I’d give the 2008 Fun Fest Treasure Hunt a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. The concerns I expressed in my Thursday post were dispelled when I learned that people were indeed figuring out the clues and enjoying themselves. I actually thought the clues were pretty good all week.
In the opinion of an observer who follows the Treasure Hunt online and in the newspaper but who doesn’t actually participate any longer, this was the best Treasure Hunt since AFG stopped running it 2 or 3 years ago. I love Pal’s, but I did not think they did a good a job of running the Treasure Hunt the past couple of years, mainly because their clues were terrible. The organizers and sponsors of this year’s Treasure Hunt did a much better job and began the process of restoring the Treasure Hunt to its former glory.
That being said, I still feel there are a couple of areas where the Treasure Hunt could be improved. As I mentioned yesterday, I feel that the organizers should take some steps to make sure the medallion isn’t found early in the morning quite so often. One way to do this would be to make the first clue a little more vague and open to various interpretations. Another way would be to hide the medallion a little better so that even after everyone has figured out the general location where it is hidden, it still takes some serious hunting to actually find it. I always found the Treasure Hunts that last all day to be the most fun.
Another area that needs to be improved is the way in which the clues are given out. I thought about discussing all of the various problems with the distribution of the clues that have plagued the Treasure Hunt over the years, but I decided to focus on the biggest problem that exists today – the online distribution of the clues.
Ever since the Treasure Hunt began having a website a few years ago, the website has been one of the official places to obtain the clue. This could be a good thing, but there have been some problems. I think more than one web design and hosting firm have been responsible for the website, but the same problems have always existed. I’m not sure if the problems lie with the people who are responsible for updating the site, or with the Treasure Hunt officials for not getting the information to the webmasters in a timely fashion.
The first problem with the Treasure Hunt website is that the clue usually isn’t posted on the website until anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes after it has been given out on the radio. Even worse, sometimes they’ll skip a clue and not post it on the Internet at all. That problem continues today, as the third clue wasn’t posted on the website today until after the medallion had already been found.
Another problem is that there have been times over the years where the announcement that the medallion had been found wasn’t posted for up to 3 hours after the fact. This led to a lot of people (myself included) wasting time looking for a medallion that had already been found.
I hope that they will do a better job with the website in future years. It should be a reliable place to obtain clues and other information. It would only take a minimal amount of time and effort to make this happen.
