REVIEW: Michigan AR Scavenger Hunt

Chances are your kids love screen time. But as a Dad, you know you want them to get up and be active. Why not combine the two with an augmented reality scavenger hunt?

There’s a company called Michigan [AR] Scavenger Hunt and they promise a truly unique and immersive outdoor experience. The scavenger hunt combines the latest augmented reality and geo-location technologies to create an adventure exploring the most interesting areas in West Michigan.​​

Sounds great, right? So I took my daughter Grace and her bestie Brielle to try it out and here’s what we discovered. 

1. It’s immediately immersive. It took less than a minute for the girls to grasp and accept the storyline. They were looking for goblins to help them on their quest and talking about crystals as if they were really there.
2. It’s not a video game. While some of the puzzles we had to solve were based on the iPad (provided), many of them had the girls exploring the real world to get the solution and acquire those crystals.
3. Teamwork makes the dream work. Each of the girls attacked the puzzles in different ways and watching them work together to get to a solution gave me some pretty proud Dad moments watching Grace defer to her friend’s strengths with some and taking the lead with others.
4. It teaches sharing. There were two girls and only one iPad. But with 15 different stops along our route, there were plenty of chances for each to hold the digital stuff and play navigator.
5. It’s custom. This isn’t a cookie cutter experience. Many of the puzzles were specific to the area where we played (Riverside Park in Grand Rapids). It felt like the game was made just for us. Plus, the cool gear given to you to help you along the hunt are high quality. 

Overall, a really cool way to spend 90 minutes together. You can bring groups of up to 10 to play. You can see the intro to our quest below to get a feel for what the kid’s version looks like. Did we mention that there’s a grown up version and even a bar crawl version as well?
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One of these days, we may schedule a full Daddy Daughter Time event around this cool new entertainment option. Until then, you can get a discount of 20% for a minimum of three players if you book with this exclusive code: DDTIME20

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