While we were at Great Wolf Lodge a few weeks ago my 12 and 15 year old had a lot of fun playing the Magiquest game. The Magiquest game was actually their favorite part of the whole trip, probably because they have been to water parks before, but this game is unique. Magiquest is a live action interactive adventure game. To participate you have to buy a wand, which has a sensor in the end. You use the wand as you wander around the lodge, and you can solve puzzles, enchant objects and complete quests, ending with battling a dragon. When I heard about this game I knew my kids would enjoy it, because they are major Harry Potter geeks and love anything to do with wizards.
First you have to head to the Magiquest store to buy your wands. My kids both wanted the same wand, which surprisingly enough was the cheapest one in the store. They said it was the one that looked the most like the wands in Harry Potter. I don’t care about that, I just knew that identical wands would be a mistake, so my son ended up getting a black wand while my daughter got the brown one they both preferred. You can buy toppers for the wands which are dragons or other magical creatures. I was cheap, so their wands are topped with the basic plastic ball.
After you buy the wand it needs to be activated, and each child got to pick their wizarding name. Then the kids have to proceed to a fake tree which has a computer screen, and where they get their instructions. The quests are like a big scavenger hunt. For example, the first quest the kids picked was to find six crystals of different colors. So they ran around the Lodge, located a crystal, and pointed their wand at it. If they found a crystal it would tell them they had found the right thing, and they continued on looking for more crystals. After they found all 6 crystals they had to find a lady hidden in the forest, and the quest was complete. Then they headed back to the computer tree to start the next quest.
The kids had a lot of fun (and got a lot of exercise) going up and down the stairs looking for items in the quest. It was really neat that the wands actually made things happen – when you pointed the wand chests opened and statues talked. The challenges weren’t especially difficult, but if they had trouble finding things the staff was always willing to help. My two children completed all of the quests and some of the adventures in about 2 days. They thought the quests were more fun than the adventures in general. The final thing they tried was fighting the dragon, and they said it was hard to do and didn’t work as well as they expected. But even though they didn’t defeat the dragon they still had a great time and I know they’d love go back to play the game again. It cost about $25 per kid for the wands and game activation, and for us it was worth the money.
