MDAS experiences, how was yours?
I completed the Mission Day at Sea cruise & Ingress events.
I had an absolute blast on the trip. I was our first cruise ever. The travel agent & chats in telegram had a bunch of great advice.
The POC (DayoSteph) did an amazing job organizing things, securing the agent, organizing the chats in Telegram, dealing with all of the random questions from cruise newbies such as myself, securing rooms for board games, etc. Really would not have gone so well without the work of the POC.
First day was tlhectic trying to get aboard and get used to things on the ship, where things were located, etc. After that it was great
The food was fantastic. Plentiful buffets and the dining room service was incredible. After 1 day, they knew my allergy restrictions & drink preference. They were very easy going, when I wasn't sure between 2 main courses, I could just get both).
I had never been waited on so much in my life, it was an adjustment to get used to.
The excursions we had we're great. The Ingress excursion at the Sunset House in the Caymans was fantastic. Snorkeling was great, it helped going with a bunch of other agents & having our guide be an agent.
The RC excursions we're excellent as well. We went to the Mayan ruins at Chacchoben one day, then went to a tour of Cozumel next day (Mayan temple, the beach, & a chocolate factory).
On the last day at sea, we partaked in various ship activities. Did bar trivia, saw an ice show, swam in the pool. We also had a conference room secured to play board & card games. There was a great many activities on board ship to keep one occupied.
The missions themselves:
I didn't arrive in Ft Lauderdale until late Saturday, 11/2. I didn't attempt the Ft Lauderdale missions so can't comment on those.
The missions in Georgetown, Cayman Islands were well laid out in a straight path and was very quick & easy to walk those missions. Big thanks to agent Tryck7, who designed the missions.
The missions in Costa Maya were annoying as one portal was outside of the port terminal complex (which is a maze to get out of). There was quite a bit of wandering into the back of shops to get the drift to reach.
In Cozumel, there weren't enough portals in the Royal Caribbean port complex so one had to leave that and walk about a quarter mile to the Carnival complex. Once there it was easy to complete the missions.
Overall the missions didn't eat up too much time and left time free to do activities on shore.
Overall the missions were a small component of the trip. It was a wonderful X-fact event and great for non-Ingress players as well.
I'm eagerly looking forward to the next MDAS event.
Comments
Regarding missions—
The Ft. Lauderdale missions were pretty easy to do, except for the fact that we had bad luck and the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show was in town during the weekend of 11/2-11/3, which limited access to the missions on the grounds of the convention center.
I think one thing we didn't anticipate was that both Costa Maya and Cozumel had terminals that were designed literally as tourist traps—there was no straightforward way to get in or out of each one from the pier; you had to take winding paths through many of the shops in order to escape, which made it harder to navigate those terminals. Also, the way shore excursions worked at Costa Maya meant that if your excursion took most of the day, you didn't really have much time to do the missions before you needed to get back on the ship.
I was more ambitious and did the optional/unofficial 4-mission banners, which luckily made use of the same portals so that if you already did the official MDAS missions, you already knew how to get to those portals.
There was also a lot more to MDAS than just the missions—we had a room reserved for board games, a fancy cocktail hour, group photo, and many other fun activities on the cruise that we took full advantage of. Warm tropical waters and cute animals don't hurt either :-) But I think that deserves its own separate comment/post as it would get quite long!
Huge thanks to Dayosteph who sacrificed so much of her own vacation time to manage logistics for the rest of us. Most people we spoke to were not aware that she had nearly single-handedly researched the group cruise agency, pitched the idea to Niantic, arranged onboard events and gathering places, and reached out to agents who could contribute mission know-how, graphical design, first-hand ship recon, local portal and tourism Intel, and curate web and social media presence. Thank you @dayosteph !!!