Congo River Adventure Golf 1325 N. Barrington Road, Hoffman Estates, Illinois
First: YAY!!! Aaron is back from Dollywood!! Wahooo!!!!
Dang!! Look at this sign!! Do you think they have a lot of broken putters??? Sheesh!!!
Hey, look at these low scores!! We did WAY better than that!! We should’ve told them our scores!!! RATS!!!!
Practice green. Gotta love that.
OK, so, at Congo River Adventure, there are two 18 hole courses - which you can play in combination for $11.95. Not bad.
We played Congo River Rapids first.
One of my favorite things about this course was the “scavenger hunt”. They had a bunch of decorations you were supposed to look for throughout the course. If you saw one, you were supposed to write down what hole you were playing when you saw it. If you saw all six of the hunt items, they’d give you a prize: a smiley-face superball!
Man, this was BRILLIANT!! It meant that if you were waiting behind a slow party, you could spend your time looking for the hunt items. It meant that kids who were waiting for others in their party to putt could also be looking for the hunt items. It was just a BRILLIANT idea!!! (Pictured below is the "mask" item. It's mounted on the shack.)
Look how lovely this course is!! Although, once again with the blue water!!
There were lots of bridges you got to walk on - I loved that.
You know, in general this course had long, interesting “fairways” that you really wanted to think about your strategy, and then they had exceptionally friendly cups. Seriously, the cups were often just slightly depressed, compared to the surrounding green, so that if you were sort of headed in the direction of the hole, you’d tend to roll in. This made you feel like a really super-competent golfer (and would be GREAT for kids).
There were a lot of holes where you putted into a hole on the top tier and then were spat out below - none of these gave automatic holes-in-one, though. Look at this guy drooling blue water!!!
We got to this hole, and thought it was a hole with a couple of REALLY harsh gaps, and then we realized that the hole was set up so that once you were in the water you’d be automatically routed onto the green below. I have to say, I love a hole where you get to putt into the water!!
See this cork-screw hole?? There were a lot of holes like this, where, really, you just teed off in the general direction that seemed logical, and then you got spat out on a very friendly green.
Wait a minute!! What happened to this guy?? Is he a guy who’s dead and sunk into the sand?? Or is he just a sleeping stick figure?? And why does he make me want to sing “Particle Man”??
Statistics:
Par: 41 Aaron: 53 Peg: 46
Difficulty (1-6 putts, 6 putts being the most difficult): 3.5 putts (but higher for children on account of the really long fairways and steep up-hill holes).
Rating (1-10 balls, 10 being the most wondrous): 7.5 balls according to Aaron. 8 balls according to Peg. Aaron liked how there were a lot of downhill putts. Peg liked the friendly, friendly cups!!
By some time in the 1930s, all the minigolf courses that weren’t part of the Tom Thumb franchise, or the Bob-O-Link franchise were in search of a putting surface. That’s because those two franchises were the only ones that could afford to use the patented cottonseed-hull surface developed in the late 1920s. (The royalties were steep.)
People tried all kinds of crazy things, including compressed feathers, ground sponge mixed with cement, and oiled sawdust. Carpet would’ve worked, but it was way too expensive, and hard to maintain.
In the end, goat-hair felt was the surface that won. It’s the surface that I putted on for most of my childhood.
Felt is arguably the oldest man-made fabric on this planet. They’ve found felt remnants in the tombs of Siberian Tlai mountain horsemen dating back to 700 b.c. Felt is easy to make: just take fibers - any kind of fibers - get them wet and smoosh them together.
St. Clement, who became the 4th Bishop of Rome, is credited with inventing felt. (So, he invented it for HIS part of the world, is what I’m thinking. I mean, if they’ve found felt dating from 700 b.c. there’s no way St. Clement could’ve invented it, actually!!)
Anyway, St. Clement stuffed his shoes with flax fibers to make his shoes more comfortable, walked around with sweaty feet for a couple of weeks, and then realized he had a piece of finely crafted felt in his shoes which he could remove and use for something (if he could stand the smell - ew!!!) After he became Bishop he set up a bunch of felting operations (hopefully no longer using the SHOE method for the moisture and compression).
It was his relationship with felt that made St. Clement the patron saint of hatmakers, who use felt extensively to this day.
Mercury was used for awhile in the making of felt for hats. But mercury poisoning causes tremors and hallucinations. The term “mad hatter” really came from the debilitating effects the mercury had on the hatters until mercury was finally removed from the process late in the nineteenth century.
So, goat felt.
You know, there’s a restaurant in Door County, Wisconsin that has goats living on the roof. Al Johnson’s in Sister Bay. Here’s a YouTube video of the goats on top of the restaurant:
One summer while I was working in Door County, a bunch of tourists were having breakfast at Al Johnson’s when one of the goats (who was at the time tethered up on the roof) fell OFF the roof!! The FURIOUS goat dangled right at the level of the restaurant windows, bouncing off one of the windows and freaking everyone out ‘til someone went out and hauled him back up to the top of the roof. He was fine. But he was really MAD!!!!
I think a goat on the roof is a really great, green idea!!! Wonder if my condo association would go for it??
Anyway, back to the goat hair felt putting surfaces!!
Eventually outdoor carpets were invented and replaced goat-hair felt, and now it seems like all the courses with money are going to astro-turf. I’m still hoping to find a real grass course someplace!!!
Coming next: Congo River Adventure (FINALLY - back in Illinois!!)
Note: For this entry, the BLACK text is Aaron speaking. The PINK text is Aunt Peg speaking. Also, as usual, you can click on the embedded photos to enlarge them.
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.
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!!
