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One more thing. We noticed a sharp decline in the “discounts” in the goody bags. After last year, I made a point of registering early because of the great discounts that were in the bag last year. It seemed noticeably different this year.

This year we went to McDonalds drawn by the free smoothie coupon and Walgreens by the free water coupon. Both locations we spent nearly $30 above and beyond the freebie. (FYI – Walgreens was sold out of Bug spray!!)

My family gave preference to those locations that offered coupons in the goody bag. I felt like those companies wanted my business. This is something I think the chamber should concentrate more on. They should encourage their chamber members to offer coupons to draw in more customers during the event weekend.

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@Jeremy wrote:

The pancake toss game problems are partially my fault. I found out we didn’t have someone to run the game, but was unable to reassign a volunteer to this task because we were scrambling early in the morning just trying to get enough food prepared for everyone.

I think the main problem was this was a brand new activity and there were many unknowns (and therefore the rules had to be flexible). How far away should the game board be? Should kids be given a break and throw from a shorter distance? Would it be way too easy and everyone would win a prize, or frustratingly difficult to win a prize? What point values to assign the prizes? How many prizes to offer?

I think if we’d offer the pancake toss again, we could do a better job and have fewer complaints. But maybe switching to a less competitive activity during the breakfast as Shane suggests would be better.

I certainly was not saying you did anything wrong Jeremy. In fact you designed a very nice game and if you built it, you did a great job. Like I said, we tried our best to please as many as possible by taking early feedback as constructive and adjusting. We did have 3 different throw distances based on age and allowed people to re-play over again until they won or decided to stop playing.

I don’t want you Jeremy to feel like I am criticizing you. We never felt that you let us down or anything. We took what you created and ran with it.

For what it’s worth my son thought the pancake toss would be like a water balloon toss where partners in a line play catch using a real pancake. Perhaps a thought for a future breakfast?

Someone also mentioned throwing pancakes at me and trying to stick them to me. Some tried to keep the game fun for those of us. Thanks for that 🙂

My post was meant to be taken for consideration and opportunity for improvement since we may do future pancake breakfasts and think about activities. I would think twice about doing a future competition-based activity and will not volunteer to run one.

Now it’s time to start getting ready for the picnic so I’m done thinking about this.

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WherIGo was awesome.

We loved that everyone had the same chance of winning cash rather than basing it on # of caches found. The social aspect of the event benefited from this changed.

No offense but my family took one look at the “kids cache” chutes & ladders sheet, got confused by all the squares and coordinates and decided to hunt ghosts instead.

Food/Drink vending and the geocache vendors were excellent.

We loved seeing all the “Geocachers Welcome” signs all around town. (see my pic on my event log for an example) My kids had a blast spotting messages on electronic billboards as well. It’s truly a unique experience like no other.

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@geolivestrong wrote:

Shane — I wasn’t there to see the happenings of that event, but I am really sorry that you and your family had to deal with that. I personally feel that the games we provide in today’s culture are just a free chance for people to act like crybabies when they don’t get their way. The part that is even worse is that most of the parents are just as bad as the kids. I personally think that geocaching events should include three primary things….caching, working with new cachers, and socializing. Trying to mix anything else in there, especially something competitive, is asking for problems. If something needs to be done to help keep kids occupied then perhaps giving a participation prize is the ticket as it removes the competition from the equation. Just some random thoughts and rambling on my part. Have a great week!

This is a fair statement given what we experienced. With my family active in trying to provide/promote family orientated activities for the other WGA events (we simply volunteered to help with this pancake toss as it was not our invention — which many who complained thought it was) we have learned a valuable lesson in helping with this activity.

This didn’t dissuade me from my goal of bringing family oriented activities to the WGA events but it did sway me away from any sort of competitive activity.

People are happiest when everyone can participate, everyone can enjoy, and everyone “gets stuff for free”. Step away from that equation and it just doesn’t please enough of the crowd to make it worthwhile.

We hope at least someone out there had fun and enjoyed the “toss” game. For those of you who took issue with anything, we’re very very sorry for your disappointment and it certainly wasn’t done on purpose.

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First of all, thanks to all those volunteers who helped run this event! Awesome job everyone.

After running the pancake toss at the event, I’ll provide my feedback here. As good of a place as any!

Our family showed up around 8:15 thinking we had plenty of time to eat before our 8:45 “shift start” and found out no one else was running the game before us so we had to start it out. With a small amount of direction we had to adjust the distance and apply some “replay” rules to keep it fun. For instance, everyone could throw the 3 discs twice and could get in line to try again for a prize but once you won you couldn’t win again.

What went well:
– The game board and setup of the point values was done very well! There were complaints about the design but seeing every single throw we could see it was designed very well. People were able to hit all of the point holes.
– The pathtags and t-shirts went over really well as prizes.

What went not so well:
– Complaints abounded from many. We would estimate probably between 20 and 30 people had at least one complaint or another.
– Some people sent their children to play because they got to throw from a closer spot and wanted them to “win them a shirt”.
– Some played over and over even after they won and parents wanted them to continue to be able to play “for fun” which made the line longer for those walking up who hadn’t played yet
– I could list a list of complaints a mile long. Some examples: We expected pancakes not frisbees, All the pathtags are brown, No t-shirts in my size, My daughter won a prize and people felt that wasn’t “fair”, lots of complaints about “fairness” and how the game was run, my son moved a prize from one point value to another as we were running out and someone complained about that. We listened and tried our best for an hour and a half.
– We ran out of lower point value prizes and that caused issues with later players.

My advice for future geocaching event “carnival games” like the pancake toss:
– Publish all the RULES on a board next to the game so players can read them all before the game starts.
– Hand out a single ticket or maybe 2 tickets and each attendee can play with a ticket so we can limit the number of times someone can play.
– Never ever change the “value” of a prize as that causes issues as well
– Don’t think every prize has to be given away. They can be used at future events.
– Bring many more lower point value prizes.
– Separate prize tables for kids vs adults.
– Pathtags and T-shirts make great game prizes as they were desired by many.

Overall we let the complaints roll off our back but it really did spoil the fun. There were so many opinionated people who felt the need to speak their peace. It was a game for crying out loud! We had an interesting ride back home discussing with my children how they should behave in a situation like this carnival game.

We did our best to help run this game but we will not be volunteering to run any game like this at any future geocaching events. It was a learning experience for my family to say the least.

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They probably haven’t activated it yet. Lots of new TB t-shirts and decals were bought at the bash itself because there were vendors there.

If they do activate it and you log it, be sure to pick Discover and not “Grab”. You discovered their vehicle, you did not take it with you! 🙂

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@GeoJorg wrote:

A cacher in the next county “saves” spots (cemeteries) for future caches he may want to place by partially completing the new cache reporting form and then unchecking the reviewer box. He does this to “save the spot” in case he wants to put a cache nearby later. Others have had new listings denied as, I am supposing, the reviewer sees the “saved spot” as a new cache in process by another. This seems wrong to me, but does not appear to be officially “against the rules”. Anybody else got an opinion on this? ❓

I’ve heard that the WI reviewers may have done this in the past. I’ve also heard that in-progress spots may have been “given away” rather than “held”.

All of the above is hearsay. Perhaps the Groundspeak reviewers will speak up to clarify current practice.

I don’t have an opinion one way or the other on how this should be handled as I could be swayed by arguments in both directions depending on the circumstances.

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@bugsmasher69 wrote:

Now that we have had a great presale and being that it is over and done with maybe we can get our home page changed so it no longer shows a presale going on?

Thanks for the suggestion. I updated the “article” to note the Pre-sale has completed.

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Thanks to everyone who ordered Geocoins during the Pre-sale period!!

The Pre-sale was very successful in helping us gauge the proper number of coins to mint.

The order has been placed with the mint and the “checks in the mail”.

For those of you who purchased WGA pathtags online during the Geocoin sale, these will be shipped soon. I will post again here once those have been shipped.

We’re still on track for the Geocoins to come in at the Beginning of September time frame.

A limited number of coins above what have been pre-sold have been purchased by the WGA and will be available for sale at future WGA events (hopefully starting with the Picnic!)

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@CodeJunkie wrote:

I really like the HTML code thing for entering the text which I thought was huge improvement from gc.com.

Geocaching.com currently offers WYSIWYG (online) HTML editor for Travel Bug/Geocoin descriptions and will be adding this for Cache pages in a future update according to notes posted on a feedback idea I posted.

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I have the 550 and it’s only had a couple glitches here and there but nothing major that I’ve seen. Not sure what major issues your seeing in yours…

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The store will remain open for 1 extra day to get your Geocoin pre-orders in. At the end of the day on Sunday 8/1 the online store will be closed.

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@Team Deejay wrote:

The harvester is strictly a moment in time application. If it misses a log, it is missed.

And it also misses some logs throughout the day because not all are actually on the source page it reads from (and there may be other technical reasons why as well)

It’s not a full-proof system but it sure is handy sometimes…

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@sandlanders wrote:

Think the update broke the WGA log harvester again…

It appears working again now. Yeah!!

Thank you WGA webmaster(s) behind the magic curtain for keeping this function working after each Groundspeak update!!

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I activate all of my collection. It’s my way of keeping track of my coins and it allows others to discover online (and collect an icon) if they’re into that kind of thing. I’m not interested in resale value in terms of activated/unactivated. I’ve purchased activated coins and they just get transferred over to me, no big deal. I wouldn’t pay extra for unactivated vs. activated (just my opinion). I guess in my mind, I’m collecting the physical coin and not exactly worrying about value if a code is used.

I’m starting to get more copies of each coin to hopefully trade. For those I leave them unactivated. It’s just easier that way.

And yes, I release coins and will continue to do so. Those are activated (or perhaps not!)

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