Easter Egg Hunt That Involves Very Few Eggs And Has Not Much To Do With Easter

You know how Living Social sends out these huge discounted events that you've  never heard of and when you see them, you're like, wow that sounds like fun, and it's so cheap!  But if you really thought about it, you would be like, hey, I've never even thought about going to something like that so I wouldn't have spent money on it anyway, so in reality I'm paying more for it because the prior cost of being ignorant was zero dollars.  Still, an Easter-themed scavenger hunt in a bar?  That's uh. MAZE. Zing.  That's how Eddie and I found ourselves in Manhattan with J, C, and DZ, holding a real egg that we could not break and signing up to follow iAdventure on Twitter so we could get updates about where to find a bunny--a man in a bunny costume--you know, one of my favorite things in the world, adults in huge character costumes.

The egg that's worth 25 points

What we thought would be a hunt for eggs around the city turned out to be a super duper game of Truth or Dare without the truth part; in its place was the opportunity to take pictures of each other doing the dare.  Some of the challenges were really harmless: take a picture of yourself hanging from a tree; with a real-life bunny (there's one in Petco, where the pets go); feeding the birds.

There was one for petting a horse.  Luckily, a vegan fest was happening in Union Square, so DZ found a person in a horse suit, and we took a pic of her petting the person in the horse suite.  Yeay, more adults in costume.  This day was made for me.

Before all the challenges, though, we sat for lunch at a suggested pub a few blocks from the starting bar.  This pub did not accept the two drink tickets and had no discounts associated with the hunt, which was unclear before we got there so we never were able to redeem our drink tickets and we never got the food included in the price.  Note to iAdventure--make that clearer on the rules. 

While we ate, we answered the quiz questions.  There were a bunch of trivia questions about bunnies, hares (NOT the same!), and Easter.  We were looking up the answers on multiple SmartPhones.  My phone was helpful in that it was actually not at all since it's not a SmartPhone but it is pretty and it plays music.

One of the questions was: What is Bugs Bunny's tag line?  We knew it was "What's up, Doc?"  Every time I typed in the answer, the app on the phone stopped working.  Nice bug.  I asked the scavenger hunt gal who had arrived at the bar about it, and she gave me the name of the technical guru to talk to.  That person was back at the first bar.  Again, not helpful.  This gal, though, was very patient and kind because me, C, and D stood in front of her (while the boys ate) and stared at the following puzzle:

MOonceON

We were there for a good five minutes, guessing things like: once around the moon! to the moon and back! one moon two moon!  moon over once!

Clearly, the answer is: Once in a blue moon.   Which I finally got after a very long time.  Our prize?  Each person in the group got a plastic egg filled with some sort of goodie.  Mostly Easter chocolate.  The girl next to us got a drink ticket.  Too bad she couldn't use it at this bar and could use it only at the beginning bar (we found we couldn't use our tickets in the final bar, either--stupid--as DZ said, this may be the last time we try to live socially).

So onto the challenges!  One of the more difficult parts was that we had to keep clicking on different challenges so we couldn't see them all at once, and they were called really stupid things so it was hard to tell from the titles of each what they were.  Like the one that said we needed to take a picture of one of us doing the bunny hop across the street was called something like, Hop, while the one that said we needed to take a picture of us all doing the bunny hop on the subway was called Hop Hop. 

We did manage to take a picture of someone wearing pastel pants.  Without her consent.  I just took it. 

We also needed a picture of a cop and we had to give him or her rabbit ears.  This, I decided, was stupid because any police officer in the vicinity was on duty, and therefore, not available for photo ops.  We walked up to two of them and asked anyway, and one of them said, We really can't, and the other said, We can get in trouble, and I said, Yes, that's what I figured and this is stupid.  They suggested we got to Times Square.  We should have listened to them at that moment, but not for this particular reason.  It's for the reason coming up. 

Before that, we traveled to Duane Reade to buy adult diapers and wear them.  We met a lovely couple with whom we split the cost for those and for jelly beans, more fake plastic eggs, bunny ears, Peeps, and a Cadbury Egg (which I later devoured).

I stuffed my mouth with jelly beans to earn five points:

Eddie laid an egg to earn five points:

He also did his best impression of Manti Teo with his lady friend:

All of this was happening in the park.  We found another extra points bonus trivia and won more plastic eggs filled with Easter chocolate because C answered the question in like two seconds flat.  Then we headed to the children's clothing store to find Easter bonnets and flowery dresses.  Then we found carrots at a food store.  And then we started walking more quickly, realizing that time was running out, and oh, ha, look at that...

Some of the challenges told us to take pictures on subways and take pictures of characters in Times Square bunny-hopping. We were like, we're getting so much done here.  Unbeknownst to me at the moment, the ending bar was Hudson Terrace, and we should've been heading there by going through Times Square.  We wound up race-walking from Union Square to a block north of where the Intrepid is.


View Stupidity in a larger map--Really! Click on it and get interactive!

After the race to get on the very long line (we weren't late for anything), we decided that maybe this whole thing was kind of stupid.  We did have a lot of fun, but the race walk to the end did some damage to some feet and backs and overall morale, especially when we realized we were going to stand on a long line anyway. 

When we got inside, there were bunny ears everywhere.  There was one bunny in costume and then there was a chicken.  I stayed away from them.  I got on the line for the people to tally up our points.  This is where it all became a sham.  For shame, iAdventure!  For shame!  The guy tallying my points (after I waited on a very long line by myself for a very long time) didn't know what certain points were worth.  I was like, I brought these ribbons because they celebrate New Year's and it says I get points to bring something from another holiday. He gave me a blank stare.  I showed him how the points for petting a horse didn't come with a place to take a picture, but I had the picture on the phone.  He shrugged and scribbled something down.  I asked if we got points for winning the extra eggs along the way.  No.  So really, anything we thought we were doing really well with, we weren't.  In protest, I left the egg J had carried all that way on his table in the hopes it would roll over and get smashed and he'd have to work around a gooey mess.  Because I'm mature.

Then, over the surprisingly good music--they played the theme song to Fresh Prince, no joke!--they announced that we'd have a winner in two hours. 

Hahhahahahhhaaaaaaaaa.  The bar was jam-packed.  We couldn't use our drink tickets.  We couldn't hear anything, and we'd clearly lost seeing that some teams had drawn mustaches on their faces and shaved letters into their chest hair.  The couple we'd met at Duane Reade appeared and hugged C as if they were old friends.  They said they weren't staying to see if they won because they, too, clearly did not.  We left after a little while longer because the team sitting next to Eddie was wearing fairy wings and they kept hitting him with them. 

When we got home, we did have some jelly beans and some Easter candy and some new plastic eggs.  However, we hadn't hunted those down.  We'd bought them in a drug store.  If that's what a scavenger hunt is, then they should just call it a shopping spree.  I'll stick to hiding eggs in the living room.