Par-King Skill Golf, Part 2: Black Course

NOTE: You can click on the embedded photos to make them larger.

Today’s blog is Par-King, Part II:  the black course.  But first, here's some Par-King trivia:

      -The lowest verified score on a Par-King course is 33.
      -The lowest possible score is 17.  (you can get a zero on the
            roulette wheel - hole 18)
      -The rollercoaster is made of over 750 wooden pieces.
      -The chances of winning a free game are 1 in 32.

The first hole is The Guitar.  I liked this hole simply because it WAS a guitar!!

 
The Tiki Hole was cool - I like putting into someone’s mouth.  And there were troughs and lots of cool rolling around, but basically, it didn’t matter how you entered the Tiki mouth - the outcome on the putting green was random.

 
The Four Aces was interesting - there was a hole mid-way down the fairway that would supposedly put you in a good place on the green, and Aaron tried this approach, but Barb and I just went for the longer putt and I think it worked better that way.  That hole mid-way doesn’t necessarily put you into the final hole.

 
OK, what was up with the Whirligig???  Where does the ball have to go in to get the good outcome??  We each went into a different place, but we all came out the same place.  ARGH!!!  This made us sad.

The Roller Coaster!!!  You know, the only thing that does this hole justice is the little film that the Travel Channel did.  It is way, way cool.  Travel Channel movie (The link will allow you to download the video in MP4 format): 
http://www.par-king.com/tc_clip.html

Look at this lovely alligator!!  You know, I read someplace that if you play a B flat to an alligator he won’t attack you.  I think they REALLY need to test this on Mythbusters.  If this is true, wouldn’t you think they’d make Alligator-deterrent whistles that just play B flats???  Or is it crocodiles??  It seems to me the article I read played the B flat on a French Horn.  Could be people who go to Florida should be sure to take along a French Horn player.

 
I liked the statue better than the hole.  And, dig his shoes!!!  I WANT this pair!!!

Another rotating hole!!

  
Oh, look at these lovely fish!!  

 

OK, is it just me, or does hole 12 bear a creepy resemblance to John Wayne Gacy?  Eeeeeeew!!!  Also, he tips his head, and you need to putt in when he’s tilting the right way.  But it’s hard not to get knocked back.   This hole is just evil.

 
Once again with the Mt. Rushmore.  How weird.

  
Nice elephants.

 
Oh, LOOK!!!  Here I am with my best friend in the whole wide world!!!  How WONDERFUL!!!  On this hole, exercise moderation, and take the middle path!!!  

 
And then, hole 18 - the roulette wheel again.  I’m not fond of the roulette wheel, as we said last time - and LOOK, you can see why!!!  There’s my ball in FIVE!!!!  

 

Statistics:

Par:  41
Aaron:  48
Peg:  48
Barb:  48

Difficulty (1-6 putts, 6 putts being the most difficult):  3.5 putts
Rating (1-10 balls, 10 being the most wondrous):  6.5 balls

Once again, the random-ness of some of the holes, and the impossibility of figuring out where your ball was going inside some of the machines brought down the score of a creative and whimsical course.  We all thought little kids would really dig this course, though.  And I also have to say, we loved the music.  They played The Monkees, Five for Fighting, and a lot of classic rock.

Coming next:  a history of the golf ball!!!

Par-King Skill Golf, Part 1: Red Course

 NOTE: You can click on the embedded photos to make them larger.

Today’s course was Par-King Skill Golf at 21711 Milwaukee Avenue Lincolnshire, IL 60069.  This is a course with a lot of history.  It began life as George's Gorgeous Golfing Gardens.  That original course (built in the 50s) is gone, and the current course dates back to the 60s, although some of the original decorations are still in use in this course.  The clown and the turtle were created for the original course.  Every winter all the decorations are taken indoors and re-painted and maintained.

There are two eighteen hole courses at Par-King, and there’s no discount for playing both eighteens!!  Man, ALL the courses we’ve played before had a discount for playing both courses!!!  $7.00 is the fee for 18 holes here, and that seems about right.  But most other courses give you the second 18 for half-price, and Par-King doesn’t.  Bummer.

Anyway, there’s a red course and a black course.   We played the red course first.

You know, they had a different type of putter here than I’ve seen anywhere else. These putters didn’t have a line on top.  You know - a line on top of the head of the club - so you could see which way you’re heading your ball, sort of.  I have to say, I really missed that line.   But then, I’m geometrically challenged.

We liked the plastic tee plates.  They didn’t seem to trip us up the way the metal tee plates did at Novelty Golf.  They weren’t as pretty as the metal plates, but we liked that there were three different tee options.

 
The second hole, Totem Pole, had a really cool red silhouette that was slightly sunken, so once your ball got into there you couldn’t roll any further from the hole.  
 



 


On the Carousel hole - I got a hole-in-one!!!!  Wahoooo!!!

 

The Statue of Liberty was the first water hole.  You were supposed to hit your ball

across a narrow bridge.  You know, I have to say, there were signs by all the water holes saying that there was a TWO stroke penalty for going into the water.  TWO strokes!!!  Who ever heard of a two stroke penalty???  My sister, who was our guest golfer today, said they just weren’t explaining it right, they meant that we should just pretend we were teeing off at our second shot.  Hmmm.   In any case, the two times one of us went into the water, we didn’t use the TWO stroke penalty - we just used the one stroke penalty, like in real golf.  Sheesh!!

 

This hole rotates!!!  

Super Looper!!  OK, we loved this hole!!  You putted into the center, and your ball goes up the elevator and then comes out at the top of a loop-de-loop.  Man.  It was so fun to watch the mechanics.  It reminded me of the game Mousetrap.  Man, I loved that game.  






 
The Buck-a-Roo is great if you get your ball in the designated area, because then the bucking bronco statue moves and the cowboy rides him.  But, my sister’s ball got STUCK inside the mechanical thing - here she is attempting to free her
ball, which had gotten stuck on top of a ledge in the corner.   She says we should re-name this the Big-Butt-Blog!!!



 


Barb got her ball stuck on the Queen’s Castle, too.  Huh.  

 

The Sears Tower (right, the Willis Tower) had an elevator inside - it just comes out the other side, though.   (But, wait, if this is a REPLICA of the Sears Tower, built while the Sears was still the Sears, then is this replica STILL the Sears???)

 

Barb got a hole-in-one on this heart hole - she’s a straight shooter!!!

 

Oh, look, it’s a Farmville hole!!

Hole 18 was a roulette wheel.  Man, we REALLY didn’t like this hole!!!  If you’re a
kid, and you’re getting sixes on all the holes this might be a nice hole, but the thing is, you just putt in and your ball goes to a roulette wheel, and you just take the score of where your ball lands!!  How much does that suck???  There is a one in 32 chance that you’ll win a free game on this hole, but to me that doesn’t make up for getting a SIX or SEVEN that ruins your score!!!!!!!  SHEESH!!!!!!

Statistics:

Par:  41
Aaron:  47
Peg:  47
Barb:  43

Difficulty (1-6 putts, 6 putts being the most difficult):  3.5 putts
Rating (1-10 balls, 10 being the most wondrous):   6.5

You know, there was too much randomness on this course.  We LOVED the goofy decorations, and the Rube-Goldberg-like contraptions.  But there were way too many holes where you couldn’t figure out where the ball needed to go into the contraptions in order to come out the pipe that would give you a good placement.

Skokie Sports Park, Part 2: Traveler's Quest

  
NOTE: You can click on the embedded photos to make them larger.

 I think Aaron and I had really different impressions of this course.  I loved this course a lot more than he did.  We talked about why.  My theory is that they set the par so low on this course that we felt discouraged.  I think Aaron would’ve like the course a lot better had the par been higher - with the low par he felt as if he wasn’t doing well.  Seriously, most of the holes were par 2!!!

What I loved about the course was how they had historical or geographical information at the beginning of each hole, and they had music that matched the

theme at many holes.   (The music came out of fake rocks.  Those fake rocks that have speakers in them always make me laugh.)  All the decorations were really high quality - they didn’t look cheap and tawdry.  Even the “Great Wall of China” in miniature looked impressive.

This whole course, though, felt like real putting, rather than goofy golf.  As if it were built so that Dad could get serious about practicing his putting while the kids have a good time.

There was a cool practice green at the beginning - which is really great to get a feel for putting on astro-turf if you’re not used to it.   Plus, it’s just fun extra putting!!  The turf is in great shape over this whole course, by the way.

In Old Faithful, hole number 2, there was an initial tier with three different holes to putt into.  Then, from

those holes your ball went through a pipe and emerged on the lower tier where the final hole was.  Aaron went into the middle hole, so I tried to go into the left hole so we’d get a different outcome.  Man.  That was a mistake.  I ended up with a 6 on the hole because it took me three tries to get into the initial hole I’d chosen!!   And then I got a worse outcome than Aaron did on the tier below, so if you play this course, don’t go for the hole on the left!!  SHEESH!!!

Look at this cool crossing of the river on rocks!!!!   WHEEEE!!!

Oh, dig the Mayan Temple hole!!  I love these decorations!!!  This made Aaron think of some old game show called Legends of the Hidden Temple.  He told me about it - something about the shrine of the silver monkey.  Did anyone else watch this show??  I think it was a game show for kids.  A show I’m too OLD to have seen.  Actually, we just watched a clip on YouTube.  It seems like a kid’s version of Wipeout.  Aaron says Wipeout, in turn, is an American version of Ninja Warrior.  We watched a clip of that - WAY better than Wipeout.  Wipeout OOKS me.  I always have to turn it off because I can’t bear to see people SNAP their SPINES!!!  SHEESH!!!  But Ninja Warrior seemed like a true display of amazing physical feats.  It’s, like, in its 22nd season in Japan.

The Pueblo Village had this nasty gap lurking just out of sight.  It ensnared Aaron.  But not me!!!!

 
Easter Island.  Man, I couldn’t love these decorations more.  And look, you can use your golf balls to give sight to the Moai!!  

Oh, dig the cute koala.  You can see the driving range in the background.  This

place has a driving range and a batting cage, in addition to the minigolf.  But, why were all the drivers on the bottom level??  Man, if I’m going to hit a bucket of balls, I want to hit from the top floor, so it can seem as if I’ve gotten a LONG drive!!!  (Aaron says the people on the ground floor want an accurate representation of their drive.  I say, accuracy - BAH!!!)

Hole 8, Great Coral Reef was a creative three-tiered hole.  Aaron and I both went in the initial hole on the right, which sent us magically into the second tier hole that sent us down to the actual final holes at the bottom (you have your choice of two!!).  Where there was an octopus.  A very, very, large octopus.

 

You know, I loved the decorations on this course a lot more than the actual golf.  Maybe that’s why I liked this course better than Aaron did.  And, look at that water fall!!!  It’s gorgeous!!!

I loved that the Viking ship had the Mayan Temple in the background - and I loved “feeding” the zebra at the Savannah.

 

Man, the hippo hole SUCKED!!!  See that open mouth??  That’s the HOLE!!  There’s a  steep ramp up into it, and it’s all bouncy surfaces in there!!  ARGH!!!!  We both got a SIX on that hole!!!!  And that was only on account of there was a six stroke LIMIT on all the holes on this course!!!  SHEESH!!

 

Look, this elephant has a butt that looks like MINE!!!!  And yet, HIS butt matches HIS general size!! Sadly, we both had to putt from underneath that elephant!!!

 

The last hole was maybe the coolest on the course.  It was Egypt.  Depending on which Sphinx you putt underneath, you follow either the lower or the higher track to the hole.  It was just cool.  

 

Hieroglyphics.

 

 






We also sampled the ice cream at the “Mi-La” snacks at the end of the course.  We split a scoop of ice cream.  But, they didn’t have any bowls, so they just gave us a gigantic cup full of ice cream.  It was real ice cream.  It was really good!!!

Statistics:

Par:  40
Aaron:  59
Peg: 59

Difficulty (1-6 putts, 6 putts being the most difficult):  5 putts
Rating (1-10 balls, 10 being the most wondrous):  

Aaron’s rating:  5 balls.  The scenery was nice, but he didn’t really like the course.   It could’ve just been on account of the low par, but he just didn’t find it as entertaining as the kids’ course.  Also, on three different holes, the cups were so shallow that his ball bounced back out, ruining his score!!  I have to agree, that’s really aggravating.  It wasn’t like they skimmed the top, either, they hit the bottom of the cup and bounced out.  ARGH!!!

Peg’s rating:  7 balls.  The scenery was gorgeous, and the course was in great shape.  There wasn’t a lot of whimsy, though.  Or, not WEIRD whimsy.

Coming soon:  Par-King!!