MouseAdventure 3/28/04 Recap Thread

[timl33]

Lots of fun, but we suck.

I really liked the format of having the entire packet at once. We took some time out to strategize and I was able to figure out the word puzzle for critter country pretty quickly. From there, we went right to Tom Sawyer Island and got stuck when we forgot where the dungeon was. That took about 10 minutes of our time. (Grrr...)

From there, we moved right to New Orleans Square. The last sign we had to find was the Stroller Parking sign. We must have walked passed it 3 times before seeing it, and I was LOOKING for a stroller parking sign too, since that was a fairly obvious word in the word search. Interestingly enough, we were looking for the Finder Seekers guy, but never found him. I probably walked passed him 3 times as well :(

The Disney opening address was another toughie. We got the M, A, G, I, and C, but somehow we found an "N" in the process. Running out of time, we finally guessed at the Mr. Lincoln as the answer to that.

I coulnd't figure out the Toad Manor motto either (Semper Absurda or Toadi Acceleradi). I tried them both in the key, but must have screwed up somewhere along the way so neither worked. At this point, we were running way out of time to do all that, so we skipped that one, skipped toon town and guessed on 2 others.

Thanks for a well designed game as always. I'll see you guys in the Fall!
All in all, we finished the Critter Country, TSI, NOS, Tiki Room, Redd Rocket's and the Main Street Cinema's (thanks for the AC guys!), guessed on 2 others and had no clue on 2.

[Demigod121]

:D

Well, now that I've had some rest and sleep I guess I can throw my $.02 worth in!

First off, I wanna say that I had the two best teammates out of all the teams participating (Morrigoon and Disneyphile!) - it made the heat and the crowds that much more tolerable! They are a couple of troopers - we never had one problem during the entire event! (And they put up with me, which can be a rather daunting task!):eek:

Expect to see our team back for revenge in October! :~D

The format was fine I thought. Overall I had a wonderful time. This being my first MA ever - I was very impressed by the time and effort put into this by the MP Staff. You guys just rock. I've never had so much fun working and thinking so hard (and not even getting to ride ONE ride! :D

I'm hooked. You'll have to throw me out if ya want to get rid of me!

I was very glad to meet all of you and hope to see you again soon!

I would also like to offer my congratulations to all of the winners. Well Done!

That said, I'm taking it easy for today! AAAHHHHHHHH!! A chair! ;)

Demigod

[Ghoulish Delight]

I coulnd't figure out the Toad Manor motto either (Semper Absurda or Toadi Acceleradi). I tried them both in the key, but must have screwed up somewhere along the way so neither worked. At this point, we were running way out of time to do all that, so we skipped that one, skipped toon town and guessed on 2 others.You had to use both.

[HBTiggerFan]

Wow. I came home last night, read this post, shut down my computer and went to bed.

I had a blast. I am the other half of BlueEeyores team. We were The Nintendos.

I'm not sure I like the new format. While I love not having to go back to the check-in spot each time it was a huge amount of paperwork to keep straight and I found that a bit overwhelming. I think the paper clips will be a new addition to the list of things I bring for MA. I also have an idea of how to adjust how I attack things in the future.

Huge congratulations to Not Afraid, Cemeinke & an anonymous non poster. Also huge congratulations to Ghoulish Delight and Cadaverous Pallor. You were all awesome.

Team Smilies had the coolest costumes, which also enhanced the awards ceremony. Thanks guys!

One of the MouseAdventure Masters has a tribute team to him, who also placed (awesome tribute).

Theres so much I am forgetting.

Thank you everyone who worked on it, so much fun.

[Ghoulish Delight]

One of the MouseAdventure Masters has a tribute team to him, who also placed (awesome tribute).To be precise, they got Best New Team. So, ironically, both the Master and the tribute will be playing for free next time (although only one will be eligible from prizes :D )

[EandCDad]

All we got was 3 seconds of annoyed mumbling and some incromprehensible hand waving. I think I'm going to protest the results for this unfair treatment!!! :p

I figured if you guys didn't know how to put your number stickers on by now, you deserved to get dinged.



We tried 3 times, first with just "Sempre Absurda," then with just "Toadi Accelerado," and finally with both, "Toadi Acceleardo, Sempre Abusrda." that finally worked.

That's what happened when we tested. I tried the them individually and then together. When it actually worked I almost cried.


All in all, we finished the Critter Country, TSI, NOS, Tiki Room, Redd Rocket's and the Main Street Cinema's (thanks for the AC guys!), guessed on 2 others and had no clue on 2.

Glad you were able to finish TSI, I have a picture of your team waiting for someone to ring the bell for you, if you PM me an email address, I'll send it to you.

[timl33]

You had to use both.

D'oh! If we had more time, I might have tried that. As it were, we only tried one or the other.

[Niwel]

I had such a wonderful time with all of you yesterday. Props to those of you who gave the Mark Twain a shot (and to the few teams who got stuck there).
It was so cute to be standing on the boat watching the teams stalk Lani waiting for the gates to open...
I also enjoyed the team or two who saw me on the boat as it was moving and started pointing as if that meant I could give them the question.

Congrats on those who got the right answer for the MAGIC puzzle. Yes, I admit, that little devil was mine. :cool: It was a red herring, and a jab at the former DL heads for not fixing up the Tiki Room. Sorry to those who were confused -- but I did get a chuckle out of some of the answers.
Ask the John Henchmen, CP & GD or any of the teams that placed yesterday what the key to doing well in MA is and they'll probably tell you a big chunk is to read all directions before beginning any quest.

Hope to see you all again in October (if not before)!

[Bill Catherall]

Woohoo! Very fun event. (I won't share my sour grapes over 2 very minor mistakes that cost us a win though. :( )

I loved the quests. They were all well balanced and solvable without being too easy. My favorite parts:

* Solving TSI twice. Once while waiting in line for the raft and again on the island.
* Looking like an idiot standing around by the bell waiting for someone to ring it.
* Looking like an even bigger idiot wondering what to do once someone rang it who wouldn't admit to being the whistle blower. (She did ring it once though. Very ominous.)
* Making rubbings. Or, actually, making bad rubbings or incorrect rubbings, then making the right rubbings on the back of the sheet hoping that would count.
* Walking into MS Cinema and being totally blind.

I liked having all the packets at once. Returning back to the tables to get the next packet was always a waste of time. Having 3 on our team there were times where we were working 3 quests at once. That may or may not have been a good strategy, but in the end, if it wasn't for 2 (minor/stupid) mistakes we would have placed. Oh, yeah, I wasn't going to bring that up. :rolleyes:

Thanks staff! You guys rock. It just keeps getting better every year. I can't wait for October.

And if my team is reading this, you guys rock too. :D

[lilblckrncloud]

How did you do? No clue. We finished 6 quests, but it's possible we got them all wrong. I can't wait to find out!! We did a few EyeSpys and Rub-a-Dub-Dubs (very fun) and completed one of the scavenger hunts.
What was your most/least favorite part/quest? Least favorite thing of the day was the heat. Ugh. Coupled with my horrible sore throat/cough, I was guzzling water like it was going out of style. My favorite part was probably TSI. I doubt we got the answer right, but I thought it was so much fun! I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid, so it was like living one out. So cool. I also loved when Cruella DeVil decided to get all creative on our scavenger hunt sheet and started drawing dalmation dots all over the page.
What did you think of the new format/quests? I am torn on this. On the one hand I really do like the idea of getting the packet all at once, because it saved us from having to go back and forth. However, I think my team just isn't organized enough to make a plan and execute it on our own. We didn't plan ahead enough. If we had, I think we would have been able to finish more quests. I think cemeinke described the pros and cons perfectly - the danger of paper flying everywhere and the fact that not everyone on the team knew what was happening in every quest were two negatives in my book, as well. I do look forward to trying to make a better plan if we use this format in the future! I definitely think we can make it work for us.
How much do you appreciate the MP staff for doing this for us? More than words can say! I am continually amazed at the effort and creativity that goes into every single aspect of this game. This year it was so well organized and many of the staffers were very visible throughout, so I felt like we were in such good hands. Congratulations for pulling off yet another rousing success!

And now for my random babbling.


No one asked me to ring it. I would have, if someone had asked, but no one did.
Can you please explain what was up with the bell ringing thing? We were one of the teams who stood around waiting (staring at you - or whoever was there when we were - for a while) and by watching kid after kid ring the bell, one of my teammates decided that it was impossible to ring it just once - that when you pull the rope once, it rings more than once no matter what. Was that it?? Pretty sneaky! Although we ran ourselves ragged on the TSI quest, we really enjoyed it immensely. So creative!

I loved all of the shirts/outfits we saw yesterday. I can't even begin to list them all, but I must say everyone really did an amazing job. I think my faves definitely had to be the Smilies, just for the sheer creativity, and Finding Teamo, because they were really well done and I think the different colored shirts looked VERY sharp. You were clearly part of the same team, but you each had your own flair and I loved it. I think my team got tired of me saying, "Wow, I REALLY like the way the different colored shirts look!" every time I saw you guys!



After filling in the letters, we were supposed to see that they were all the same 5 letters (M, A, G, I, C).
That one was a killer. I could have smacked my teammate, because when she FINALLY figured it out (she had been working on it the entire time we were running in circles in the theater, and kept telling us we must have filled in the speech text wrong because NO shop name had that many repeating letters) she shouted out "MAGIC!! MAGIC!! OMG IT'S MAGIC!!" People! How many times must we say it?? NO shouting answers and NO pointing!! :p

Overall we had a great time and look forward to the next one! If it is indeed on October 10 I will probably be out of town, but the rest of Dorks, Inc. will be there for sure!

[Kevy Baby]

So Bill:
What time did you get home?
Did you go to work today?

[3894]

I know you just got done with one but ... when will the date for the MouseAdventure fall 2004 be announced? How firm is it? (for those of us who have plane/hotel reservations to make and muggle significant others to convince)

[mamabot]

I know you just got done with one but ... when will the date for the MouseAdventure fall 2004 be announced? How firm is it? (for those of us who have plane/hotel reservations to make and muggle significant others to convince)

Alex said the tentative date for the Fall MA is OCtober 10th.

[Bill Catherall]

So Bill:
What time did you get home?
Did you go to work today?

a) 4:15am. No Doze does wonders.
b) Yes. 2 hours of sleep was not a lot, but refreshing. If I wasn't at work I'd be sleeping right now (and yes, I actually am getting work done :p ).

[mhrc4]

All I can say is WOW....

First off, I am still tired, sunburnt, dehydrated, and still thinking about how we screwed up some of those quests...

Overall, the jury is still out on if we liked the new format better or not, while a quest in and of itself was the document management and time management, it still allowed you to see everything up front and do what you could do and skip what you could'nt. I think the new format, combined with the 90*+ heat, and the new style of quests (TSI) that we saw, threw us off a bit (http://mousepad.mouseplanet.com/images/icons/icon14.gif)

(Well now that I figure out the backspace button dosent work with the WYSIWYG editor, i have to RETYPE my entire post:mad: )

After everything is said and done, a few things stick out in my mind from the quests and puzzles from MA. First of all was the NOS quest and the mishap that ensured following that. We (I) missed the correct answer on the quest due to haste, and have only ourselves to blame for that. We headed right out of the gate over to NOS to look for some signs, after 15 minutes of feverishly looking for ONE elusive sign, we gave up, did the word search, and came up with Pirates of the Caribbean as the answer (honestly, we added up the letters, and got Pirates of the car and assumed POTC and went on), it wasnt until 3 quests later, when someone grabbed us outside of the main street Cinema and told us what the sign was that was behind the scaffolding. By then our minds were off that puzzle and onto others, so we didnt bother to go back and check that answer with the newfound knowledge... 20/20 hindsight says we should have. Oh well...

Our biggest problem, and subsequent guess on the answer, came on the Picture This puzzle. There were 2 references to the park map guide, which proved to be utterly useless, because of the ambiguity of the map. According to the map, there are 2 picture spots in Fantasy Land, which dosent help much when only "Fantasyland picture spot" was referenced. One of the questions was referring to a Map guide picture spot reference with associated sample picture. On the map, there was no sample picture, so we can only guess that the question was referring to the actual spots in the park. Well, besides the 2 fantasyland picture spots, all 3 answers could have been correct because all 3 places (toon town, fantasyland and BTMR) had sample pictures with their signs in the park. :confused: Don't know if that threw anyone else off, but it definetly did us, and that led to us getting the wrong answer for that puzzle....

I wish we would have had time to get over to the TSI quest, as in the end it looked like fun, but after 3 of 4 of our team members read the quest, and couldnt figure out a general direction we were supposed to go with it, other than to go to TSI and follow the directions blindly, we opted to skip that one in favor of doing 2 smaller quests.

All in all, it was an enjoyable MA, but just fell at a bad time, with record attendance numbers, record ride/attraction closures, and record heat (notice a pattern here?) otherwise, it was an adventure in changes to MA (new format and record number of teams) We will definetly be back again in Oct.

It was good to see some of the familiar faces around, and was quite funny to have people walk up, and talk to me, knowing all the while who I was, and I couldnt for the life of me figure out who was who! (i know I was talking to Sophie a little, as well as one of the girls from Plane Crazy, as well as a few of the admin staff) My wife was shocked pretty good when AdrienneK walked up and asked her how the wedding was and all that, my wife turns to me and asks me "how did first of all, she know who I was, and secondly, that we got married!?" :)

I am with one of the previous posters, 3 straight events of not winning a raffle prize (not even a year old calendar!) so I look forward to continuing that streak next time :)

Also, wanted to lend a tidbit of a reccomendation for Alex and his staff. BUSINESS CARDS. Would be a great addition to the MA format, 3-5 business cards for each player, something to put into everyones pockets so as they go along in the game and get stopped by everyone asking what we were doing, we could easily just give them a business card that says "MousePlanet.com Mouse Adventures" and the website address with maybe a short description on what we were doing. I swear, we were stopped maybe 10-15 times by peopple asking us what all the people with armbands were doing....

just an idea :)

Congrats first off to cemeinke and the team, you should first off be congratulated for not passing out of ehat exhaustion in wearing all black....

secondly to monorailman and nirvanaman, you take the term "Forum Geek" to a new level of geekiness ;)

and lastly to GD and CP.. its official, we all hate you, not ONLY do you win 1st place in quests only, but you both won your raffle tickets. Its rigged I tell you, its all a HUGE MA CONSPIRACY! ;) :)


(okay, now my fingers hurt from typing this much, took me almost an hour to type this and work at the same time :p)

[AVP]

This was one of the most entertaining MAs for me in a while, and a lot of that was due to the fact that I had nothing to do with writing or testing it. Usually I help with one or both of those tasks, and by the time the game rolls around I am already sick of the quests. This time I saw the quests for the very first time the night before the event, so I was really experiencing the game with the teams as they were solving the puzzles.

The TSI quest was hands-down my FAVORITE quest ever, from ANY MouseAdventure game. I read straight through it, (interrupting the staff meeting several times with my giggles), and thought it was just the most clever format ever. I hope to see variations of this theme in future games.

I really wanted to test out this new format - it was my ony contribution to the actual game play - and I'm glad Alex agreed to it. I like that it introduces a brand-new level of strategy to the game, and also lets us accomodate more teams with the same number of staff. Handing you everything at once also meant that most of the staffers could be released into the park for various duties. When that pesky awning issue came up, it allowed us to mobilize most of the staff in the effort to track down all 99 teams and provide the needed info. (To those of you who got the news 10 or more time, I really do appologize! :D )

The biggest drawback for us was that we had to grade all 99 packets is 90 minutes, which is not an easy task. We're constantly looking for ways to make the grading process faster without resorting to multiple-choice answer sheets.

As always, I loved the team costumes. Some of you are amazingly creative, and it's always fun just watching the teams play. That was the other thing I really liked about this format - I got to watch the teams play this time, instead of spending my entire day behind a table.

See you in October!

AVP

[Ghoulish Delight]

Actually, you were closer than you thought to getting the NOS answer right, mhrc if you had "Pirates of the Carribean." The piece of information that was in error was that one of the pictureds signs was missing. Since you just went through and found the words in the word search without looking for the signs, you probably found those words anyway (petite pattisserie). So you had the puzzle solved. What you didn't do was what we almost didn't do....keep going. The actual answer was "Pirates of the Carribean Exit Only" And then it said "Alex Lani," but that wasn't asked for in the instructions. So you were that close....

[EandCDad]

My favorite part was probably TSI. I doubt we got the answer right, but I thought it was so much fun!

What did you get?



Can you please explain what was up with the bell ringing thing? We were one of the teams who stood around waiting (staring at you - or whoever was there when we were - for a while) and by watching kid after kid ring the bell, one of my teammates decided that it was impossible to ring it just once - that when you pull the rope once, it rings more than once no matter what. Was that it?? Pretty sneaky! Although we ran ourselves ragged on the TSI quest, we really enjoyed it immensely. So creative!



We are not that sneaky or clever. Alex wrote this quest and he's a sadist with a sense of humor. It didn't matter who rang the bell or for how long. No matter where you went after that point, you'd (eventually) wind your way to the correct answer. My only point for being there was to make sure you didn't ring it yourself, fortunately, no one did (well, one team did but then realized that they were not supposed to ring it and stood next to me for 5 minutes waiting for someone else to come along and ring it.)

[adriennek]

My wife was shocked pretty good when AdrienneK walked up and asked her how the wedding was and all that, my wife turns to me and asks me "how did first of all, she know who I was, and secondly, that we got married!?" :)

Well I have met her before at previous events so I'm not a total stalker! I couldn't tell you your wife's name to save my life, if that helps- my memory for names is horrible, but little things like you got married in January I can remember.


Also, wanted to lend a tidbit of a reccomendation for Alex and his staff. BUSINESS CARDS. Would be a great addition to the MA format, 3-5 business cards for each player, something to put into everyones pockets so as they go along in the game and get stopped by everyone asking what we were doing, we could easily just give them a business card that says "MousePlanet.com Mouse Adventures" and the website address with maybe a short description on what we were doing. I swear, we were stopped maybe 10-15 times by peopple asking us what all the people with armbands were doing....

There's a reason we don't do this. We don't want to upset Disney by appearing to be soliciting on property. And can you imagine if we had over 300 people doing it?? We don't want to find our players or ourselves in violation of any Disney policies.

Adrienne

[adriennek]

What you didn't do was what we almost didn't do....keep going. The actual answer was "Pirates of the Carribean Exit Only" And then it said "Alex Lani," but that wasn't asked for in the instructions. So you were that close....

[official grader hat on]SOOOOOOOO many people did that- they put "Pirates of the Carribean" and didn't put "Exit Only" so they got it wrong. Some teams put "Exit" but not "only" soooooo close. And we didn't mark anyone wrong for putting "Alex" and/or "Lani" in the answer. But Lani giggled.[/official grader hat off]

Adrienne

[lilblckrncloud]

What did you get?
Something about a Shack... Haunted Shack, maybe?? I also loved when we were standing there counting moose (which is around about when we got our answer), the Mark Twain floated by and one of the staffers (I am not sure on her name - Shawna?) was standing there watching us with a huge smile on her face. The timing couldn't have been more perfect.



We are not that sneaky or clever. Alex wrote this quest and he's a sadist with a sense of humor. It didn't matter who rang the bell or for how long. No matter where you went after that point, you'd (eventually) wind your way to the correct answer. My only point for being there was to make sure you didn't ring it yourself, fortunately, no one did (well, one team did but then realized that they were not supposed to ring it and stood next to me for 5 minutes waiting for someone else to come along and ring it.) :rolleyes: Well, that figures!! That cracks me up so much. We were sure we had done something wrong because you (or whoever) just sat there watching us with a COMPLETELY deadpan look. Great poker face!!

And yea, we were one of the many who just put PoTC for the answer on the NOS sign quest. GRRRRRRRRRR... We gotta be more careful! It was still a very fun quest, though, no doubt about that.

[adriennek]

Haunted Shack was the correct answer for that quest.

Adrienne

[EandCDad]

Haunted Shack was the correct answer for that quest.

Adrienne

Hidden Shack

[lilblckrncloud]

Haunted Shack was the correct answer for that quest.

Adrienne
WOOHOO!! Ok, at least we got ONE right. But honestly, we could score zero and still have a blast.

[adriennek]

Hidden Shack

Hidden, Haunted... yeah, ok, it was Hidden... ;)

Adrienne