Category Archives: Reviews

Pandemic Legacy March Review

The March game was a little scary at first because we learned we would have to complete two objectives. In addition to the mandatory objective of curing the three diseases we would also have to either eradicate one disease or build military bases in each of the six major regions of the world. We got a new character in this game, the operations expert. We also got a new set of available scars for players, which fortunately we haven’t had to use yet.

We didn’t think the instructions really explained military bases much. Only players with dog tags on their character card were allowed to jump from military base to military base. It also never told us how to make a military base, but the new character was able to make them so it only made sense to play the operations expert.  Don was excited to have the operations expert because he likes to play him. He can also make research stations easier. We opened a box that gave us little green houses to symbolize the military bases.

Don played the operations expert, Ian was the quarantine specialist, Cassie was the dispatcher, and I was the scientist again. This was probably the hardest game so far; cities were out breaking like crazy and the outbreak marker got down pretty far.  We won though and at the end we got to choose upgrades. Since we eradicated one disease we upgraded that one. While we were choosing the upgrades we noticed we did the upgrade on the disease wrong during the first game. In the instructions it says to make sure to upgrade the diseases in the correct order, but on the sticker sheet it just tells you that these are the upgrades for the eradicated diseases.  The first time we upgraded an eradicated disease we only read from the sticker sheet. So like anyone, we questioned that the upgrades were numbered level 1-4, but we still decided to choose a level 3 or 4 upgrade. We should have chose a level 1. So this time we went by the rules in the book and chose a level 1 upgrade. We keep misreading things! Can’t wait for April.

Zombie Apocalypse Live

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By far the best haunted house / zombie experience I have ever had. Each person gets a realistic M16A4 Rifle (infrared) that has safety, single round and 3 round burst settings. Air-soft recoil action. All the zombie actors have electronic sensors. Gotta make the head-shot. Soooooo good. Zombies come charging at you and you let them have it. Three Reloading/Safe House locations throughout. Two Buildings/play areas.http://zombieapocalypselive.com/ This group is doing a small tour, if its coming by you I highly recommend.

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Pandemic Legacy Season 1 January-February Review

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A few years ago we fell in love with the board game Pandemic. Pandemic is a cooperative board game where everyone either wins or loses. This cooperative concept was pretty new to us. The premise of the game is everyone plays a character role with special abilities to help cure four diseases that are threatening the world. There are ways to make the game easier or harder depending on your level. There are also many variations of the game due to the expansions. The game is so fun because it is different every time and you really have to think about things to make it work. We first played this game with Cassie and Ian and we lost several times in a row. We probably lost 10 times in one night. We played until about 2 am when we finally beat the game by putting it on its easiest level (it might had been even easier than suggested in the rules). But once we won we continued to get better, the expansions kept coming, and we were addicted.

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Cider Rider Makes Its Way Into My Top 3 Worst Bus Rides of All Time.

I want to start off by saying that we were all really excited for The Cider Rider Tour and we did have some fun despite the downfalls. Cider Rider is a bus tour from Chicago to 4 different cideries in Michigan. So let’s start from the beginning. First off, Cider Rider did get a rough start with falling on Chicago’s first snowfall and coldest day of the year, so that was kind of a bummer. We met for the tour at 6:30 am and the bus took off at 7. We needed 6 seats together so we went to the back of the bus to get 3 sets of seats. Kara, Christina, Cassie and Marrisa sat in the back row, while Don and I got two seats in the row in front of them. These back four seats were different from the rest of the seats in the bus because they could be removed or folded up to make more space. They lacked adequate support for two people to be sitting in them so they leaned towards the aisle of the bus. I was sitting on the side closest to the aisle and it felt like I was slanting the whole time. Really uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable as that time we were jammed into a van for 8 hours in St. Lucia….but that’s a different story.

Continue reading Cider Rider Makes Its Way Into My Top 3 Worst Bus Rides of All Time.

Golf Carting

So today we got up and rented a golf cart again. The cart this time was a little fancier. It was pouring outside. Luckily when we picked up Aoife and Sean it had stopped raining. We drove to the GreenVerde Restaurant again. This time I had the chilaquiles and I didn’t think it was that great. After lunch we drove down to Punta Sur again. It was so hot! When we finally got down to the beach the water felt amazing. And of course it was completely beautiful.

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We walked around after swimming and took some nice selfies.

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After checking out Punta Sur we decided to stop by Tortugranja again. Here Don and I checked out the old man’s sea life he was showing off. We held a small stingray, a sea urchin, and a horseshoe crab. After that we headed over to the Caribbean side to look for a place to have a drink before heading back. We decided to stop at a place that had a sign that said “Beer So Cold It’ll Make Your Teeth Hurt”. This was the bar at the Villa La Bella Bed & Breakfast. The bar was very cool looking; it had swings around it. My first drink there wasn’t actually a beer because I really wanted a pina colada. I’m glad I got it because it was super good. Later I did have a Tecate and it was cold, so no letdown here. The place had a great view. We sat out watching some storm clouds pass and we even saw some dolphins swimming.

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This place also had a lot of rules to abide by…

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On our drive back it started raining again. We felt bad because it started pouring after we dropped off Aoife and Sean and they were heading to the port. It was fun spending the day with them! Hopefully we will meet again sometime!

When we got back it was still raining so we went inside our hotel and hoped it would stop after we got showered. Luckily the rain tapered off a bit and so we went out for our last night on Isla. We ate at an Argentinian Steakhouse called L’Argentina Grill. The food was pretty good here, but the service was not so great. It was a pretty good steak though. After dinner we were tired and we needed to do some packing since we leave in the morning so we went back to the hotel. At the hotel we watched the movie Sinister on Netflix while packing. This vacation has been amazing! I don’t want to leave but I’m definitely ready to start planning our next adventure.