Next Stop…Nevada!

I spent Thursday in Spokane, Washington, but by early Friday morning I had boarded a flight headed for Reno and I could hardly wait to get back to that part of Northern Nevada to check out a new arena I had heard was installed in Sparks, NV.

However, I was going to have to wait because there was a delay in my flight that pushed my schedule back by about three hours. However, traveling in this part of the country was worth the wait, if for no other reason than the spectacular views as we flew into Reno!

Because of the delay I had not eaten anything except for plane snacks, so my first stop was not to a laser tag arena, but instead to Ohana Sushi in Reno. Anyone who knows me understands that I always seek out sushi on my tag trips, but very rarely to I mention the restaurants by name, but this one was different. If you are in Reno this restaurant is a MUST!!! I went in during the all you can eat lunch hours (which was a great value for the price as well) and sat down at the sushi bar in front of Chef Edson. At first I ordered a small plate, but then I asked the chef what he recommended and had a wonderful experience as he created a customized sampling for me as we went along. He asked me about my tastes and whether I was allergic to any foods and then proceeded to create one plate after another of delicious samplings of dishes that I LOVED, but would probably never have thought to order. Talk about personalized service!

This was the best experience I’ve ever had at a sushi restaurant in any of my tag travels and I wanted to mention it here, not just because they totally earned an excellent review, but I want to be able to remember this place for whenever I next return to Reno. So, if you’re out that way please treat yourself. It’s worth it!

After all that I was finally ready to play some tag, so I drove to the neighboring town of Sparks, NV and the recently installed Laserforce Gen 8 arena inside of Coconut Bowl at Wild Island Family Adventure Park.

I arrived and asked if I could play against the most competitive person in the building and immediately it was suggested I play against Matt. This sounded promising! Matt helped round up a couple of other guys so we’d have a better game and we split up into two teams, Matt and Brandon on red against Mark and me playing on blue…forgive me, I’m still getting used to referring to the colors as “fire” and “ice”.

We suited up in the vesting room.

Then we entered a really nice two-level CW arena with what appears to be a newer motif. That’s probably the case considering laser tag is a new attraction as of around December. I really like this arena! It’s a reasonable size for smaller groups and plays well because of the open area in the center. The inner part of the upper level is fenced in with metal bars so you can target from above or below.

This makes for more playable space and a good balance because the upper level does not automatically have a greater advantage (which I find is sometimes the case with a closed floorplan). In fact, this feature resulted in some very unexpected tags by both teams as we were constantly trying to figure out where the beams were coming from!

The upper level is accessible from two corners by wraparound ramps.

This site had three base targets. The red and blue were each housed inside the mouth of a giant snake structure on opposite sides of the lower level.

Meanwhile there was one green base on an upper level wall. There were also two tablet beacons rotating additional points or power-ups, which I utilized frequently during this game. This was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed both the arena and game as well as the competitive nature of my teammate and our opponents. Thanks for a great game guys!

Time to grab a bottle of water…