[Ghoulish Delight]

Well, I can still walk!

Sadly, we were undone by one simple fact...we NEVER get lockers. And thus, presented with a drawing of a pile of suitcases to find, the Main Street lockers never ocurred to us. Even after taking a 20 minute penalty to get hints (which informed us that it was on Main Street, not an attraction, and inside), we walked into every single open door on Main Street EXCEPT the lockers. And when we were forced to then take a second, 40 minute, penalty to skip the quest, we had a gut-wrenching, head-slapping moment the second they said, "It's a locker combination." Once they said that, the image of those lockers jumped into my head, clear as day. AAARGH!

So yeah, 60 minutes of penalties plus the wasted time wandering around in vain. At that point, we felt utterly defeated. And, idiotically, we failed to remember our lesson from the last Invitational...even if we feel like we're doing terribly, odds are that means other people are as well. Had we kept our pace up, even after that, we learned that we may have still been in contention. As it was, we eventually switched our goal to "just FINISH", which we did, and in what turned out to be a respectible time.

I thought there was a lot of fun stuff. From having to spot the Zip-a-Dee poster on the Splash river boat while on the train, to spying 3 "blooms" (brightly colored umbrellas scattered about DCA by the staff) from atop the Sunwheel, to my crash course on how to use a compass, I thought there was a lot of clever stuff. Though, having beta tested the open game, I liked some of those quests better.

HUGE congrats to all the others that finished. Hell, to anyone who even attempted. Damn we're a bunch of masochists.