Tiviachick Loves Laser Tag: Tivia Tags To 25 Miles (What, Like It’s Hard? LOL!)

When I say something like “It would be cool to laser tag 25 miles in a weekend” it sounds simple enough, but actually being able to execute a plan and do it is not quite as easy! Especially with trying to achieve this in only two days, which is what I did this past Friday and Saturday. This idea involved working with a variety of factors and unpredictable scenarios and I realize I could not have accomplished this goal just anywhere. Truly, the support of my local home laser tag arena, The Fun Warehouse in Camillus, NY, made all the difference to my being able to say…achievement complete! :)

First of all, my HUGE thanks to Beanz, Fox and the entire staff (including of course Tim who allows these crazy ideas of mine to happen at his business!) because they all made this personal challenge viable. First, we had to identify a weekend where I had three days fully available on my calendar to take a run at this challenge. Anyone who knows me can tell you that was a hurdle in itself, as we have been looking at dates for the last month. Initially I thought I would try to do this over the course of three days, spread out over a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but when Beanz suggested doing this the weekend of the FWH Halloween party because there would be more people around to play against it made sense, but also made me really want to complete it in two days instead, so I could “cross the finish line” so to speak during the event.

Somehow, that actually happened! Let me tell you about how this was possible.

I began by taking a half day off of work in order to start this challenge at 2:00 in the afternoon on Friday. Obviously, I know full well that most laser tag arenas are not going to have people showing up in the middle of a school/work day, but if this was going to happen I also knew I would need to play every possible game during business hours, so we built in a contingency plan…a 30 minute game of Escalation.

Here’s why. The bare minimum definition of a game of laser tag is two people trading tags. So, as long as a staff member was in the building and could start a game by tagging a few shots with me at the beginning, then if they have to walk out of the arena to attend to actual business it is fine because Escalation is a game that allows me to both play against other people and/or play against the arena, which I was able to do for the remainder of the half hour increment. A game took place, but for the lion’s share of it I would just be playing against the system, which in effect is me mostly competing with myself. During the hours when nobody else was available to play I would run through this half-hour game mode and simply try to beat my own previous score.

Stealth Elf later asked me what my high score was from this endeavor…

That’s right, over one million points…actually it’s nearly a million and a half!

For the record, that still puts me in the lower part of the top 2000 global Laserforce players for high score, so I’m clearly not the only one who has played a somewhat creative game format. ;) I checked this for my new membership, as the FWH set me up with a dedicated account specifically for this challenge called TiviaTagsTo25.

Unfortunately, I took too long exiting so the screen timed out and went dark the very second I tried to document this high score with a photo. I’m glad you can see all the relevant data on the back of the phaser screen photo I snapped as I was leaving the arena (even if not in this pic) because I doubt I will ever have a score like that happen again!

Obviously I’m pointing out the sheer novelty of figuring out a way to do this. I’m not suggesting this score counts for anything other than kicking off the challenge in a way that creatively allowed me to get my steps in.

For those who are curious about the mechanics of such a game, in Escalation each base starts out being worth only 11 points, but every time it is tagged it takes about a minute to reset and then becomes worth more and more points, escalating in value, and requiring more shots (and faster shots) to deactivate it the next time. Of course there must be a threshold, but in a normal ten minute game nobody would ever be able to discover it, so let me tell you what I have learned from playing this game firsthand. It appears that the default threshold is achieved at the point where the base maxes out at 12,001 points and requires 15 quick, consecutive tags to deactivate it. After that, the base takes an extra long reset window and resets itself to 11 points again, allowing the process to repeat should you ever arrive at that point.

We only did this to fill in gaps between games if needed. Between Friday and Saturday I played with lots of different groups. Anyone who showed up for a game got to be part of this challenge with me, like these awesome players who were there all night on Friday!

We played a variety of game formats, so there was some variation in game duration and intensity, which accounts for some of the data I documented on my challenge board over the weekend. Here you can see how I tracked my miles. I used my Fitbit as my official measurement, clocking in my start and end point for distance at the beginning and end of each game. I did the same thing for my steps, keeping a running tally after every game.

I had people cheering me on when I hit my first ten mile mark on Friday night.

I actually completed over 13 miles on the first day and came back to do the remaining 12 miles on Saturday, tracking all the data over the course of 38 games in total!

You will notice that there is a column of step data in a different color as well. These are my Laserforce steps. A couple of years ago LF added a step sensor to the Gen 8 packs, allowing players to see their in-game steps on the scoreboard. Because the Fitbit pedometer is on my wrist and the LF sensor is in the pack I wear on my chest I knew there would be some slight variance (although not as much as I guessed), so while the Fitbit remains my consistent means of data tracking, I kept a column of my LF steps as well, simply as interesting information.

I did achieve several achievements including the “Half Marathon Hero” for completing the equivalent of a half marathon. Ironically, an actual marathon is 26.22 miles, so I would have been very close to that as well if there were just a few more hours in the day!

On Saturday morning I returned bright and early to be ready to join in more games as soon as they were open for business. Saturday was a VERY busy day for The Fun Warehouse with multiple birthdays and large groups playing all day long prior to the Halloween party. I did join the groups, but with one important (and self-imposed) guideline. I am NOT a birthday basher, so if I played with a party group I promised to simply be a mobile target for the kids. I’d trade a couple of tags early on and then just let the kids tag me as I got my steps in. I also enjoyed being able to be an in-game coach and show the little ones how to play the game, while additionally being an extra set of eyes and ears to help out during these busy games.

This little girl really loved having someone show her how to take bases and score big points against her dad!

As such, if there was a birthday group in the arena I would “play”, but did not play hard or anywhere near my full ability. I giggled as I overheard one dad say “who’s in 12th place with 90% accuracy?” ;)

There was only one instance where I would have liked to play harder, but held myself back. At the beginning of one game there was a family walk-in group that came into the vesting room and we chatted a bit. It turns out that the guy on the far right of the photo is Joey Walker, the mid-day DJ from Syracuse radio station 93Q.

Now, my actual real job is that I work in radio also and am both an advertising rep and a DJ on a radio station in the next market over, so in our world we both know many of the same people. We enjoyed realizing we have even worked with some of the same people. I originally suggested I would play with the kids team in this group, so we could have a real “radio DJ vs radio DJ” challenge game, which would have been so much fun! However, timing was such that one of the birthday groups needed to play in this timeframe also, so I had to simply take my playing level way down and didn’t get a chance to see how it could have gone. So Joey, if ever you want to do a real challenge game another day I am up for it! Maybe we reel in Brandon C and a couple of our mutual radio acquaintances to make it fun! ;)

After that there was one large group that had scheduled an exclusive hour of time, so during these games I left to grab some dinner and returned ready to play as many games as necessary to complete my 25 miles later that night. I was at roughly 20 miles by the time people started to arrive for the AYCP event including several of my tournament teammates, so at this point in the night I was able to really let loose and play for real. I felt like someone let me out of a box, lol!

During the course of the night there were some Halloween festivities going on as well. We had scavenger hunts for items inside the goodie bags.

There was also trivia, an Escalation challenge to win some Tiviachick prize packs I had brought along for the night and specially themed Halloween tag with team colors programmed for the event. As you can see, teams were renamed for Spiders, Witches, Pumpkins and Monsters to add to the fun.

As we got towards the end of the night I was closing in on completing my 25 miles of laser tag. It’s important to note I was only counting steps taken inside the arena during actual games, so when I saw the end in sight before a game of Color Conquest I decided to just go for it and push myself to get the miles done in a way that would line up for one big finale game of (you guessed it, my favorite) Photon! So that is the game format we all played that allowed me to reach this personal goal. I can now say I have laser tagged 25 miles in two days time!

Again, I want to sincerely thank the entire staff and all the players at The Fun Warehouse, as I realize I could never have accomplished this goal without your support and coordination. Laser tag by its very definition is never an individual sport. It takes a community and I am very fortunate to have such an amazing local arena getting behind all my wild ideas!