[NirvanaMan]

I'm gravely disappointed today. Not because we did so poorly (even though during the game we thought we were) but rather because we did so well and then rushed at the last minute and transposed our answers. The teams of Superstar Losers and Ralph Wiggum, Fej and the POP featuring Nirvanaman were both down two members so we joined forces to form the superteam of Superstar Losers featuring the POP and Nirvanaman (formerly of Ralph Wiggum, Fej and the POP featuring Nirvanaman). Powerhouse that we thought we were, we all failed to produce even one clipboard. Amateur move right there. No worries though, I happened to have a hearty Range Rover brochure handy in my bag that served the purpose just fine.

We were doing great at the beginning, thanks to Andrew's quick thinking, and we were in second place just mere seconds behind first. That is until the evil map/lockers/buzz lightyear quest. None of us rent lockers either so the fact that the number was a locker combination didn't dawn on us until it was far too late. We were sure the drawing was an architectural map of some sort...to the point where we almost convinced ourselves that it was a map of Hollywood in DCA. However, we still couldn't make sense of the code or even what we would do when we got there. We thought the code may refer to numbers on the map, and it did correlate with all of the buildings in the Hollywood section of DCA...but we still had no idea as to what we would do once there. So, we ran around tomorrowland, went in all the stores, and even braved innoventions. Heck, worst case some secret clues might start glowing right? But no luck. We were about to give in...which no one on the team wanted to do...and use the cursed failure envelope to give up on the task and go to the next step. Then Babette reread the clue, which we had all done a million times, and focused in on the word "unlock." We then had a bit of a brainstorm, and decided maybe we should try the lockers...even though there were clearly no instructions of any sort that indicated we should go there. Even still, some on the team were encouraging the use of the dreaded envelope...but we pursued on. After all, there aren't that many lockers in DL right? Once in the locker room, we saw the luggage and cursed the evildooers. Never had I stepped foot in that room before. Drained and feeling like we failed...we moved on.

We did well again from here on out for the most part. We checked into the next location to discover we had fallen back to the 11th place team. Pretty big fall, but perhaps there was still a chance. Isaac saved us 20 minutes of torture by having memorized the entire spiel to the Tiki Room. Bouncing through several answers, depending on how the question was interpreted, he was finally confident of his answer. And really, who knows the park better than him. We trusted his instinct and went with it. This was our chance to catch up a bit after our fake map failure. We opened the envelope. Phew...looks like we were right and this next bit is a legitimate quest. Babette rescued us by breezing through the Soduku, instantly recognizing the need to translate symbols into numbers. Once we had a concept of where we were heading, we assumed incorrectly that the answer would be Splash Mountain. We were aware that DCA was still a possibility but we decided to head down to Splash anyway to save time.

Well it would seem that these fancy soduku puzzles seem to change constantly, as Babette had warned us. We were now certain that we needed to head to DCA and we couldn't be further away. No biggie. We headed to Grizzly, which was wrong (and closed) and we headed back to Soaring to solve the next clue, which we did in record time.

Collecting eyespyes along the way, we were actually doing much better than any of us realized. We had few problems with the compass exercise, save a bit of time having difficulty in tracking down those tires and we called the correct phone number on the first try, after getting all the answers correct. Off to the sunwheel, where Babette's sharp eyes caught those umbrellas, that the rest of us didn't see at first. I really have to argue that an umbrellas is not a bloom, but whatever. It was a lot of fun. So after we solved the remainder of that puzzle, I believe it was time to head back to DL, but not before a quick stop at ToT cause I was sure that art deco clock had to be somewhere over there. It was, and we captured the time (there was some disagreement about this with the officials at the end, but it was resolved).

Back into the park for the final test, which seemed to be more of a wild goose chase than anything so we didn't complete all of it as it didn't seem to make much sense. We correctly solved the final riddle and then we were off to the judging desk with only moments to spare. We then needed to do some funny math with the times on all the clocks we collected (we found all but one of these eyesspys) and then needed to transfer this to the answer sheet. And herein lies the problem. In the chaos of the last minute rushing and screams to turn the packet in, we did not realize that the lettering system used to identify the eyespys failed to follow normal English conventions in that it labeled photos down the column vertically, then over to the next column, as opposed to moving left to right…in the same manner in which we read. This seemingly minor transgression and a failure to double-check our work given time pressures lead to udder devastation as we handed in our answer sheet and watched as large X's were drawn through all of our seemingly correct answers. Wrong wrong wrong…was what we heard. All the right numbers were on the page…we failed to place them in the correct boxes.

So…all that..for naught. 7 hours. Miles of walking. And in the end, we did it all, and did it all correctly. We never gave in to the temptation of the penalty envelopes and we were vigilant in pursuing the eyespys. Needless to say, that leads to mixed emotions. Yes we were one of only 25% of teams to finish. That's little consolation. Actually, it would have felt better had we failed in earnest as opposed to a minor secretarial transgression. What hurt the most was that after what seemed like an impossibility due to our struggles with the locker task, it looks like we would have placed first, instead of ninth, had we simply double-checked the placement of our correct answers. Utterly devastating.

Of course..this is just some silly Mickey Mouse game…right? Right?