We stayed at the lovely swissotel which was pretty good. Their had system could use some loving, but everything else was excellent. We got our early catch wristbands to let us in early and started our day of adventure in Chicago.
Everything was lured the whole time. And raids were abundant.
Very abundant.
And for anyone that does raise the ultra boxes are really good deal. 16 raid passes would cost you 1,600 coin so get in the whole box or 1480 plus other items is just a very sweet deal.
We walked around early morning to see a few sights and get some unique gym badges, bit we knew the line was forming and we had to head to the event.
The line was immense, even for the early catch people. It went for blocks, and wrapped around Grant Park. This was my 12th Niantic gaming event, and by far the largest. So many people coming together for one purpose, awesome stuff.
The special stops would spin but the you would need a QR code that you acquire at the front gate. After an hour or two we got inside the event. We passed the time with chatting and catching with other players. Finally we made it to the gate!
It was so exciting. Once we made it through check in we were given an envelope with a QR code to scan. The cell network was overloaded due to the amount of players so it was a bit hectic. Once we got the codes scanned we were able to see all the stops and gyms inside of Grant Park.
It was very exciting. It was also the worst game lag I had seen in the game yet. It is here I will point out the problems we encountered. The cell network was overloaded due to 20000 players in one location attempt g to play at once. There was a login error on Niantics end they were working on to fix. And , not affecting me, there was an iPhone bug on Niantics end as well. These were the three errors of the day, and I'm sure other people will vent about how awful an experience it was, I am not one of them.
Niantic was doing the best they cpuld. Cell phone providers, Verizon and AT&T supposedly dropped the ball. Sprint did not for those that had them. The scope of what Niantic was attempting to achieve was massive, and even given the faults of the day I feel I was given a good enough experience. Of course it could have been better. Everything could always be better in some way. But me, a 4 year augmented reality gamer that has played Niantic games the entire time and been to a previous 11 events, was fine with the final results. This will be the only time I mention it in these posts because it doesn't need to be said multiple times. They are going to refund all ticket sales. They are giving every attendee 100 dollars worth of pokecoins. All attendees will also receive a legendary Lugia automatically with the refunds. I feel this more than apologized for a day full of experiences, when we could log in at least. I don't feel Niantic truly let is down, it was their first Pokemon Go event with 4x the amount of players they ever experienced at any of their Ingress events and instead of being across a whole city we had Grant Park to ourselves. Massive undertaking and they tried super hard for us. And the staff there was amazing.
That's it for this post. More to come. I am working today so I will post as much as I can to try to get the whole experience out to you. Steem on my friends.