Dear Aunt Peg:
Today my parents surprised me by going someplace I had wanted to go based on a brochure we picked up. It’s called MagiQuest, located in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and it looked to be something like a real-life video game!
MagiQuest is situated inside this giant castle. There were four attractions in this castle: a mirror maze, the vault (which is like a spy movie where you have to avoid the infra-red security lasers), and Pirate Golf were downstairs; and MagiQuest itself was upstairs. You could pay for just the downstairs or just the upstairs, or $18 per person for both.
This guy was running the front of house. He was dressed kind of like Altair from Assassin’s Creed. He was happy to pose for photos. He also explained how everything worked, including showing us his wand as a demonstration.
Pirate Golf was all felt (not astro-turf). And many of the holes were quite small, as space was limited. Look, your shoes and socks glow in this glow-in-the-dark room!
They did a great job with scenery. Unfortunately, Mom picked a blue ball, and much of the felt was blue, so she had a hard time finding her ball in the dark most of the time.
This is one of their longer holes.
On this hole, there was a motion sensor that played thunder sounds and flashed when your ball went under. Dad kept sticking his club under it and setting it off.
This was just a painted wall. It looked really nice.
They had occasional video screens, where film loops were showing of pirates trying to escape, among other things.
This hole had ridges.
This guy popped out of the barrel when you putted underneath him.
Man, I’m beginning to get the feeling that you had to be there!! These photos are so dark - I can’t see ANYTHING!!
Mom’s ball got stuck under the skull’s gold tooth!!
Here’s the pirate ship.
Oh, OK, I guess I can see these.
See, there’s Mom’s blue ball against the blue felt.
This hole was really well done - there was a video of a ship caught in a whirlpool screening on the wall, and the golf hole was like a funnel, so when your ball went down the funnel, it was as if it was in the whirlpool that the ship was in!
OK, that’s way cool.
We all got a hole-in-one on the cannon hole. It wasn’t an automatic hole-in-one type hole, we just all happened to putt straight.
This is Madam Olga. She’d ask for your palm, and then she’d say, “I foresee you’ll get a hole-in-one!!”
Here’s the over-under hole.
A video of a guard sleeping.
Yeah, there’s a lot of action there!!
And then he’d wake up and talk at you for awhile.
Oh.
On this hole, when you putted under the treasure chest it opened and you could see the gold.
That’s cool!! I wish it also had rubies, emeralds, sapphires . . .
This is what you saw on the way out.
On hole 18 you either hit it in the center, for a score of 1, or if you missed, you got a 2. It was a ball-return. If you got it in the center, the arrow lit up, and the pirate, his parrot, and his skull would all sing a song for you.
Like, did they take requests??? What song did they sing????
Statistics:
Par: 38
Aaron: 43
Barb: 39
Paul: 36
Difficulty (1-6 putts, 6 putts being the most difficult): 2 putts
Rating (1-10 balls, 10 being the most wondrous): 7 balls. I certainly enjoyed this course. It was my first black-light course, and that was fun. And they really kept the pirate theme.
We went on to do the mirror maze. Which really only had one way you could go, so it was really more like a mirror hallway. They made you wear these plastic gloves so that when you felt the mirrors to find the way out, you wouldn’t get nasty fingerprints all over everything.
This is inside the maze. The second picture is inside the infinity room.
OK, I couldn’t love this more. Although, it reminds me of a woman’s bathroom I once visited. Seriously, a theatre patron (who has to remain anonymous - but she’s got at least one Tony in her library) has a bathroom with mirrored walls (and possibly ceilings and floors - I can’t remember now) so you can watch yourself pee into infinity - WHEEE!! The bathroom also spritzes you with perfume upon your exit. Which, come on, I like to choose my own fragrance!!
This is one of those walls where you move in front of it and it reacts. They’ve got walls like those at Children’s Museums sometimes.
And then we went on to do the vault, which took about a minute for each of us.
We went to lunch at the Mellow Mushroom.
Now, that’s the kind of psychedelic place that looks inviting to an old hippie like me!!
They had a lava-lamp fire place.
Rock ON!! Did you know that lava lamps were originally invented as egg timers?? That is, they were modeled after British egg timers which were glass shakers that you put in the water along with the eggs you were boiling. When the wax in the shakers floated to the top, your eggs were done. The lava lamp just removed the eggs. Oh, and added the lamp. You know, I used to often keep a lava lamp in the pit of shows I was conducting. Very festive.
Then we began our MagiQuest, having obtained our wands. First, your data was downloaded onto your wand. We were also given the ancient book of wisdom, which detailed the various quests we would be doing.
We were brought into the training room, which gave us the back-story and let us test out our wands.
We went through the assorted realms - there were four of them. They had the forest, the village, the dragon’s lair, and the main quest-stone area. If you pointed your wand at a quest object, the object would react. Some things lit up and talked to you, some things opened, etc.
This is the Altar of Heroes. In our allotted 90 minutes I got all eleven runes, so I got to go to this place and the Quest Master congratulated me.
Meanwhile, here’s Mom doing the Fairy Quest. She saved the Fairy Crystals! Yay!
I made the leader board!! (My screen name is always Beta).
My screen name is always Flester Dreadfulwater.
Dad with his wand.
For anyone who’s interested, there are MagiQuests in a lot of locations. The closest one to Chicago is in Yorktown!!
Once you’ve played, they keep all your data on-line. You can go to other locations and collect other runes and such. You get to keep your wand after you’ve played, so you can come back and keep spending more money. You can upgrade your wand, and buy a special holster for it, and such.
The biggest MagiQuest of all is in Tokyo. (Even though this all started in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina). Pictures of the Tokyo MagiQuest, from the Magiquest web site, can be found at the link below.
http://www.magiquest.com/locations/kingdoms/japan-locations/tokyo-dome/photogallery/
SHEESH!! Sheesh to this whole MagiQuest business!!
In Japan, they advertise that MagiQuest is good for building unity and team-work skills. Whoa. They say, “bring your office party to MagiQuest”. The picture from he web site linked above showed some very serious Japanese businessmen fighting the dragon.
Coming next: Goat Felt Putting Surfaces - a history!!
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