MouseAdventure

[innerSpaceman]

Heheheh, the entire game was custom-made for zapppop. I call shenanigans. Ahem, he routinely gets the daily high score on Buzz Lightyear, and who else has the entire (and I mean entire) soundtrack of Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Roomcommitted to memory? (not to mention every other attraction in both parks!)


I have to agree with Babette that the constant puzzles all on one page meant other teammates sitting around doing nothing, or attempting (in my case) to do what I could from looking over shoulder. I much preferred when there was trivia or some other activities to spread among the team members. I am not the main puzzler on my team (though I contributed a bit when things got sticky) ... so, to me, there was all too much nothing going on too much of the time. Though I spend that time trying to figure ways to the answer without doing the puzzle, and that often pans out nicely!


I have to give kudos where due. There were some fun elements ... even in quests that, on the whole, I did not like. Hiding game materials in lockers was clever. Buzz Lightyear score battle was resourceful of a newish attraction. Spying things ON attractions (Disneyland RR, Monsters, Inc.) was a fun twist. Calling in to a phone recording was cute ... but Compasses was an unmitigated disaster (imo) that I hope never to see repeated. (I am reminded of the infamous sextant quest that was thrown out, with everyone getting full credit, after we'd spent almost an hour on it!)


For the Invitational, I was surprised (in an unpleasant way) of how little of the resort was in play. I mean, the last Mad Scramble had us going to The Disneyland Hotel, one of the parking lots, the ESPN Zone and the Grand Cal, in addition to DCA. I really expected to see more outside the usual MouseAdventure Zone of Play ... and I was very disappointed in that regard.

I am also surprised that so many people did not recognize the drawing as luggage and packing boxes. I mean, not necessarily every member of the team ... but certainly the person who transferred the drawings from the original page to the grid. Hmmm, just surprises me. Now, knowing where that stuff was in the Park is something else.

The words "unlock" and "combination" finally gave it to us, but there were so many other hint-like words that ultimately meant nothing. I kinda don't like the vagueness of this Invitational ... in a game where you must complete the task in order to move along.

And, in that vain, I HATED that MouseAdventure Central was in the Esplanade. Sheesh, a Jumpstart or Roadside Assistance should have had no further time penalty than the time it took to get there from a team's likely hang-up point. There were times we would have taken the Jump Start, but were too darn far away from the Esplanade. A 40-minute penalty would have come to twice that!


So we tried to muddle thru ... we did get a little assist from a couple of staffers in the parks, and actually got a good piece of help from MA Central without having to use our Roadside Assistance envelope, which was very nice.

As usual, in fact, the staff was helpful, pleasant, fun and professional throughout. That's one element of MouseAdventure that never varies and is always appreciated.

[NirvanaMan]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

I am also surprised that so many people did not recognize the drawing as luggage and packing boxes. I mean, not necessarily every member of the team ... but certainly the person who transferred the drawings from the original page to the grid. Hmmm, just surprises me. Now, knowing where that stuff was in the Park is something else.

4 people staring at it for an hour...not one of us saw "luggage". Maybe because we had already decided it was architectural diagram of part of the park, what with all the umbrellas and benches clearly displayed on the map...

Not just that...but we actually redrew it! That's right, because we all rather hastily drew in our own pieces it was a bit sloppy. Not that redrawing it helped us at all! We still couldn't figure out what the hell part of the park it was supposed to represent.

Not that we would have had any idea what to do had we seen luggage...


So does anyone know...what happened if you lost the Buzz battle?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by NirvanaMan

So does anyone know...what happened if you lost the Buzz battle?

You had to play again and again until you beat someone, as RStar said above. GD felt bad because the guy he beat was trying for the third time. Now I'm really glad he always plays Buzz with a game face.

Originally Posted by Nirvanaman

4 people staring at it for an hour...not one of us saw "luggage".

Did any of you look at the original sheets with the pieces? If there was one thing I knew about that damn puzzle it was that they were luggage pieces....but I'm guessing that once they were transposed you just kept looking at the full stack.

Originally Posted by iSm

but Compasses was an unmitigated disaster (imo) that I hope never to see repeated. (I am reminded of the infamous sextant quest that was thrown out, with everyone getting full credit, after we'd spent almost an hour on it!)

I know it's "imo" but but it can't be "unmitigated" if others did well on it...which we did. There was no reason to throw it out because it was totally doable.

ACK my break is over more later

[NirvanaMan]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

You had to play again and again until you beat someone

Ouch. Glad we sent Isaac to do it. That was a pretty easy decision.

Did any of you look at the original sheets with the pieces? If there was one thing I knew about that damn puzzle it was that they were luggage pieces....but I'm guessing that once they were transposed you just kept looking at the full stack.

Sure did. I remember saying at one point that we needed to go back to the originals to see if they made any more sense. They didn't. We then thought about cutting out the originals to place on the grids, as perhaps our drawing skills were to blame...they weren't. We saw plenty of buildings, tables, chairs and benches...but certainly no luggage. For whatever reason, I believe our minds were locked on the fact that this was an overhead 2d view of something big, as in a land in DL. Though we did consider the fact that perhaps this was a representation of a mosaic of some sort, even hoping that the mosaics in Inoventions would provide the answer, we never saw luggage. I think its like one of those eye teaser puzzles. Now, had we been able to leave it and come back to it later in the competition, maybe one of the four of us would have seen something else there. But, who knows.

[Alex]

You all played the version of that Adrienne was responsible for so I don't want speak as the official voice or anything.

That said, some comments.

Surprisingly, I agree with Steve at a personal level. If I were a player (and I've remarked on the irony before that I have never actually played MouseAdventure, its predecessor, or any of the similar events) I don't think I would care for the Enchanted Race format. I think my contributions would lie in multitasking well and overall strategy. So, I would likely be iffy on the game no matter how well done.

That said, it is the fundamental nature of a road rally type event that tasks come at you one at a time and you don't advance until you've completed it. That's why we originally came up with the Mad Scramble format. It perverts the pure time/race nature and allows for more multitasking (combining single tasks that must be completed before moving on but also having quite a few "event wide" events).

Where might you have placed MouseAdventure Central such that the problem described wouldn't have happened. If it had been inside Disneyland, then teams in DCA (where about half the game took place) would have resisted using it even more.

Lisa and Chris, so far as I know the umbrellas were in place until 4:00 p.m. Is it possible you just didn't see them?

I don't remember who came up with the idea of compasses but the way in which they were used was completely my idea, so I get the blame for that. That said, the first use of the compass was intended to be relatively easy to give you a chance to figure out the use before getting to the complex stuff later. Also, by orienting Main Street, it allows you to orient and align the two park maps which means you could sit at a table and approximately locate each spot before moving. Sorry you didn't like it, Steve, and I did have my worries after the map orienting puzzle last fall.

I hold no illusions that every idea we have will be gold, but let me tell you that after 13 of these things sometimes I'm just happy that we can still come up with ideas at all. Particularly for something like the Invitational where we know that all of the teams will be well familiar with our standard elements, unlike in this open where half of the teams qualified as new.

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Lisa and Chris, so far as I know the umbrellas were in place until 4:00 p.m. Is it possible you just didn't see them?

We did not see them either. And with the distractableness of our team by bright objects and ability to spot things that do not belong I am not sure they were there when we rode the Sun Wheel (about 2:45ish). We may not have seen them as *blooms* but we sure would have said why do those umbrellas have numbers on them?!

I really want to post a full review - just no time yet.

[katiesue]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Lisa and Chris, so far as I know the umbrellas were in place until 4:00 p.m. Is it possible you just didn't see them?

Actually one of the staff umbrella holders came by us where we were busily working on the puzzle at about 3:50 and told us to head over to mouse central so they did come down a little before 4. Although I'm not sure how quickly you could have gotten the puzzle done by then anyhow.

[Babette]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Compasses was an unmitigated disaster (imo) that I hope never to see repeated.

Well, even if they use them again, you won't see it repeated since you won't be playing anymore.

I liked the compass game. You just had to stop for a moment and let it settle. Turning the compass to make it go where you want only sends it spinning and wobbling. North is always north.

Some people are ditzes about recognizing sketches of luggage, some are ditzes about using a compass, some are ditzes for not matching correct letters to corresponding boxes. That is what makes the game so fun. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. MouseAdventure..yaaaayyyy!

[Prudence]

Oh yeah - as much as I personally wasn't a fan of the compass, I had a great time. I've had a really rough month, some of which I've disclosed and some of which was just too unpleasant to talk about any more than necessary. I didn't know when I signed up to do this that I would have needed the escape as badly as I did. It could not have come at a better time. I was so busy, it was sunny (sorry, y'all), and I was at the Disneyland Resort with nary a neuron to spare for my spat of angst. It was the perfect time to ignore my life for a few days.

So, thanks to NA and Euro for their generosity and fabulous hosting skills, and to GC for sharing my Coke obssession and making it so that I wasn't the only new person on the team.

April, eh? Hmmmmm.....

[€uroMeinke]

I had to get up at 5:00 this morning to go to work and finally felt the pain of the day before. Exhausted, sore, and happy to have survived another. I had fun, and eventhough the Sudoko quest misdirected us to Critter Country, it seemed like we always had a chance - well, until the sun wheel anyway. The Compass killed us, bevause it seemed we had three possible locations for each question. Even when we were certain of our answers we must have called something like a dozen stranges in our quest to find the right number. I wish we saw the blooms, that seems like it would have been a great aha moment.