MagiQuest

One of the attractions at the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine is the MagiQuest game. I could find very little about this interactive game on the internet - the MagiQuest website is not terribly informative as far as the "rules" of the game or any game-playing tips.

When we arrived at GWL, the kids immediately went downstairs to the 1st floor to check out the MagiQuest store as well as the arcade. My sister went ahead and bought them each a MagiQuest wand. After checking in and finding our room, we went back down to the Magiquest store where I bought myself a wand and also bought the kids "toppers" for their wands.

Each of us had a different topper representing different clans. My "clan" was the healing clan but that's all I remember about the clan. I should have remembered to take a picture of the clan descriptions on the walls of the store. Each of our wands had to be activated and you pick a name to associate with your wand. Amina chose "Angel", Rhys chose "RhysTS" and I chose "Kidoctr". The wands were $14.99, it was $9.99 to play the game, and each topper was $14.99, I believe. Each player is given 4 days to complete their game. Each player is also given "the Ancient Book of Wisdom" which is your guide to the game - you really should read pages 2 and 3 of the book. We didn't take the time to read it and learned the hard way by trial and error how to play the game.

To "activate" your wand, you jiggle the wand a bit and you can see the light in the topper light up then when you point the wand at the "Q" symbol on any item, it will activate that particular item. The Ancient Book of Wisdom lists the "Key to MagiQuest Locations", aka the hotel floors' names. For example, the 1st floor (where the MagiQuest store is located) is called "Dragon's Hall". There are 8 floors total in GWL Grapevine and every floor must be visited multiple times to complete Quests, collect "runes", and complete Adventures. Each time you use your wand, you collect gold pieces and experience points, aka XP. Some quests require you to have a certain number of gold pieces.

The kids were told by other players that during the game, you must use the stairs. Taking a wand into the elevator apparently subtracts XP from your score although I haven't confirmed this to be true. The stairs are called the "Hidden Stairwell" and tell you which floor is above and which is below your current floor.

You can go around and wave your wand at everything to see what happens - we did this for a while before figuring out how to start a quest. There is a training room to get started in on the 1st floor in Dragon's Hall.

To start, you must find a Quest tree. There are only 2 floors where the trees are located: Floor 1, Dragon's Hall and floor 6, Pixie's Perch. To move on to other quests and adventures, you must return to a tree, wave your wand at it to start, then choose the quest or adventure you wish to try. Listen carefully to what the Quest Master says and be sure to "accept" the quest that you have chosen otherwise everything you do won't count on you wand.

Each rune quest is listed in the the Ancient Book of Wisdom and are ranked in order of difficulty. The quests become more difficult because the descriptions in the Book become more vague. There are 10 runes in total to collect and it takes completing 11 quests to collect all of them. There are 3 adventures to complete as well but each adventure requires a certain set of runes in your possession in order to complete the adventure. We just completed the rune quests pretty much in order and then went on to complete the adventures.

The game worked well in terms of all the computers and such. There was only one quest (the Wolf Rune quest) that was malfunctioning.

When we got to this quest, we simply went to the MagiQuest store and this rune quest was "uploaded" into the wand as completed. Oddly, the entire hotel with all 8 floors only had 4 elevators which were constantly busy with guests going up and down between their rooms, the restaurants, the waterpark, etc.

The stairwells were also constantly busy with kids going up and down the stairs doing quests. I was particularly irritated by the numerous unsupervised children running up and down the stairs, yelling and screaming (and at one point even asked a little girl to refrain from screaming in the stairwell) but had to chuckle at the out-of-shape parents/grandparents who were trying to keep up with some of the the children on the stairs. Some quest and adventure items were also located inside the stairwells.

The stairs connected each floor's "lobby" area and the game did not extend past this lobby area as there were guest rooms down either side of the lobby.

Items needed for the quests are located everywhere on either side of the lobby area around the elevators as well as the long hallways leading from the elevators to the waterpark entrance/MagiQuest store (floor 1, Dragon's Hall), the main lobby area (floor 2, shopkeeper's hall) and the Camp Critter Bar and Grill (floor 4, Enchanted woods).

Some items are hidden around the corner in an alcove:

Other items are located on the celing:

To check what items and runes you have collected, and how many gold pieces/XP you have, consult the Status Stations located on various floors:

Once we finished collecting all the runes - which took several hours the first day and about an hour the next day (we got the hang of it and did these quests on our own - Amina and Rhys finishing theirs and me finishing mine in very good time), we started the 3 Adventures one by one at the Quest Tree. The Adventures are trickier as there are no clues in the Ancient Book of Wisdom and we had to frequently consult the Status Stations to find out what our next item was. As you found each item, you had to oftentimes listen carefully for important instructions from that item- where the next item was located, how to use the runes/symbols properly, etc.

As I was finishing up the last few quests on my own, I started keeping track of some of the items I hadn't used yet as I found them by writing them down in the Book and notating which floor they were on. This came in handy later when we were searching for these items to complete Adventures and we finished the Adventures much more quickly than the Quests. Some of the quests and all of the Adventures require the use of the Hover Crystals. These crystals were located near the Quest Trees and had to be charmed (eg waving your wand at it) in order to complete some of the quests and adventures. We learned a lot about the game just by watching other players. Kids were also frequently looking for a specific item and would stop to ask each other.

Here are the kids completing the Amulet Adventure:

The last Adventure we did was the most difficult - it was the Dragon Adventure where we had to battle the Red Dragon. After many tries and watching others try, I finally figured out how to time the game and defeat the dragon. I defeated the dragon with my wand then went on to defeat the dragon with both kids' wands as well. I also ended up helping 2 other little boys finish their adventures too.

The game was really fun and the kids really enjoyed it too. We got to keep our wands and hope to use them when we stay at the GWL in Williamsburg in October while we're on our Adventure by Disney Spirit of America tour. Each of us are "Master Magi" now.