Deciding how and where to spend your time while on vacation is fairly crucial. We spent the better portion of a day at MagiQuest in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Let’s take a look at the different realms and the questing floor.
At this point, we’ve spent the better part of a half hour and our Magi are finally ready to do some adventuring! After a brief walk through the Forest Realm, they were dropped off at the Quest Stones and their adventures began!
The Realms
There are three realms, or sections on the floor: Forest Realm, Dragon’s Realm and Village Realm. If you aren’t going to quest with your kids, then you can hang out near the Questing Stones, or even downstairs near the drink machines. Each realm only has one exit (although there are secret doors that lead between them). Also, there are so many kids running around that there shouldn’t be any fear of your child running into anything unexpected.
The Quests
After getting their quests from the Questing Stones, the Magi will follow clues in their paper guides to find their next rune, secret or treasure.
On The Book of Stars, you can see the red mark that signifies it will interact with a wand.
The different realms were decorated with a lot of flats and some dimensional work. I have to admit that I was pretty impressed with the different realms as I followed my younger Magi around.
Occasionally, you would pass by treasure chests or jewels that would give you gold. You could then use the gold to unlock different quests. My kids were confused because you never lost any gold, even when you “purchased” the upper-level quests.
Even the exit doors were painted to the environment!
It was hard to keep up with the Magi (we did have four), but we did see them criss-crossing the rooms fairly often. There was never once a fear of losing any of the kids.
There were areas of MagiQuest that were fairly dark and could frighten younger children.
There were opportunities for “boss battles”, but they were part of the larger quests and in secret areas. Honestly, neither myself nor any of the Magi I was with could figure out how to beat a few of them. It seemed random.
What We Learned
During most of the time the kids spent doing MagiQuest proper (about 90 minutes), we sat near the questing stones and enjoyed the kids running around and having a good time. We had to help out on occasion with sussing out a clue, but our group (11, 12, 15 and 16) really enjoyed themselves. We did notice a few things, though.
- Kids under six lost interest very quickly. The MagiQuest experience really seems to be geared towards 10-13 year-olds.
- The under 5 set seemed to enjoy the energy but became fairly disinterested once they realized it was more than just waving their wands.
- One session was not enough time to complete the major quests and the Magi begged for more time. (We actually left for a late lunch and came back.)
- Show up as early as possible; it became very crowded around lunchtime.
- Adults participated, as well, even if it was just helping their Magi figure out clues. (We did see a few adults doing the quests by themselves.)
- The staff at MagiQuest were not wearing name tags. They were dressed in some form of renaissance-fair garb. They really needed something to show the kids that they were there to help and that they were employees.
There were three other experiences that we paid for and I’ll be covering them: The Vault Laser Maze, Pirate Glow-in-the-Dark Mini-Golf and the Odyssey Mirror Maze.