Mobile Tag at the Firemen's Fair
When I heard there was going to be laser tag at a local firemen’s fair I was enthused about it and on opening night I was ready to go play some tag. We arrived to find that the mobile operation that had been brought in for the event would be using Battle Company equipment. Wow…this is the third time in less than a month I’ve gotten a chance to play using this particular brand of tactical tag!
We arrived to find that nobody else had yet signed up and the owner of the company suggested waiting about ten minutes until some other players arrived. That was fine. Ten minutes later there was still nobody else there so we waited another ten minutes before deciding that a 1v1 game would be fine.
I’m going to speculate that part of the reason nobody else was playing might have to do with this outfit overpricing their games. There was a sign out front that said “$5.00 for 5 minutes”…however they were running 20 minute games and charging proportionately. In my opinion $20 per player, per game is not a price point that people in this particular area would be likely to go for, particular as many would likely be experiencing laser tag here for the first time. That’s unfortunate because I really hoped that this new addition to the event would be successful. It’s not that this is unreasonable for session pricing in some settings, but for this kind of event I think shorter games would have been in their best interest. But nobody asked me, so I guess for now it would just be two of us going down to the field to play. A young woman showed us to the open field area across from the park.
Paul and I were each given a BRX phaser and headset.
Then we headed out for twenty minutes of…me tagging him consistently and very few tags coming back my way. By the time we were about halfway through the twenty-minute session he asked “what are you aiming at?” I said I was aiming the green dot in the scope at the sensors on his headband (even though the phaser itself can be targeted as well). At this point he says he has no green dot (sheesh!) and we stop long enough for one of the employees to come out, say “yeah, that must be one of the bad ones”, take a few minutes to reset something and send us back out on the field. OK, he now had a green dot to aim. I concede that tactical is much harder without that key component. And he did get a few shots off on me after that. However, the settings for this game require you to hit a player five times before they are deactivated for the point and that never happened when he tried tagging me. Meanwhile I got plenty of hits and the final score was 12-0. So…we’ll blame a LITTLE bit of that on the equipment.
But at least I got to try the system in a new setting and support the firemen’s fair in the process. As I mentioned, I think the price point would be a hinderance to a casual customer so I hope they considered adjusting that as the week of the fair went on. Laser tag was a new attraction to the fair this year and the only way for something new to be successful is for people to try it, like it and spread the word/return to play more. Since all I can speak to is the first night, I will just hope that this took place because I would really like to see laser tag return to this event next year.
Comments or Questions?
Contact: Tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com
