It's a bright sunny day at the Great Wolf Lodge, a water park in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, but the Whooping Hollow Kiddie Slides and Slap Tail Pond Wave Pool are empty. Where is everyone? Sprinting through the hotel hallways waving plastic wands at corny D&D-style dioramas. They're playing MagiQuest, a real-life World of Warcraft for the Chuck E. Cheese set.
Invented by Creative Kingdoms, a company that designs theme-park attractions, the game is built around infrared sensors embedded in the wands. "It's like having a joystick that controls a 20,000-square-foot facility," cofounder Denise Weston says. After paying $14.99 for a wand (plus more to soup it up with fantasy bling) and a $10-per-hour activation fee, players begin a scavenger hunt for Tolkienesque paintings, sculptures, and installations scattered throughout the hotel. Video kiosks of wizards and maidens dispense clues and track your progress by picking up your unique IR signature. Guides in Elizabethan garb roam the grounds dispensing advice. Victories and discoveries trigger up to 150 visual and audio effects, and frantic kids drag weary parents to and fro until they catch them all.
Startup costs for MagiQuest aren't cheap—they range from $500,000 to $4 million. But since its 2005 launch, the franchise has expanded to 15 US cities and two locales in Japan. In August, Creative Kingdoms planned to launch a multiplayer online extension of the game, designed with the creators of Myst. The online version lets players accrue rewards and "powers" that carry over to the physical locations. The company is also trying to expand beyond sword and sorcery; it now has a dinosaur-themed hunt in Los Angeles. Cofounder Rick Briggs imagines a bright, nerdy future in which shopping malls and movie theaters are equipped with branded Star Trek or Hannah Montana quests. "This is a mobile technology platform that can work anywhere," he says. "Well, we can't do underwater yet, but we're working on it."
A Sample Quest
Arm Yourself.
Buy an IR wand and pay activation fee.
Train Up.
Watch a video of a bearded wizard, who explains the rules in Tolkienese.
Pick a Mission.
Wave your wand at an ersatz tree and a video screen will flicker on and ask you to choose one of five adventures, such as the Dragon Rune Quest.
Go Exploring.
Search for treasures in the "forest" (two floors of the hotel painted to look outdoorsy.) As you wander, you'll find fantastical objects that respond to your wand. Wave it at, say, an image of a mushroom and a voice proclaims, "You found the knot hole fungus!"
Deposit Loot.
Take the objects you've collected to the designated spot. You'll receive praise from a CG pixie or a real maiden in a Renaissance fair costume. Now go back to the fake tree and initiate another quest.
Take a First-Person Tour
Adventurer, welcome to the realm of MagiQuest! It's a videogame, a theme park ride, and a renaissance fair all wrapped up in one. Click on the embedded YouTube clip to see a trailer for MagiQuest, which has players wandering through sprawling installations waving smart wands at objects to earn points and powerups. The game can be played at 12 locations around America and two in Japan.
I visited the one at the Great Wolf Lodge, a hotel/indoor water park in the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania, and brought a camera along. Click the thumbnail images to see how a MagiQuest mission unfolds.
I began by visiting MagiQuest's faux-medieval shop on the second floor of the hotel. Clerks in medieval garb sell plastic wands with embedded RFID tech, as well as assorted wand upgrades and bling, for $15 to $20. Gamers choose a handle, register in the MagiQuest database, then head off to quest through two floors of the resort.
RYFM! Before beginning, thou must reade ye freakynge manual! MagiQuest noobs file into the vine-covered training room to watch a video of a bearded Gygaxian wizard who lays out the rules of the game. He explains that players are now Magis in search of mystical runes.
To win each rune, they must find five or six magical items — paintings, sculptures, crystals — hidden throughout the "forests" (actually, two hotel floors done up to look sylvan and old-time-y). Whenever the player's wand is waved at an item, his or her ID and score are updated in the game's computer system.
Believe it or not, this sturdy oak that I'm waving my wand at isn't real. It's a MagiQuest prop, an Ent-like talking tree located near the hotel elevators. I begin a rune quest by waving my wand at it. This cues a video of the quest master, who assigns missions to players. He's prone to saying things like, "Seek out the five crystals with colors so bright: red, yellow, blue, purple, and — most powerful — white."
About a dozen items line four hallways that've been retrofitted for the game. As you wander Whispery Woods, Enchanted Woods, Piney Path, and Tangled Woods, keep an eye peeled for anything that looks like a Jethro Tull album cover. It's probably part of your quest.
Waving the wand at certain items triggers a cheesy audiovisual effect — a shining green lantern or a mushroom painting declares, "You found the knot-hole fungus!" The item is added to your inventory in the game's database.
MagiQuest helpers in medieval garb are ready to lend a hand. (Hey, it beats having to wear a stifling Donald Duck costume all day.)
Yes, this item is a bust of two wolf heads. The eyes glow red when a wand is waved at them.
A star item in the ceiling tile sparkles blue after a quick flick of the wand.
MagiQuest may seem a tad silly to grown-ups, but it casts a powerful spell on the tweens who make up its target demographic. Because the clues are spread out over two floors of the hotel, the young Magis must run up and down stairs dozens of times to complete the tasks. After a day at the water park, fatigue quickly sets in for parents, who can often be found trailing behind their pajama-clad kids, nursing a beer for sustenance.
After collecting the necessary items, the quest concludes inside this diorama. Waving the wand triggers a video of an animated pixie or live-action maiden who praises your skills, and bestows a virtual rune — now added to your database. "Brave Magi, you have shown me you are worthy in bringing the Healing rune," the maiden says, "may peace find you, and good luck on your journey."
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