Recovered Yet? Fall Mouse Adventure Date Released

[~MS~]

I can just see Brad doing that!

[Prudence]

I'm not even sure we're staying for the awards. If dinner's not between game and awards, we won't be doing it.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Ok, fine, I'll post about the event. Now you'll find out why I didn't post yesterday, even though we skipped the awards ceremony and got home early. My mood hasn't improved much...

It was f'n hot. Like, seriously. And I swear, we did that walk to Paradise Pier in the bloody sunniest part of the sunniest park in the hottest part of the day at least 6 times. HOT. We had frozen our brand new camelback but alas, it is such a well-insulated pack that the ice refused to melt fast enough, and would block any actual water from coming out the tube. We had to resort to adding drinking fountain water to keep us alive.

I swear, halfway though the day, we were looking at each other and saying "is this even fun anymore??" I felt ready to YAGE from the event forever, and that's never quite happened to me so strongly before.

Ok, enough introductory complaining, now on to the rest of the complaining.

The Mystery concept was a cool idea, actually. There were 6 crime dossiers we were given one at a time. Each dossier contained 3 different puzzles to solve. In Disneyland we were allowed to separate to work on different puzzles which was fun though the concept of being divided without being able to call each other kind of freaked me out. I don't even wear a watch, so we couldn't set a meet time either. Thankfully we both wore recognizable hats so it wasn't an issue.

After you solved the three crime puzzles you handed it in and got one of the 6 mystery components to solve. It required parts of info from the three puzzles to solve it. If you skipped small bits of your crimes you could be in trouble.

Once again we found ourselves doing a ton of work and then, due to one missing component, getting the answer wrong. Still not a fan of this concept. Other teams said the same afterwards. Oddly, I think we did pretty well on the major questions as we were able to backtrack and get answers, but I'm really not sure (not ready to hit MousePad yet). All that backtracking didn't help our mood, though.

There were a couple of construction wall problems and they dealt with them in interesting ways. One was an errata sheet, which gave the answer in a storyline way, which worked fine (once someone told me to check the errata sheet. Yup, I still miss stuff). The other was to add an extra sheet to the actual puzzle, but in reading it, we were totally confused. It seemed to give us the answer in a roundabout way, but it didn't quite come across well enough. We were confused as it seemed we didn't have to do any work. Even so, I think we got that one wrong. Confusing!

Oh, and I have to say, the wording on some of these was awful when it came to exactly what kind of answer they were looking for - a character, a location, what? We have finally mastered reading everything but now it was "read everything - 4 times - and debate the meaning."

There were some puzzles that were mostly easy, and some that did have a satisfying moment where you look for the 3rd time and find the hidden sign (Shrunken Ned's "Medical Advice", woo!). For example, the mural at Mulholland Madness had nothing on previous mural challenges. But then there was the license plates in Condor Flats, yeech. I can't wait to see what the hell that was about. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to us. We made a mostly blind stab guess which didn't make much sense. These "logic puzzles" aren't really logic puzzles.

There were some fun gimmicks. I did the yellow grid over the course of the day. It was the best use of my sharpie ever at an MA, as a pen or pencil wouldn't work too well on plastic. I thought I was missing something, had the awesome a-ha moment, and got it right. Yay. Same was true for the red sheet, Miley Cyrus' bday. I got to do a few of these major questions and those were pretty cool. We got the "plans for the DCA expansion" at the very last minute. If we only had time to get them all done...

But seriously, a lot of the minor questions had us frustrated and backtracking and grumbling. However, like any MA, we saw things that we've never seen before at DL. The posters on the ceiling of the pin shop in NOS was my favorite.

Why could we separate at DL, where everything is close together, but not at DCA, where everything is far away and being separate would be useful?

Anyway, I'm not YAGEing from MA yet, but I will say that I really don't want to do another afternoon at DCA. Thing is, we never know which park is at what time of day when we register. So maybe I'm just too old and cranky for this crap anymore? Maybe I've done it enough times. I don't know. The prospect of a freakin' Enchanted Race is not very enticing right now, even though we can actually compete in it, because it just doesn't sound fun.

Anyway, since iSm didn't make it, I guess I had to fill in the curmudgeon role.

[Not Afraid]

We tried to sit this one out but it didn't work out that way. I liked the concept of this game, I really preferred the DL portion. I thought the challenge up splitting up and getting back together added an interesting twist since we had no means of communication. Once we got to DCA, I was less enchanted. The park is HOT and it was bloody mid afternoon. We were just getting into our groove at DL then had most of our problems in DCA. Condor Flats was still remains a mystery to me. Try as we might, NM and I just couldn't get a logical answer. We used our hint on that one and still guesed. The Redwood Creek quest caused a lot of problems for us as well. I really only had one moment of epiphany throughout the entire game - the answer to the WHERE question. I'm usually a bit more useful than that.

Our funny team stress moment came when we were crossing the suspension bridge in Redwood Creek. The bridge was moving frantically with all 4 of us on it. I was hanging on to the rope for dear life but still laughing. EH was behind me and thought that I was causing the movement on purpose. She was not amsued (plus she was in pain and having a hard time).

The next event is the Enchanted Race. Everyone thinks that was a great game. I played just after completing radiation and Graves treatment and i was in the worst physical shape ever. We had to make a trip to the HoJo's and A was literally dragging me down Harbor Blvd so I could keep up with the team. I didn't think it was much fun. Who knows if we'll play again.

[Prudence]

I loved the whole green set of questions - super easy for us! We had just scoped out the Redwood Creek area a week or so prior, as I was sure that would be part of the event, so we were totally set for that one. And the flag was was one of those decoding ones I love so much, because I only have to do a very small part of the puzzle. (We even figured out the "blue" mystery element with knowing only the hollywood address; the rest was simple logic to figure out the right numbers.)

Our bugaboo was the Tomorrowland quest. We figured out the crossword answers easily, but just couldn't unscramble the letters into anything relevant. We burned way too much time on that and should have used our hint, but it was our first set, and my teammate didn't want to burn the hint too soon. I think he has a better idea of game rhythm now, so next time we should be a little better.

Splitting up was a challenge, but mostly consisted of me sending him on "assignments" for answers when I knew where they were located while I searched specific areas for things I didn't know.

Bonus for this time: the Toontown quest was neither long and impossible nor conducted at 2:30pm!

We blew off the awards ceremony in favor of riding Midway Mania with Libraryvixen and teammate, followed by a thorough drenching on GRR and a quick escape home.

Anything revealed for the spring dates yet?

[madmonkeygirl]

Sounds like you had fun and at the same time frustrating. That's why we don't play anymore. Yesterday was bloody hot but we had the air conditioning cranked up and it was blaring full blast. Only time we went outside was to go to the store and Best Buy. The rest of the day we were inside. Unless they make MA in the middle of winter here (and even then we can have 80 degree plus weather) we sit it out....

[Prudence]

That remindes me - it really didn't feel that hot to me this time. True, we weren't racing around as much as we might have, but my teammate badgered me into drinking copious amounts of fluid (instead of my usual 1 bottle of water) and I really didn't feel that bad. Feet didn't even hurt. I'm a little more thirsty than usual today, but it really didn't seem that bad this time.

[Disneyphile]

I'm really happy we did the 101 yesterday, considering the heat and air conditions. But, it was way too damn easy. We kept our slowest pace ever, sat down on a few occasions, even chatting with people who asked us about the event.... and were completely done with all quests by 2:30, and only needed 3 more Eye-Spies, to which we found during a leisurely stroll down Main Street, even ducking in the shops to browse the holiday merchandise while we were at it.

We turned it in at 3:30, and decided to head home shortly after, since I could no longer breathe the thick smoky air.

But, we're so ready to jump back into Advanced/Race next time. I love the challenge!

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

I had a fantastic time playing MA for the first time. I loved the Nancy Drew mystery approach, though some of the sentence structure was screwy and we really lost time on one task because of this. The Disneyland portion was more enjoyable, though I think part of the frustration in DCA was not being able to split up. With no central hub, you really do spend a lot of time running in circles to get around. Still, there were "Eureka" moments throughout the adventure that made the whole day worth it. And enjoying a meal with friends after was all the reward I needed.

Thanks to my teammates for making it such a positive first experience, and sorry again to NA for snapping!

[Disneyphile]

Originally Posted by Eliza Hodgkins 1812

Thanks to my teammates for making it such a positive first experience, and sorry again to NA for snapping!

Team stress is all part of the game. Ken and I were bitching at each other within the first 15 minutes. It wouldn't be MA without it, almost. We have a rule - anything said or done within the game is completely game related and is never to be held against anyone later.

We have a separate "game relationship" that is just that.