Xploring Toronto on Xcitelife Mystery Xperience
CANADA | Wednesday, 3 February 2016 | Views [55]
Bubble Soccer in GTA Sports Plex
Imagine getting on a bus filled with strangers with no idea where you're going? or what you're going to be doing? for seven hours.
Would you ever do that, voluntarily? I did. And this is what happened.
Xperienced Xcitelife's Mystery Tour started at 2pm on 30th Jan 2016. We all boarded a bus for an unknown destination and bonded together as we shared our blissful ignorance. Nobody knew where we were going, but we all knew that it would Xpand our minds because we knew and trusted the host to do that sort of thing. Paul Peic has built a career blowing peoples' minds and now a website that lists fun things to do Xcitelife is a marketplace for experiences.
This first ever Mystery Xperience was wholly unique package. All at once twenty passengers put on name tags expressing their inner secret identities; I inscribed my tag as 'BobbyC' which is the alter ego that I sometimes use in such situations.
Xcitelife staff gave everyone their Mystery Xperience gift bags right at the start of the journey. The SWAG bags contained gourmet chocolate bars from Qlicious.
There were also black and red Xcitelife t shirts, and a pair of safety glasses! Everyone put on their t shirts immediately and there suddenly plenty of people taking pictures of themselves wearing the back and red X emblazoned shirts with captions like, "the mystery xperience begins!'
Without any hesitation the assembly all signed waivers exempting the organizers from any legal responsibilities, and there was a brief sing-along after that legal drama. Then somebody else uncrated a box of different size plastic guns that shoot Nerf Bullets and for the next twenty minutes there was a Nerf pellet war with suction cup foam tip bullets flying everywhere. The people at the back of the bus fired at the people crouching down in the front of the bus and they fired back. The people in the middle just kept the heads down. This is why there were safety goggles included in the gift bag!
ESCAPE GAMES CANADA at 15 Kodiak Cres. Unit 5 Toronto was our first stop and for many folks it was the first time anyone had ever even heard of an 'escape game'.
In time we discovered there's a haunted house puzzle game here, and a jail scenario. Our group selected The Mayan Curse in which we started at the base of a lost Mayan temple and had to lift the curse of an ancient god to escape the tomb. The adventure did indeed test our problem solving skills and the gauntlet of logic puzzles... defeated us.
Yes let me explain, The Mayan Curse is among the oldest puzzles at the facility - it was one of the first missions that Escape Games Canada opened with in June 2014. In this exercise the crew navigates through an assortment of small dusty rooms opening strange chests with padlocks and canvas scrolls with strange characters marked on them. Idols that need to be placed in pedestals and even the dusty skeleton of an adventurer who failed to escape the temple earlier. Officially this was a beginner level mission, catering to new escapees with a linear puzzle design, but it still defeated us.
Xploring GTA Sports Plex
The GTA Sports Plex at 8301 Keele St, Concord, ON L4K 1Z6 is a very large facility filled with all manner of indoor sports arenas. There is a massive soccer field, basketball, badminton, and even archery butts. We were there to play Bubble Soccer!
This is a game where ten people (we split into two groups) climb inside five feet wide plastic bubbles and play the game with lots of physical contact.
After we split into colour coded teams we found ourselves standing on AstroTurf opposite ten giant plastic bubbles. Five of these orbs had red polka dots while another five with blue dots. Without too much trouble we climbed inside them and when the whistle blew we played a game of soccer just like normal - except everything is different when you're encased in a large plastic air bubble!
Lunch with Guest DJ Heather Van Vyper
While we ate a hearty chicken dinner with potatoes, couscous and a leafy green salad, guest DJ Heather Van Vyper serenaded the lunch room with musical beats.
We Played Archery Tag at GTA Sports Plex
We played archery tag at GTA Sports Plex and there in the hardwood basketball court at the back we learned to become fairly decent archers by aiming wooden bows and shooting foam tipped arrows at each other.
Archery Tag is played similar to dodge ball but one big difference is that we all have bows and arrows and so there are a lot of moving pieces! Two teams, consisting of five players each formed up against one another and shot at each other until there was just one man standing. One team wore black goggles and one team had green goggles and we were separated by a safe zone. You can eliminate a player by hitting him or her with an arrow, or by catching his or her arrow. The First
Mystery Xperience Ended With Good Vibes Circle
When the bus finally stopped rolling, we Xcitelifers disembarked and found themselves back in our home parking lot, but little did we know the Mystery Xperience was still not over. Paul gathered the whole gang gathered together on the shores of Lake Ontario to make a prayer circle and send good thoughts into the future.
X stands for Xperience, Xcitement, Xplore. Xcitelife seeks to evolve your weekends
