Adventure Trek at Six Flags Great Escape Lodge (Queensbury, NY)

My goal with this blog has been to document the wonderful and the weird in the world of MagiQuest. 

Today we are taking a dive into the deep end of the weird.

Friends, I present to you... Adventure Trek!

Location: Six Flags Great Escape Lodge and Indoor Water Park (Queensbury, New York)

https://www.sixflagsgreatescapelodge.com/

Physical Address: 89 Six Flags Drive, Queensbury, NY 12804

Realm Type: Non-Standard

Chronicle: Quest of the Guardians

Primary Landmarks: Adventure Trek Clubhouse, Adirondack Heights, Lake George Waters, Old Queensbury Way, Deep Forest Paths

Adventures and Gameplay: The game structure of Adventure Trek is a little bit different. It is divided into three adventures, each of which consists of five missions followed by an encounter. For the most part you can do the Funzerker and Splashateer content in any order, however you must complete all five missions before attempting the associated encounter, and all of the content from these two adventures must be completed to unlock the Imaginaut Adventure. As with MagiQuest, only one mission or adventure can be active at a time. 

Funzerker Adventure: Boomerang in the Outback Mission, Cold Comet Needs Firing Up Mission, Condor Which Way Is Up Mission, Demon Won't Come Out to Play Mission, Sasquatch at the Dog Pound Mission

Splashateer Adventure: Tall Timber Treehouse Leaky Bucket Mission, Take-It-Eesi-Creek Ran Dry Mission, Avalanche Rafts Snowed-In Mission, Boogie Bear Lost the Beat Mission, A Muddy Mess Mission

Imaginaut Adventure: Find the Radeau Mission, The Four Forts Mission, Golden Treasure Mission, Iroquois Heritage Mission, Great Escape Excavation Mission

For each completed mission, you earn a badge. These badges have different functions that you must use during the encounters. They're basically runes with another name.

So, the question we've all been waiting to ask... what exactly is Adventure Trek?

Adventure Trek is a quest game using the same wand technology as MagiQuest and the same basic gameplay as ShadowQuest. It is exclusive to Six Flags Great Escape Lodge and the content is tailored to the Lake George area. 

Those who are familiar with MagiQuest will find a lot that is similar here in terms of game mechanics. To start your adventure, you receive a guidebook and are directed to the Adventure Trek Clubhouse - which is not in fact a clubhouse at all, but is a couple of standing stones along the lines of the quest stones.

There you will meet the main characters: Dexter, Hannah, and Billy. They are teens who converse in over the top Buffy-speak and seem completely devoted to the concept of having fun at all costs. Their group is called the Fun Faction, which consists of the Funzerkers whose missions focus on the Six Flags Great Escape amusement park rides, the Splashateers who focus on the attractions at the Lodge water park, and the Imaginauts who focus on the local history of the Lake George area and the Iroquois who were the original inhabitants. At this point we also learn about the Humdrums who, with their leader Spoilsport, are trying to prevent any fun from taking place in Lake George. Bummer! Your quest is to stop them and keep the good times rolling.

Like MagiQuest at Great Wolf, the game is played throughout the hallways of the Lodge, using the 2nd through 4th floors. The walls are painted with game scenery like MagiQuest, but the art style is more blocky and stylized.

Armed with your wand and guide, you set out. The basic quest structure is like ShadowQuest, where you are tasked with finding various objects along the walls and in scenes. There are also crystals - with some color variations not present in ShadowQuest - and Six Flags emblems that function in the same way as the crystals do. Unlike ShadowQuest, some quests have tablet-based mini-games that are required for completion, but these are generally pretty easy and shouldn't slow you down too much. Most quests end at a status station, but unlike MagiQuest, these are generally interchangeable and you can end any quest at any station.

The Funzerker quests are pretty oddball in a fun way. They treat the amusement park rides like actual characters, so for example you will need to rescue Sasquatch from the Pound and find blood red garnets to appease the Steamin' Demon. The Splashateer quests are more about overcoming environmental obstacles that the Humdrums have caused.

Throughout the realm, you will find chests that are similar to MagiQuest. (They even use the same voice when activated.) They have been defaced with graffiti by the Humdrums, however, which is a fun touch. The chests reward gold, and only seem to be needed for one quest; other than that, the gold is just tracked on a leader board.

Once you have completed the missions, you face the Humdrums in an encounter. The Funzerker encounter takes place on a roller coaster, while the Splashteer adventure takes place inside the waterworks that control the water park. Due to technical issues with the touch duel system and badges not activating (and possibly being inadequately clued in one case,) I was not able to finish either encounter. It bugged the completionist in me, but I'll just have to go back some other time and try again.

Now that I've covered the basics of gameplay, I want to mention a few practicalities:

The entrance drive for the Lodge is shared with the entrance to the Six Flags Great Escape Theme Park. Traffic tends to back up at certain times of day because of cars waiting to enter the park, so take this into account when planning your arrival time. You will pass a sign indicating pretty high prices for parking; this is for the theme park only, not for the Lodge, so don't panic. You will be able to park for free in the Lodge parking lot, so just ignore the sign.  

The Lodge itself is very comparable to a Great Wolf Lodge, and you will even see some familiar decor. Just like MagiQuest at Great Wolf, you are not required to book an overnight Lodge stay to play the game.

Since the same kind of wand is used for MagiQuest and Adventure Trek, if you already have one from MagiQuest, bring it instead of buying a new one. The employee will need to enter your account information manually because the computer systems aren't synced up, but this takes the same amount of time as a new activation and once it has been completed, the game will work fine with your existing wand. As with MagiQuest, your information is stored and you can pick up where you left off next time you visit. Activating the game (without a wand purchase) costs $12.99 and lasts for several days.

The staffing for Adventure Trek is... minimal, to put it bluntly. The game was open from 9am to 10pm, but the store was only open from 6pm to 10pm. You have to go downstairs to another store to have someone come up and activate the game for you, which they were happy to do. Unfortunately because the store is locked and gated most of the time, though, it is not clear that the game is open. This may be their off-season staffing; I went in June, and high tourist seasons in Lake George starts around the 4th of July. Even so, it didn't really put the best foot forward for people deciding whether they wanted to play. I also ran into a number of game-breaking technical issues that the floor staff had not been trained for, which meant I had to wait till 6pm till their dedicated store staff came in. This was not the fault of anyone who was working that day - they were all doing their best - but more that management or corporate seems to be putting in the bare minimum at most for the game.

So, bottom line... do I recommend Adventure Trek?

My answer depends on what you're looking for. Adventure Trek is exactly as described in their promotional material. If you think that sounds too silly and dumb to be worth your time, you most likely would not enjoy the game and should give it a pass. If you think it sounds like a quirky and entertaining way to spend an afternoon, though, you will have a good time if you accept it for what it is. It's not MagiQuest, but personally, I had a blast trying to save Lake George and keep the fun rolling!

I've added a selection of photos to this post, but if you want to see a full collection of the images I took, you can head to the gallery and check out Part One and Part Two.

May your adventures be... adventurous! ;)

~Annacat