Well, the Fourth of July Festival in Auburn is days in the past, and I have a few days before the Pacific Days Festival this Saturday. For noobs to this blog, I hosted free Lazer Tag games at the former, and will be doing the same at the latter.
As I expected, the turnout was significantly higher than last year, probably over 300 unique players. Our location, while not ideal for actually playing on, had great exposure. It was easy for anyone to find, as our line and info/hosting area was right on the main paved path that runs through the park. The entire parade went right past us. The funny part about the parade is that by the time it happened, we had already been running games for an hour, and the line was getting long. People were watching the laser tag rather than the parade go by. 🙂 For the entire rest of the event, we had constantly full 24 player games. Most of the time, there was another 24 or more already lined up for the next game. It got busy enough that I found out later that parents were saving spots in line for their kids, and there was even a couple cutting incidents. While that saddens me, it’s at least an indication of popularity and busyness.
One of the issues encountered this time was that no matter how many times I said it, kids would inevitably pull the triggers too soon, and end up causing the glitch that results in no score at the end. I think for Pacific days, I’ll try out having them actually wait for Good Luck before they are allowed to remove the tagger from the rack. That way, even if they do nothing but pull the trigger the entire time, at least it will be AFTER the point when the glitch can take place.
The whole “NEUT” thing is still confusing for people, even full grown adults who read the instruction signs. They just want to be able to aim and pull the trigger, so the respawn thing just confused them. I had Tod and even Alex walking around with a specially programmed remote to respawn people who were running around not knowing they needed to return to the base, usually littler kids. Hopefully by next year, we’ll have a solution to host custom games, allowing me to use something other than Respawn games for these events.
Interestingly, we only had ONE problem with the barriers. For the entire day before, AND after, no one messed with the barriers, but during one game, a player decided she needed to move the barrier with her as she moved around the field. Pulling the barrier up and tearing the spikes out of the ground, she proceeded to use it as a mobile personal shield. While I half expected this from a teenager, this wasn’t the case. This person was a grown adult, a mother of some of the kids on the field. She REALLY should have known better. Maybe she thought she was being clever or something, and was the first person to ever think of it, I don’t know. It just kind of sad that the only person to do that was a grown adult, a mother who should at least be trying to set a good example for her own kids, not to mention the rest of the players on the field. Ah well.. another day, another example of humanity’s disappointments.
One thing that kind of irked me was that while I was checking all the batteries in my taggers, I found one where the screw for the battery door had become completely stripped. It would not hold the door shut any more. Fortunately, I had a spare battery door I could use. Unfortunately, another one cropped up during the games. The player came back with a tagger that had been reset, so I checked the batteries to find that the door didn’t unscrew… it was held in by friction only. We ended up taping it shut to prevent that from happening. We guessed that the tagger locked up because the batteries had come away from the connection, and the player unaware of this, used up the remaining charge in the capacitor added to protect from momentary battery jiggle lock-ups. The tagger didn’t have any problems after that, but now I need to find a replacement screw for it… and these are tiny little screws. :\
Overall, I think it went pretty well. We had lots of new players, lots of exposure, lots of possible new ALTC players, and that’s what it’s all about. If you’d like to see more of the photos, check out the gallery. And if you’re the type who likes videos, here’s one from the event.
Well done Greg and an excellent description too. It looked like a TagParty event, hosting station and barriers, but without the colored vests and safety glasses.
I am glad that the barriers are working out for you. We too have had the occasional barrier lifter, and like most of the “bad ideas” it is usually an adult.
Apart from the UNDL and the battery compartment screw, it sound like you had no problems with the Taggers and the effort for the Magic Drone Mode was worth it.
Good luck with the next event.
Thanks, Peter! 🙂 I think Next year will be a whole different experience if we can manage to get a hosting computer in the mix.
Hopefully I can eliminate the UNDL bug by waiting for the Good Luck! before letting them take the taggers this Saturday. 🙂