BeastBuzz '05

I have to concur with everyone else - this was a fantastic event! Kudos to whomever put the weather order in that kept the heavy rains away :) The Beast was absolutely flying Saturday night. Those quite possibly could have been the best laps I've had on "Papa" since the brake upgrade.

I'd like to thank everyone involved who helped make BeastBuzz 2005 the best one yet! Jeff, Maureen, and Kristin seemed to bend over backwards to show us a good time. What an amazing team! I must say, it was great to see some familiar faces and a lot of unfamiliar faces running around with the group this year. Thanks to Jeff and Steph for setting it up and getting all of the Buzzers in and registered.

I definitely think the best place to be is Lt. Dan's bar on the back of Bubba Gump's. Crazy things happen there. It was also nice to have a few drinks with the teammates (James K., Phil, and Lumpy72 -- We'll get first next year boys!) and Jeff and Steph. Good times were had.

I can't wait till next year's event. Best event ever.

Yes, we will take first next year! (laugh) I will spare the rant... :)

Lumpy, It was great hanging out with you all day. And yes, I did get my phone back.. sort of. it is currently in the mail. Here is the short short version of what actually happened.

Lost Phone on ride yesterday, Park retrieves phone, I go to pickup phone, Phone Gone from Lost and Found. Tried to see if they had it at the park today.. No luck. Turns out that the Park gave my phone to a guy who lost the same exact phone in the same exact place. This guy did not know the difference because it took a 50 foot fall and the battery went AWOL.. Anyway, This guy calls my Mom (because it said "mom" in the directory) and she calls me and I call him.. He works for the post office and is going to send me my phone tomorrow.. Sans Battery.

It turns out that the phone we saw on the Tomb tour was not my phone, but this other guys identical phone. Thank the Lord for the few honest people who still have some integrity in this world!

Oh yeah, When Joe and I went back into the park on Sunday, There were no lines anywhere. We took a quick walk-on ride of Beast and headed out for our journey home, which took us the wrong way, then by lesourdesville (by accident), and then into a major traffic jame do to a burning third wheel trailer... All in all, a normally 3.5 hour trip took about 6. But we made it home just in time to watch the Pistons Get Creamed.

Anybody want to hit up Lt. Dan's tonight? ;)

Well I am glad everyone had so much fun and realize that I would have had fun to. I wish I could have made it and retract my previous post.

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James K said:
Yes, we will take first next year! (laugh) I will spare the rant... :)

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Speaking of the scavenger hunt... What is everyone's opinion on it? I thought it was a bit more difficult than last years. There were about 3 or 4 questions that my team was unsure about:

-Counting the Coca-Cola logos: Just an old fashion pain in the rear.

-Counting the green lines on the subway of IJ: Well, this was hard for a couple of reasons.
1) Some people might not have had a chance to ride because of the sporadic downtime
2) It's tough to count when your flying down that hill! For the record, we counted 7.

-The toucan question: The only toucan I could think of was the fruit smoothie stand over by the parking garbage portion of IJ. Did we miss an easy one? :)

-Lights in the station: It was the Beast, right? It's the only coaster I thought PKI had that "used to be the tallest and fastest".

Anyway, we had a blast doing the hunt. Hopefully we'll place in the top 3 next year.

Jerry

There were 8 lines on the subway.. confirmed.

The toucan was on the fruit smoothie station.. I think.

The beast had 12 lights in the station, also unconfirmed.

Okay.. so you brought out the rant. :) which is not really a rant, and is written in jest. Either way, we all had a great time!

Here it is,.. again.. I am not compaining in anger or digust or anything.. Just mentioning the facts.. lol

The question that gave the winning team the 1 point edge over us was one which made us count every time we saw Coca-Cola written in the logo script on the Coca-Cola Patio of a diner in the park. Joe, Phil, and I all counted every one of them 2 times and all three of us came up with the same number. After close inspection we found the "Coca-Cola" logos that were so small one could easily miss them if they were not looking very very very carefully. SO... upon Phils first counts he got 360 both times. Joe and I both got 358 both times we each counted. Upon discussion, Joe and I realized we both missed a logo on a Thermometer. Phil also realized he counted one that should not have been counted... Which gives us a count of 359 logos, verified 6 times.

So... The winning Team (and the park's "correct" winning number) was 338 (+/- 5). So, since that team had the 338 number they got the point to beat us from taking first. HERE IS THE KICKER! The small, almost hidden logos I found work out like this.. 12 very very small Logos (2 per sign) on one type of sign which most people missed. Also, there was 8 more logo (1 per sign) which were very very small on a different type of sign that there were 8 of. There was also 1 Logo hidden elsewhere that I know a lot of people missed. So.. we take the number of logos that we found that could have easily been missed when the Person in charge of the Scavenger hunt counted them (21) and subtract it from our number (359) and you get... 359-21 = 338... So, We are pretty sure that we indeed have the actual correct winning answer! Did we actually win the scavenger hunt? The World May Never Know... lol

Sorry, I was going to skip it.... Thanks again to PKI for a great time!

Dude, Let it go. :)

Good times. I thought the Hunt was a bit easier this year, but then again, I came in knowing what types of things to expect.

*voice of Napoleon Dynamite*

You guys are DORKS!

*runs off to Boomerang Bay* ;)

-CO

(who did exactly that last year)

I did let it go.. lol.

By the way, Congratulations to all those who participated in the Hunt this year!

And Joe makes it sound like we had some kind of inside advantage, which we did not. We just referenced last years Hunt questions and thought about what might be similar this year.

Well, for what its worth, we also counted 359 Coke logos. I know exactly what "small" logos you're referring to (on the bottle caps).

I got 13 lights in the station.. I counted the one light hanging just at the end of the ramp leading into the station. Whoops! Another thing we struggled with on this question was "which lights to count?" The white fixtures, the emergency lights, the moving flood lights, or all of them?? We settled for just the white fixtures. That question was a bit to ambiguous for me. I don't have a problem with tough questions, just make sure the answer to the question isn't open for interpretation. :)

I got stuck with one of the short straws to ride the log flume to count the spitting coconuts (right before lunch). Actually felt pretty good after running around in the sun for a couple of hours.

Good job on making the top 3!

Proudly wearing my Dork badge, :)
Jerry *** Edited 6/13/2005 3:42:51 PM UTC by Outlane***

Thanks! I am glad someone else counted 359.. lol. Yes the logos on the bottle caps on the ceiling signs and corner post signs. Most people I talked to thought there was 2 logos on each side of the post signs, when actually there was 3.

There are also 13 more logos in the DJ booth. We actually went in there and counted, but did not need them for the answer.

On the Wild ThornBerry's I believe there were 18 coconuts (unconfirmed). There was a way to count those without riding the Actual Thornberry's ride though ;)

I agree, the lights question was very ambiguous. We too agreed to just count the white "hanging" lights.. per the questions clue..

Also, was Blue Thunder the correct name of the Blue car? Or were we really supposed to be looking for the Scion?

And I think the correct time in Scooby was 1:35, although it was never confirmed.

It should be noted that we went in the booth WITH permission.

Lets see...

18 coconuts on Wild Thornberry's.

We picked Blue Thunder for the car. At first we had the Scion XA, but changed it.

1:35 for the time on the clock, and "Mom" was the name on the portrait in the study.

4 PTC logos?

106 fountains.

T-O-M-B was the word scramble answer, which gives you "Famous Last Words" for the other clue. Luckly, I've ridden TR:TR so much, I knew that answer immediately.

"Track 2" was closed on Adventure Express. Had to ride twice because the sign was so faded.

I think the rest of the answers were pretty straight forward. What was your final score?

Not sure what our final score was.. But I am pretty sure it was 37 or above.

Outlane.. you sound like you did very well. Were you on the 1st place team?

Oh, what about the Tables in the eating place? We figured it was Fest Haus and counted 138 tables.

*** Edited 6/13/2005 4:21:09 PM UTC by James K***

They weren't sure exactly what the scores were, but Kristin (the one who works in Marketing, not me ;) ) said she thought it was 38 for my team and 37 for those who came in second. They threw out/changed a couple questions while grading them, and we asked Kristin at lunch about the Academy Award question once we realized that the letters "B", "O", "T", and "N" weren't going to spell anything. She changed it to "nominee" after that.

Overall, it was a lot of fun and kudos to Steve and Kristin for another great (and sadistic) hunt. The Coca-Cola thing was awful though and I hope they never do something like that again. Once you hit 200+ things to count it starts to get a little tedious. Parts of the scavenger hunt felt more like the math section of the SAT. :) *** Edited 6/13/2005 4:33:14 PM UTC by Kristin Marie***

Nope, didn't even place top 3. Not sure where we went wrong. I KNOW we missed:
-IJ Subway question
-Coke signs
-Lights in the Beast station

We must have missed others, but I'm not sure what they could've been. Maybe the blue car question or Congo Falls fun and safety guide question.

We did get 138 tables. I didn't do the actual count, but that's what another member got.

We'll get 'em next year.

We didn't go in the DJ booth (didn't appear necessary, especially since it was illogical to expect every team to ask the workers to unlock it and snoop around), but still got 334 logos after a very thorough count. Also, the answer the park got was 336, not 338...

We thought the IJ subway station question was ridiculous! However, one could still arrive at an answer even without riding -- we used three different vantage points from the sidewalk to find the number of stripes on the left side of the subway, which we used to get the right side since both mirrored one another. It was very tricky and there was still a hint of uncertainty at the end, but eight it was.

Our team also counted 13 lights in the Beast station -- one easy one to miss was one hanging right at the entrance, which wasn't easily visible unless you were in that corner.

As for the car, we ended up picking Blue Thunder because there was more than one blue toyota vehicle parked around action zone/oktoberfest.

Lastly, adding to what Kristin said above, the paramount story question was a doozy since the question asked, "who was the 1976 academy award winner?" but there were two '76 mentions on the ground (neither of which had academy award mentions). On the other hand, the 1975 movie "Nashville", which was there, won an award at the 1976 show... (but what word can you make out of the letters T, O, B, and N?)

All in all, the hunt was ridiculously fun, and helped to distract our attention from the huge lines and sweltering humidity.

-Skydiving Jeff,
Team "Best Scavenger Hunters ON THE PLANET!!"

Defeat The Evil Dork Queen? You've got your work cut out. She's already training for next year! :)

-CO

(who supposes Horsey Girl is now a Dork Army General)

If only there were more horsey questions...I'd clean up the competition

I could be the General. I have two medals now to prove it. :)

You mean BESIDES the one that reads 'CO Stalkette?' ;)