potter (right, in the white shirt) won one of the cool raffle prizes, a Toy Story 10th Anniversary DVD.


The Festival Arena is cleared out at the end of the awards ceremony. I think that is EuroMeinke (wearing black) in the middle.


One last group photo of people from LoT and MiceChat before leaving the Festival Arena.


Mr. and Mrs. NemoZorro (from MiceChat) visiting from Arizona, with Disneyphile, Frodo Potter and DisneyDaniel celebrating the end of MouseAdventure Sunday with dole whips at the Tiki Room.

Actually, you can do a Mini-MouseAdventure at MouseFest on (I believe) December 1 (I know it's that week, I'm pretty sure it's Thursday). But it's a bit of a plane ride for a 2 hour event for most of you! It's at 'the other' domestic park.

If any of you see two adults (sisters) doing the Spring version of MouseAdventure this weekend on their own - say "Hi" (they sold/are selling those quests, which I'm very thankful for, so now I can at least get my arms around what kind of a thing you guys are all talking about)

The event recap is up at MousePlanet today. Link.

I swear one day I will do a mouse adventure.....

Don't know that anybody here is actually considering going, but I want to make sure it is clear that the MouseFest event has the emphasis on the "mini" part. It is just a taste and completely non-competitive (just an activity if interested).

I'm sure it will be plenty of fun, but I wouldn't want anybody to go out there expecting something nearly on par with the regular MouseAdventure.

I love looking at the team photos! Check these out:

Huey, Dewey, Louie, and Screwey had an awesome shirt setup:


Team Whateverland (which did rather well, and look how young they are!) gets into it:


Looks like The Happiest Team on Earth downloaded a photomosaic program:


There are so many cool ones, I don't have time to post them all...

Oh, I remember Mr. Screwy from the awards dinner. It's a good thing I didn't know his designation at the time, or I would have taken that as a confirmation of what was already in my head (and I don't mean crazy).

In retrospect, that glorious moment on Saturday night when our team was in DCA and bought a round of Mochas to complete our puzzles by, should have been an indicator that we were missing something...

When did you come by the Main St. train station? I don't remember seeing you.

WOW! We are on your ignore list in a big way! ;)

You saw us and even spok to us as we were talking to AVP about the dead puzzle.

And you're young!;)

Oh right. That was right as I was leaving. :rolleyes: Next time I'm going to request assignments that don't require me to be in exile for the whole time. It affects my brain. I did like the fireworks from there though.

Sorry, it was the only place I could think to put you that would let you watch the fireworks.

Having served this apprenticeship I think you are ready for advancement. Next time we'll let you pour sodas. Play your cards right and you'll be on the fryer by the end of 2008.

Sweet! Do I get to wear a hat?

Still have all those berets, don't you?

Bien sur! :cool:

But the crab hat is my favorite. :D

On Monday, I met a team member of Team Zlick at school. It was kinda funny...he was in the ASB office and was talking to our ASB Secretary about how he did a Scavenger hunt at Disneyland on Sunday. I asked him about it, and we ended up talking for a few min. Unfortunantly, I don't recall his name, but he isn't a LOTer or a Padder. He's on the far right in their team picture.

Wow I must say, great picture of us...Thank goodness they had my DH sit down on the table top to take the picture...LOL!

Even funnier to see that they put our loser scores under our picture...WOOHOO!

(team 2056---sorry I can't get my team photo to work for some reason)

Here ya go:

Hey! Thanks!

Wow. Looking through the results, I'm not sure what to say. We should have done way better. We finished every task save one, but made some careless mistakes. We could have very easily gotten first or at least second. However, I was really surprised that we placed at all, honestly (if you count 4th as really placing, but we got free shiz so I'll count it I suppose). After the game I really didn't think we even came close. Luckily, a couple of the answers other teams told us were correct turned out to be wrong so we scored in a couple places we thought we lost. Still, frustrating that we were so close, and we can see exactly where we could have easily gotten some extra points for the win had we just done this or that. Oh well, such is the game.

It was nice of them to create a 4th Place award...just for us. We must be an exceptionally good looking team or something. ;)

Does anyone know how the shooting gallery one was scored? I'm a bit confused on our score versus some others, knowing I got all but one of the targets. (got all the rest on the first shot too)

Um, I certainly count your fourth place as "placing" ... because it was actually THIRD PLACE. There was a tie for Second, and they didn't give any team third place!. They awarded your team Fourth Place, which is out of any traditional winner's circle placement .... but in actuality, your team came in third. You are legit.

That's how it goes if there's a tie in every other competition I've been in. If there had been a three-way tie for second, there would not have been a fourth place awarded.

Well, I don't much care whether that's the way it's done or not. It's bull****. Their team came in third, if they are the one's who had the next highest score to the two teams that tied for second.

Hotels may not admit to having a 13th floor, but that floor just above the 12th is not the 14th.

Well, it may be BS but it is common practice. I'm not surprised that this is the method that is used for MA.

common practice is not good enough for my friends. It seemed to me as if "and featuring Nirvanaman" was fretting about their placement, and I simply wanted to point out to him and the other folks we love on that team that they did tremendously well ... even better than their official placement title indicates. Like I said, you can call the 13th floor the 14th, but that don't make it so.


They had the third highest score.




Heheh, I actually think M.A. should have tie-breakers. Maybe a really quick mini-quest, or at least a fast round of geek trivia on the spot.

You know Steve, sometimes I get the sense you just like to complain. I don't know why that thought pops into my head every once in a while.

If we had a tie breaker they would have come in fourth. Even though we didn't use a tie breaker (because they've been arbitrary in the past this time I decided to take the risk and hope we wouldn't have a 1st place tie) they still had three teams finished in front of them. That is fourth place. There were three scores higher than theirs. That is fourth place. Even though there were only two unique scores higher than theirs, they were still in fourth place.

Now, I hope this doesn't somehow diminish their result (and if they feel it does I hope one of them will contact me) because they still did very well.

As for going down to 4th place, with 150 teams we figured we could expand the prizes (I've been involved in races that go to 10th place with prizes, in 8 different age categories for each gender). If the general preference is that we not, then we'll reexamine the decision next time.

I'm not complaining about the way it's done, by MouseAdventure or by any other competition. I'm simply arguing against what I see as the illogicality of it. Alex, you pointed out some very logical positions, namely, that there were 3 teams ahead of them, and that there were 3 separate scores ahead of them.

My logical points are that there were 2 different scores ahead of them, not three. That the place number following 2nd is 3rd, even if there are two 2nds. And that they did the third best of any teams in the two-day competition. That two teams did precisely as well as each other does not, in my personal book for which I critcize no one else, mean that they did fourth as well ... even though 3 individual teams did better.

The whole point of this game of semantics on my part is not to complain, but simply to pump up the standings of some friends of mine who got the title of "fourth" when no title of "third" was given at all. No complaint about the scoring methods of MouseAdventure was meant to be implied; simply a point about general scoring logic and semantics.


Oh, but I still think a tie-breaker during the actual awards ceremony would be fun. It's not like randomness is a thing unseen in MouseAdventure quests (see, for example, the recent David Koenig trivia quest during the Saturday night competition). It would be entertaining, and then each team would be given their own unique, final ranking. No big deal either way, just a bit of fun.


As for including a 4th place in the, um, first place ...well, I personally think it's kinda on the lame side. Wasn't there even a fifth place awarded, or did I imagine that? In any event - 1st, 2nd, 3rd are the traditional "winners circle" places of the vast majority of races and competitions. I'm not saying that MouseAdventure must stick to that tradition. If it makes more teams happy to get recognition and get prizes, that's pretty cool. Heck, I'm even in approval of the decision to "retire" the so-called Masters so that others can have a shot at winning. The more people who win, the better. Winning is fun, no doubt about it.

But I find it odd that M.A. will bend tradition to award a 4th or 5th place, and yet will stick with the tradition of "skipping" a lower placement award when there's a tie at a higher one.

Still, glass half empty or glass half full? True that 3 teams did better; also true that they got the 3rd highest score. Whether that entitles them to be called "third place" is an irrelevant matter of semantics. No big deal either way.

1st, 2nd, 3rd, is not necessarily the tradition in certain types of competition (for example, at the Walt Disney World marathon, over 100 "place" prizes are given out). In all the races I've participated in as well as the academic competitions I used to do, awarding places beyond 3rd were common. Now that we're almost four times as large as the first MouseAdventures, going down one more place seemed logical

No, there was not a 5th place awarded.

I don't see illogic where you're seeing it. To me, the way we did it is the only logical way to do it. If we had 150 teams get perfect scores and the 151st had zero points, would you be arguing that they came in second place? I suppose you would, but that makes absolutely no sense to me. Did Ralph Nader come in second in the 2000 presidential election because Bush and Gore essentially tied? But maybe I'm just not seeing something that is obvious (see the discussion on MousePad about whether next-to-last and second-to-last are synonyms) to others.

It may be irrelevant semantics, but earlier the way we did it was, as you termed it, bull****. So my apologies for thinking you felt stronger about this than you do.

oh, well the bull word is something I toss about most carelessly. When I feel strongly about something, I will usually call it goshdarned frelling bull****.

Would you dispute that such a team did second best? That they got the second best score?

Zero points is a lousy analogy for any score. What about one point? If team 151 scored one point, is that not the second best score? Did they not do second best?






And let's face it, this is all about bumping my score up to 17th, so that I can avoid the suicide that the shame of falling to 18th demands. :iSm:

No, that would be the 151st best score. It would be the second unique score. They did not do second best.

I'm willing to agree to disagree but I just don't see how your position would be the more logical one. Prizes are given out for place, not for unique scores.

I was going to say that under your system it would probably be more than a bump from 18 to 17, but I'm amazed to see that in the top 20, the only tie was for 2nd place.

Sorry Steve, I agree with Alex on this one. If three teams did better than you, then regardless of their rankings against eachother, you are in fourth place.