non-ride builder thoughs on slide event.

[cat_herder]

I'm trying to ride all the dis rides this weekend. I've seen some that knocked my socks off. I've took notes on the things I see in the rooms that I like or don't like or that need some more thought -- no names or room titles just general notes for the future on use the theme - construction - length of ride - build teams interaction with guest - etc. I did it mainly for myself, for some future time when I might do a ride competition, but today I thought I would share with you the things that would or would not have gotten my vote if I was voting.

Thoughts on rides:
Some people did these - some didn’t - not all were dis

* I really liked the ones that started and ended the ride in the same room, that way people could give feedback to the staff. I make sure I said something positive to every slide ride I visited, even when there was no one responding to me in the room, maybe all them had to go to the bathroom at once. On the rides that ended in another room, I went back to shallow end to tell them I enjoyed the ride.

* Some rooms had rides that were too short and I didn’t get time to look at the room AND read the ride descriptions.

* Some rooms the ride was rather too long and with nothing to look at the room beside the slide.

* Some were just right in length and had great room descriptions.

* I like the rides best that stuck to their theme through every room and told a story with the rooms.

* One ride I have to say was rather annoying because it keep popping you back into a “central” room I guess you would call it, and you were there for only a few seconds and you really didn’t get the change to even see the room much less read any room descriptions.

* I liked the rides that had something to look at in the room beside just the slide.

* Some teams felt that once they were judged they didn’t have to “man” the room anymore. –not good. They left a character in there to keep the room open - the lights were on but no one was home.

* I liked the ones where every room description had the name of the team or the ride name in it. I got knocked out of some rooms, dc, and had to go find the rooms again to get back on. Having a name in the room help me to remember the team and slide ride much better.

* Some groups had abandoned their room and there was no one behind the character sitting there, before the judging. No response to greetings or questions. Hope the host didn’t come judge you at that time. – not good.

* One of the rides I had liked and wanted to visit again couldn’t be found on the ride list all day Sunday – not good.

* Sometimes it was nice to be able to get off ride and just look at the room for a while then get back on the ride; Many rooms you couldn’t do that.

* I like when they used items to spell out words and have the hidden Mickeys.

* The free pirate stuff was very popular to use as building material and can see why but I liked the rooms best that didn’t use all the free pirate in every room of the ride but just rearranged it.

* Some people really used “forced perspective” very well in the rooms like the flagpole with the pirate flag on the top.

* Some rides had -wow rooms - but their staff was too busy talking to each to interact with the guest.

* Some of the rides were simple but the team interacted well with the guest and really made the ride joyful.

* I hope everyone that built a ride had fun during the build and during the weekend. Everyone in my book got an A for having the courage to try. I didn't sign up because I expected to be gone this weekend to an artist workshop but at the last minute we had to cancel our trip and my hubby had to go to California instead. But I'm glad I got to see all the rides.

Here is the list of the rooms I got to visit- they are not in ranking, this is just the order I was able to visit them:
Ride the rainbow
Savvy pirates
Summer escape
Wdw pool hopping
Water works
Holiday splash
Wind walker
Disney swingers
Boogies
Sea explorers
Plastic pirate
Vmk time slide
Frozen Paradise
Cactus water ranch
Pirated in paradise
Tiki tiki island
Tiki Trouble
Extreme Bubbles
Friends are magical
Slide in Movies
Camp Slip & Slide
Pirates on Holiday
Fantasmic jewel
Battle of elements
Yeti can't swim
Ppiglet patrol
Disney home tours
Dancing pegiums
Mission splash down
Aztec splash
Haunted mermaids
Caribbean
Whoose
Vmk adventures
Mavi Ocean
Royal purple gold
Worlds of wonder
Giraffe
Castaway crew
Wave walker
House of the mouse
Tear drops

My favorites rides that got my vote for best all around ride.
Ride the rainbow - really love the colors.
Wdw pool hopping - excellent theme in keeping with water ride competition.
Holiday splash - very cool theme, very good use of building material.
Aztec splash - fantastic use of building material.
Vmk time slide - fantastic theme

My favorite room of all was the Aztec Village from Aztec Splash.
The moment I saw it I thought of the Mexican Showcase in Epcot.

On my orginial ride on Friday or Sunday one group got negative points for lack of interaction with guest but reriding them on Suday they were better at the interaction.

Dianne

 

[Disney Dreams]

My favorites rides that got my vote for best all around ride.
Ride the rainbow - really love the colors.

On behalf of our whole team, thanks! Glad you liked our creation.

Just a note on the reason some rooms may have been open with no one really there, or closed on Sunday: I know with our team, for example, we only have 6 members. All efforts were made to keep the ride open all weekend, but it simply was not possible at some points with such a small crew. The choice is to either close the room, or leave it open with "no one home" as long as possible so other could enjoy the room. It truly was a more difficult task than we had imagined it would be.

Thanks again for your kind appreciation of our ride!

 

[qruthie]

Great list! I agree with almost everything you said!

Some additions:

* At least one ride had an obvious dictionary dance in a room description. I hope that didn't get the team disqualified after putting so much work into a fantastic ride. I didn't think to check for a flag at their shallow end. I mention this because staff sent me a message about my game room saying they were impressed with the room but couldn't consider it for the best guest award because there was dictionary dancing in the description. They did say the room could be considered for an award if I removed the dictionary dancing. I changed it immediately but don't know if the room was ever considered for an award. On the other hand, I have since seen rooms win awards despite having dictionary dancing in their descriptions so who knows?

* Some rooms looked like my Skull Rock storage rooms. It was nice to see the rare, beta and quest items but I would have been much more impressed if the furniture had been arranged more neatly.

* Some rooms took a long time to load due to the amount of items in the room so there wasn't much time to see the room before going to the next room. In the worst case, a room's furnishings appeared for about one second before I reached the exit. I would recommend using fewer items if possible.

* In addition to having a spot to exit and enter the slide in each room, make sure that spot can be reached from anywhere in the room if possible. Many times I got dc mid-ride so I would start over again and click on the slides to speed up through the parts I had already seen. I fell off the track many times. At least once I fell off in a room that did have a start piece but I was trapped by furniture so I couldn't get to it. My mistake but something to consider when building the rooms.

Here are some things I would like to see VMK do to improve the competitions:

* Somehow give out a prize or credits to people who ride. It would be a lot of work to add that to the final room of a ride but given the amount of time ride builders put into their creations, I think it's okay to have VMK do some extra work. I saw very few shallow ends on the first page of popular guest rooms. People worked very hard to give staff a weekend off from hosting games so it only seems fair to give some incentive for people to go on the rides.

* Riders should be allowed to vote for their favorite ride. This would be in addition to the current awards given out by judges. Again, this would be more work for VMK. The voting could be as simple as using the stars ratings from quests. Another option would be to vote through the contact us page. I realize people would be likely to vote for their friend's rides but I believe that many people would vote for what they really liked.

 

[HappyBoy]

<snip>
My favorites rides that got my vote for best all around ride.
Ride the rainbow - really love the colors.
Wdw pool hopping - excellent theme in keeping with water ride competition.
Holiday splash - very cool theme, very use of building material.
Aztec splash - fantastic use of building material.
Vmk time slide - fantastic theme

My favorite room of all was the Aztec Village from Aztec Splash.
The moment I saw it I thought of the Mexican Showcase in Epcot.

Dianne

Those are very good choices. I rode almost all the rides listed there as well and, for the most part, enjoyed doing it.
Having seen them, I am glad that I did not get accepted (I still have most of my credits). The creativity here was just amazing! Good work all!!!

 

[WDWfan36]

Frozen Paradise

Ok, what did you think of this ride honestly. I would like to know
Thanks

 

[LisaInNc]

Having done this competition I can answer a few of the topics you posted.

Keeping the room open was really difficult. My team was small and one person was on vacation and others were not available the entire weekend. It pretty much fell to me to sit in there and it just wasn't possible to give up and entire weekend. I was on Friday for more an 12 hours. That is a LOT of VMK!

We tried to put a start at the beginning of each room but of course I thought to ask them to do that AFTER the rooms were built and it was impossible in some. So that is a really good thing to note, Build it in each room from the start.

I used hot keys for my welcoming message. Before my usual buddies jump all over me for this VMK staff said it is FINE to use them for saying the same thing over and over just not for codes.

I don't agree with having people vote unless it is just on catagory because it will end up being a popularity contest. VMK is such a big click as it is I would hate to encourage more of that.

 

[Peri]

I think this is a great thread!

I was only able to do a few slides but I took notes! Some of the ones listed here, I could not find in my "shallow" search. but I loved the Start room for camp slip and slide and the theme was very consistent and really fun!

Pirates on Holiday was very cool - Peasy had a good scary room in that slide group!

WDW Pool Hopping - these were the nicest hosts - so friendly they really made me feel welcome.

Boogie was fabulous - I loved all the ships everywhere, the Animal kingom room with all the screens - also the circle ride in space was so cute! Also the soldiers room and the snowflake. This was just one great room after another.

I could not find the touted Aztec room. I did go on slide and seeek, which I thought was most like a real "ride" - like you would have in a real life park. So creative!! Hunting for everything was grand. I did the quest, too, at the end, but they closed it before I could finish.

Frozen Paradise -= was great - the use of the pirates skeletons was inspired. Lots of fun!

Tiki Trouble was PRETTY - so pretty!!! That was it, I never found the rainbow or the others on the list!! I did feel the rides were very very long - and agree with earlier comments that some rooms you just flew through and I couldn't read the descriptions fast enough plus see the scenery.

So I would recommend fewer rooms, with more time in each one. But I did not enter and do not mean to imply that there were any bad rooms or bad rides - they were all extremely impressive!

 

[HappyGoLucky]

I spent all Friday evening riding different Slides. I had a great time. I believe Friday was the best, because everyone was most excited about the contest then. By Saturday, and definitely Sunday, (yes, I rode all weekend but I had a hard time finding open rides) I think everyone was Slided-out. I rode 52 different rides. I took someone's advice and wrote all the names down, and I'm glad I did, because there were some I had to double check to see if I had already rode them or not.

All I can say is I'm glad I'm not a judge. It would be really hard for me to pick a winner because I liked them all. I think everyone did an absolutely wonderful job with their projects.

Best of luck to everyone who was in the competition, I think you're all winners!

 

[HappyBoy]

I spent all Friday evening riding different Slides. I had a great time. I believe Friday was the best, because everyone was most excited about the contest then. By Saturday, and definitely Sunday, (yes, I rode all weekend but I had a hard time finding open rides) I think everyone was Slided-out. I rode 52 different rides. I took someone's advice and wrote all the names down, and I'm glad I did, because there were some I had to double check to see if I had already rode them or not.

All I can say is I'm glad I'm not a judge. It would be really hard for me to pick a winner because I liked them all. I think everyone did an absolutely wonderful job with their projects.

Best of luck to everyone who was in the competition, I think you're all winners!

Hey cool! Another Happy
52 rides?? I thought I did good at 34. I agree with you on how well everyone did and how much I wouldn't want to be a judge. I wish everyone involved (including the cheerleaders) the best of luck and want to thank all for making my weekend that much more interesting!

 

[qruthie]

Having done this competition I can answer a few of the topics you posted.

Keeping the room open was really difficult. My team was small and one person was on vacation and others were not available the entire weekend. It pretty much fell to me to sit in there and it just wasn't possible to give up and entire weekend. I was on Friday for more an 12 hours. That is a LOT of VMK!

We tried to put a start at the beginning of each room but of course I thought to ask them to do that AFTER the rooms were built and it was impossible in some. So that is a really good thing to note, Build it in each room from the start.

I used hot keys for my welcoming message. Before my usual buddies jump all over me for this VMK staff said it is FINE to use them for saying the same thing over and over just not for codes.

I don't agree with having people vote unless it is just on catagory because it will end up being a popularity contest. VMK is such a big click as it is I would hate to encourage more of that.

It looks like you did everything you could to keep your room open and to make the ride pleasant. So just keep up the good work! Most people would understand if a ride was closed for a few hours here and there. Especially if there aren't very many people on the team. I have been quite sick recently so I wasn't directly involved with the contest. I would have gladly helped teams man their rooms if I had thought of it before now.

I'm not cat_herder but I think her comment about keeping rooms open longer was directed toward people who were judged and felt they didn't need to keep their room open any longer. I recall entering a shallow end where the team was congratulating each other because they had been judged and now they didn't have to keep the ride open. That's their choice to make but I would suggest keeping the ride open for at least a few hours each day of the contest. I know it's a lot of work but I want to ride as many rides as possible as a thank you to the ride building teams.

My suggestion to allow riders to vote for their favorite ride is just so the VMK general public could have some input. One category would be the best way to do it and I'd even go so far as to call it "Most Ridden" or "Most Popular" ride. I'd love to see a list of the top 10 or 20 favorite or most popular rides. Sure mules and friends could skew the vote for a specific team but at least the riders could be part of the "judging". I definitely wouldn't want the riders votes to be included with the staff's judging by categories because that would make the entire contest unfair. The staff judging isn't perfect but it would not be improved by adding rider bias to the mix.

 

[4fosterkids]

Great thread Cat.
I think it is very interesting to read other people's perspectives and comments on the rooms and slides, especially as a rider.
There are so many rides I never got to see, but of the ones I did....they were just amazing! Everybody is so talented in different ways and these VMK competitions let everybody show off their special skills and make new friends along the way! The dis'ers for the most part are a great group of team supporters and always eager to help one another! Woot for the Dis!