treasure hunt in hollywood
the hunt took place on hollywood blvd, between vine and highland. we started at the improv theater. there was a "remake of the remake of rob zombie's halloween h20 2" theme. one helper dressed up as michael meyers, and there was a fake stabbing to death of another helper, lots of screaming, and the stuffing of the first clues into her mouth.
the first clue was a maze puzzle. if you completed the maze, it actually drew the logo of the show "wicked." from outside of the improv, you could see that logo since wicked is at the pantages theater. once people ran down to the pantages, they were handed the second clue.
this clue had newspaper titles and 2 sets of numbers next to each title. for example, it would say "new york times, 6th 11th." if you looked around the pantages theater, there are all these big banners of review quotes hung up on the building. so you would find the quote from the new york times, 6th word, 11th letter. once all the letters were found, it spelled out something like "in the subway by the cameras."
run across the street to the hollywood and vine metro station, where there are big cameras on the platform. there you get the next clue, which was 2 lists of movies. the clue said something like, only some of these movies are awesome, awesome movies have killing, death, killing, etc...
so the lists of movies would be stuff like "the shining" or "as good as it gets." each movie was also missing one letter in the title. if you selected all of the right (horror) movies, it spelled out hollywood and highland.
some of the teams took the train over, some of them ran the whole way. haha, suckers. at hollywood and highland, they got an interactive clue. it was to take pictures with 5 characters and to get their autograph as the character. elmo was very popular that day. it was funny to see "elmo" scribbled on the paper as a autograph.
once that part was done, they got the real clue, which was to play a "road to hollywood" game. at hollywood and highland, there is this "road to hollywood" walkway winding around the open areas. it consists of quotes. so the clue had pictures of dice for each roll. so it would be something like, first roll, 12 steps, meaning 12 quotes ahead on the walkway. and then there were rules, like if you landed on a quote from an actor or actress, you move forward one step, but if you landed on a director, you went back one step. after all the rolls were completed (and if you paid attention to actor/actress/director), you end up on a quote by a composer. at the bottom of the clue were the final "scores" depending on whose quote you land on. the score for composer was "413." if you did it wrong, you could end up on other quotes, like by a tv star, which would be worth a different score. the score was actually the number of a store at hollywood and highland. (so if you did it wrong, haha, you'll go to the wrong store.)
at the store, was the next clue, which was a picture of weird shaped grid type map. some of the shapes had letters or numbers in it. there were chinese characters at the top of the map, and at the bottom it said "only actors in awesome movies are awesome." or something like that.
the map was obviously for the handprints in from of the chinese theater (the chinese characters actually were supposed to say "chinese theater," so if any team had anyone on it that read chinese, they maybe sort of got a tiny leg up). then, remember the list of movies from the earlier clue? that's the list of awesome movies. so you find the handprint areas of the main actors in those movies, write down the corresponding letter/number in the grid, and it spelled out kodak theater 2nd floor.
at the kodak was a clue with a picture of a hand missing the pinky. it said, these movies suck, if you make my movie like any of these movies, i'll cut off your last digit and feed it to you. then there was a list of movies on the side, such as chicago and what not. at the bottom of the list, it said, the only good movie here is silence of the lambs.
if you look around the kodak theater, it has every movie that ever won best picture and the year that it won on the columns in front. so once you find all the years of the movies on the clue, and then look at the last digit for each year, you'll see that it's a ten digits that start with the numbers 3,2,3. obviously a phone number. if you call the number, it's a recording for upcoming events at different places. but silence of the lambs's winning year's last number is a 1, and the recording says, "for the egyptian theater, press 1."
so run over to the egyptian theater for the last clue. this was the fancy clue that required these giant plexiglass "star decoders." greg, the guy that writes all of our treasure hunts, and some of his friends actually used to regularly participate in treasure hunts held by people. where you pay to sign up and the winners win the pot kind of thing. for one hunt that his friend wrote in hollywood, he had made up 30 of these things. they are life sized star shapes that fit over the stars on the boulevard. there is an opening that's just big enough to show 1 letter. there is a dial with numbers that moves that opening around.
the last clue actually came in three parts as "collectible trading cards" collected throughout the hunt with previous clues. the first card said "only stars facing east." the second card said "only stars with a movie icon." the last card said "since he was murdered in the shining, scatman crothers is your first star."
at the egyptian, the teams got the decoders along with a sheet that had pictures of stars and numbers on it. like, a picture of star with a "1" inside and with "22" next to it. so that would mean 1st star, dial the decoder to "22" and find the letter. this clue was easy to do, but also very easy to make mistakes with. carmen and i were the testers for this hunt and did it a week before everyone else. and we totally messed up with this one, twice! some of the stars on the sheet said "no letter" next to it, meaning you would skip that star. (i.e., a picture of a star with the number 12 in it and the words no letter next to it would mean that when you reach the 12th star facing east with a movie icon, you just skip it.) and some of the stars were repeated - there would be a picture of a star with a 16 in it and a 22 next to it, then a picture of a star also with a 16 in it but a 12 next to it. we missed the repeated stars twice and had to go back.
anyhow, if you the decoding right, it spells out "in front of superman at wilcox." if you run over to wilcox, there is a big mural painted on the side of the building. it's of a bunch of celebrities sitting in a theater. if you look at superman, the person in the seat directly in front of him is clint eastwood in western gear.
the finish line was back at the improv, and to cross it you had to give the proper name. some of the teams had to run back to the mural to get the correct name -- one team had to go back 4 times!
it was a fun hunt, and i liked that the area it was in was flat this year. that made it much better. those uphill dashes are not for me. i also really enjoyed being the tester instead of an actual hunt day participant. there isn't all that crazy pressure/adrenaline thing happening. and i didn't have to run at all. i told greg that i would be up for testing the hunt every year, haha! it was a good thing i tested it too, because the clue with the phone number originally came up with a wrong number. carmen and i kept calling some poor woman who didn't even speak english.
this thursday is the agency hunt, which is the same but "dumbed down." a little. meaning, he added more hints to the clues that seemed to take the longest. it'll be fun to watch random strangers running around hollywood like mad.