[innerSpaceman]

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!