Laser Tag aka Kill Barman

You didn’t have to tell me twice. I was out of the office on Friday moments after quitting time. I had a trek to go to try and make the Detroit area by 7:00 PM last Friday. You never know what rush hours will be like in Detroit.

It all payed off as I made my nieces basketball game she was cheering at. The boys looked good but where just out classed but not the cheerleaders. With no stunting it was still job well done. Of course my eyes tried to wander a little as the pom pom dance squad was sitting with us. Well that was until I told myself they were in HIGH SCHOOL.

We went home, watched a movie and called it a night to get charged up for Saturday. As is usual the day started out on fire. Another game to cheer, home for a quick bite to eat and do some homework (hers, not mine), and off to a basketball game which they killed them won. No baskets for my niece but she still did well.

Off to the highlight of the night, laser tag. I should have known better. Anyone that watched the original Star Trek knows that it was always the crew that wore the red shirt that would be killed off, never the blue or the gold shirts. Well I wore a dark red shirt. What was I thinking? I should have known that the night was not going to go well.


We showed up at the place to play the games and found something very interesting. The place was the same place that I mentioned below where we played Whirlyball. I guess Whirlyball was out and laser tag was in. Some things never change however. The Whirlyball court did not work very well so it took a lot of the fun out of the night. Well guess what, the laser tag had it’s problems too. My first game my equipment was working well I guess but the second game my gun only worked a little over half the time. Anyway lets get started, shall we?

We were lead into this area where we were handed our life jacket vest. It went on easy enough and had our laser gun clipped to it. During the whole time this was happening our eyes were being allowed to adjust to the dark. They then activated our vest and off we went into the area for our 15 minute game. It was not long before I saw just how bad the night was going to go. I felt my vest vibrate away.



Now vibrating may sound like a good thing but I was hit over 50 times in that 15 minutes. It seemed like my vest never stopped vibrating. I have no idea how I was getting shot half the time. I did find out after the first game that there were some targets that, if they were hit, they act like grenades and kill off everyone on the first floor or second floor depending on which targets you hit. I guess that explains how I kept getting hit when I was least expecting it.

So round and round we went in the rat maze arena. There were ramps to the second floor, grids that allowed you to look up, or down, at the other people passing by and shoot at them, dead ends, lots and lots of glowie things that were lit up with black lights, very, very dim lights, more dead ends, more ramps and lots of open space to take long range shots at the other people. My niece and my cousins were dead meet. I shot ... wait a minute, I shot how few people? Oh man, I suck! I did so bad that when we were given the tally at the end of the game I had a score of zero. For every hit on another played I had, four people hit me. Not good, not good at all.

Between games we had some pizza, something to drink and played some arcade games. There were not a ton of games but it was not to bad. I focused on getting as many tickets as I could so my niece could buy some over priced trinkets. So did most everyone else. I found this one game that if I timed it right I would hit the jackpot which was sitting at 150 tickets. I kept hitting it to soon until this one time ... bingo, JACKPOT. No sirens, bells or lights, DARN.


It was time to hand off the tickets to my niece and I had a plan. I took the other tickets I won and handed them to her but hid the jackpot from here. She spent a while getting the tickets all tucked away in the cup she had and she was happy to receive them. They I said “oh, and I hit this thing called JACKPOT” and haded her those tickets only to see her eye go all wide. In the end she bought some cheep trinkets and a stuffed turtle who immediately was names Sherman. Just what she needs is another stuffed animal.



Back in for another round of laser tag. This time my gun did not work well at all so not only was I bad, my gun sucked too. Oh well, red shirt proved to much to overcome. Try as I might I could not get any of the grenade like things to work. And my vest was again vibrating like crazy. So much so that when I took the vest off I felt like something was vibrating for the next several hours. I managed to shoot my cousins daughter many times (I know, tough guy), and several others and I was hit a few less times but I still managed to get a score of 0 (see below top row third column), zip, nodda, nothing, goose eggs, big fat zero. I blame the equipment but you know, I think it is just not my game.



Well that is my experience with laser tag. Would I do it again? You bet but just not at that place. Would I be in dead last again (or at least do very poorly) most likely. But that is OK, that way everyone else feels good about how they did. I can handle that. Just once I would like to score a few points.

Sunday was some more basketball and off I was back home. The only bad part of the weekend??? I managed to catch a cold or something. Rats.

P.S. Sorry about the picture. Between my camera phone not taking the pest picture, the fact that it can not take low light pictures (no flash), and me trying my best to spiff up the pictures with photoshop ... that is the best I could do.