Tiviachick Loves Laser Tag

Monday, September 29, 2025

Celebrating Ultrazone Fort Wayne’s 30th Anniversary

Getting to attend the 30th anniversary of Ultrazone Fort Wayne in Indiana was such a wonderful experience! This is quite a milestone for a legacy, standalone laser tag center that was not only the first laser tag in Fort Wayne when they opened three decades ago, but has also resonated strongly with me over the last ten years of my own laser tag journey.

When I heard about this event I knew I needed to be there, so I flew out to Indiana just for one day to be part of the festivities with owner Pat O’ Connor, his family, his staff (many of whom I have met through tournaments) and even Simon Willetts, president of Zone USA.

I had first heard about the event from manager Paige Herman who reached out about a month ago to ask if I might provide some laser tag history to share with their players and guests. Happily! Then last week I saw a few Fort Wayne players while we were all playing in Ohio, so my resolve to be there became even stronger. It was well worth making the travel from New York.

As soon as I got out of my rental car I heard a voice call out “is that who I think it is?!” Imagine my surprise when the inflatable balloon man waving out front (aka Cody) comes to life, calls my name and rushes over to say hello!

I ask if I can hug him in this costume, not sure if it will pop!

Waving to me from his seat by the front door where he was soaking the sun (as it was a PERFECT weather day) was owner Pat O’Connor, who I had not actually met until this day. He was such a delight, as were his wife and his daughter Mary, who I met throughout my visit. He escorted me in where I immediately saw more familiar faces. Ultrazone is a little like Cheers, where everybody knows your name!

There were plenty of activities planned for the day including an ice cream truck, balloon animals, coffee, face painting and prize wheel. They also had my favorite thing…30th anniversary tag swag!

Thank you to Pat for hooking me up with some awesome souvenirs to add to my collection.

We ventured into the side room where I signed the anniversary wall.

Then I saw a bit more of the collection display I had prepared showing up on the monitor. They were playing the “History of Zone and Ultrazone Fort Wayne” video that I had sent to Paige to serve as a virtual “Traveling Museum Collection” display, in lieu of my not being able to bring all these artifacts with me on the plane! ;)

It was truly delightful to see players enjoying the history that was showcased in this video. I tailored a special version for the occasion, including many highlights specific to Ultrazone Fort Wayne, then added an archival version of the “History of Zone” to the traveling exhibit series at LaserTagMuseum.com.

I had shared this video in advance with the team at Zone Laser Tag… and speaking of Zone, who should show up but Simon!

Ultrazone had some examples of Zone phasers from over the years available to hold for photos. This seems like an opportunity for a past, present and future photo op for sure!

From here I needed to seek out some nostalgia with a return to the arena where I have enjoyed many laser tag experiences over the years, going all the way back to my very first visit to Ultrazone Fort Wayne to play in the Battle for the Fort in 2016 with this awesome team, Ascendance!

So, back into the arena, but with a very different game experience ahead of me. I started tagging with the completely inconspicuous Cody!

Want to see how that game went?

And while that game was a LOT of fun, I couldn’t say I had the full experience this trip until finally getting into the laser tag arena and playing Zone against Simon!

I joined the other familiar faces on my team and it was cool to have a reunion vibe with these guys.

Meanwhile, Simon took some of the younger players under his wing for some in-game coaching, which was really delightful to see.

During the course of the day I had a chance to break away for some interview time with Pat, Paige and Mary.

They will all be appearing on the next episode of the Laser Unfocused Tag Talk podcast, which will post this coming Friday.

I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to be present for this event. To achieve success with a business and thrive in the laser tag industry with a standalone attraction like this for three decades is an amazing accomplishment! The fact that I can feel so connected to this place while living halfway across the country is testament to how special their laser tag community here really is. I never cease to be amazed at how laser tag brings people together, whether it’s across town, across the country or quite literally across the globe. It was such a privilege for me to be able to take part in this celebration with so many familiar faces. Congratulations to Ultrazone Fort Wayne on 30 exceptional years in business. You have truly created a legacy laser tag experience!

Comments or Questions?

Virtual Traveling History

For Museum Collection Monday I’d like to share the latest addition to the Traveling Museum Collection video series.

This is the History of Zone, presented as a video display in lieu of being able to have the collection actually travel with me this time.

It has been added to this ongoing series found at https://lasertagmuseum.com/exhibits/traveling-museum-collection/.

Comments or Questions?

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

The Draft Tournament

Let’s talk tourney. Before anything else, shout out to Thomas Provitt for coordinating and George Raptis for hosting the September Laser Storm regional tournament at Skyway Laser Storm in Warren, OH. Even though Storm is not exactly my strong suit, I have always really enjoyed being part of events held here, and this past weekend was no exception.

No event ever happens without a surprise or two. There were some unforeseen challenges that occurred and I think they did a great job of both balancing and adjusting to a variety of unexpected scenarios that came up. When I think back on this tournament I will remember it as a fun time, a success for Tag 4 A Cause and above all, interesting at every turn! Among the most unique situations is how from the first game to the last game there was a notable difference in the “before and after” roster for Team Selenago.

Let’s start with how I ended up on this team to begin with. This occurred right after the draft. With about 40 people registered for the event, there were 7-8 teams expected, which is a lot! That is a great problem to have and I think the increased interest was likely the result of this event being a draft. It was certainly the reason I signed up and there were a good number of players coming from other tag systems who were also relatively new to the Laser Storm scene. I think this is awesome because clearly they are cultivating new interest in the system and the tournament scene.

The volunteer captains drafted players and I was announced as a player on team DemiDeath, captained by Clayton. Due to there being an uneven player numbers, this team had a roster of six players instead of five.

Logan was also captaining a team and had drafted Lonewolf…who was nowhere to be found! So instead Shel asked me if I would mind taking his place on Logan’s team. Since Clayton had an extra player, the move did not impact numbers, so that’s how I became part of Team Selenago.

With a roster that included Gumby, George, Grumpy and Logan (along with the young Pittsburgh player who goes by Laser Beam), on paper this looked like a really strong place to be (even though George and Gumby were intended to swap for each other, not play at the same time). But life happens and we would face a few more surprises before the day was done!

With this many teams, a traditional round robin would not work due to time constraints, so instead they opted for a Swiss team-pairing format for the seeding games. I have absolutely no idea how that worked, so I will not even try to describe it, but I trust in the process. The only part I am sure about was that it had to be adjusted from five rounds to four, also to account for limited time. Here’s how the rounds played out.

At one point there was some additional roster confusion. Someone called out to me “Tivia, are you playing?” I had not heard Team Selenago called…and that’s because my name was still showing up for Clayton’s DemiDeath team.

And some flip-flopping of team names/rosters happened, but both of these issues were easily resolved. What was not so easily resolved was losing Grumpy mid-way through. His son, Papa Smurf, had injured his knee earlier in the morning. In spite of his dedication and insistence on powering through, the injury warranted a trip to the emergency room, so unfortunately both father and son had to exit the tournament early. That’s all we knew at that point and of course we all wish Brayden (Papa Smurf) a speedy recovery! But losing Grumpy was also a blow (and disappointing to not be able to visit longer with them both).

Somewhere during this time window Lonewolf arrives! So, with the continuing roster rotation he’s back on this team and our player line-up continues to morph. I’m not actually certain that I played with the same group of team members in any two games of this tournament, lol!

Considering how it was all going down, you can probably understand my confusion when fairly early on Logan said we ended up with a bye (always looks wrong when I type it) into the finals, but ok. However, we also heard Gumby might have to leave soon (again, because the event was running long), so what would that mean if we lost another player? For the record, we didn’t.

In actuality, we all moved into double elimination. We took a break between the first round of games and the finals to run the Tag 4 A Cause “Top Gun” games, which were intense and showcased some awesome Top Gun scores. Corbin won the trophy and continues to impress everyone with his Storm skills! :)

Then we entered the finals and, well…we were out of it pretty early on. This was one of those “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” situations.

However, I really enjoyed the event and want to congratulate the top placing teams! In third place was Love Hugs, second place was Just Chillin and first place was (ironically the team that had drafted me at the beginning of the day) DemiDeath! Congratulations to all!

I also want to again thank Tom and Lex for doing a skills session the night before the tournament. They had a great set-up in the party room and shared many useful tips and examples.

This included some tips on Wilsoning.

And here are a few more!

No matter what, I always enjoy playing in these events. And when I show up for work on Monday morning and my coworkers ask me what I did over the weekend I can always sum it up in two words. ;)

Comments or Questions?