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Airport Adventure Labs?


JL_HSTRE

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Yesterday I was told there are Adventure Labs placed at some major airports. The questions have nothing to do with any specific location; they are all set to maximum distance for triggering. All questions are multiple choice and/or the answer is contained in the description for each stage. The idea is that anyone at the airport - in the terminal, on a plane, even driving through - can do these as an easy +5.

 

Is this true? How are these allowed? Isn't an Adventure Lab supposed to require using the location to answer the question?

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If I recall correctly, the one at Toronto Pearson has a geo-fence of 2km. It was mostly airport-related trivia questions (ie. "What is the former name of Toronto Pearson?")

 

These, to me, don't "feel" like Adventure Labs. However, I suppose that they don't indisputably violate any of the guidelines:

 

Quote
  • Require players to physically visit Adventure Locations. The geofence does force ("force") you to visit the location. In this case, the "location" is the airport. Question: Can such a large area be considered "a single location"?
  • Are accessible to the public most of the week. Yes, airports are generally open to all.
  • Have permission from the landowner or land manager. Possibly the CO doesn't have permission, but we don't know that they don't. Question: If the Adventure stage can be completed from public land, does it require permission?
  • Do not involve placing a physical object or container for the Adventure. Presumably, this guideline is followed.
  • Cause no harm to plants, animals, or property. Presumably, this guideline is followed.
  • Adhere to all local laws. Presumably, this guideline is followed.

 

Edited by Hügh
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from the guidelines: 

2.3. Adventure Lab® guidelines

Lese die Richtlinien auf Deutsch.

Locations

Make sure all Locations

  • Require players to physically visit Adventure Locations. (I highlighted)
  • Are accessible to the public most of the week.
  • Have permission from the landowner or land manager.
  • Do not involve placing a physical object or container for the Adventure.
  • Cause no harm to plants, animals, or property.
  • Adhere to all local laws. 

Content

  • Is suitable for all ages.
  • You own or have permission for all content, including logos and images. Adventure Lab® logos are available to use freely.
  • If you or your organization receive something of value (including promotional value) by creating an Adventure, you must add the following text to the description: “This Adventure is sponsored by [name of the business or group].” 

Adventures are free to play

Exceptions to any of these guidelines must be provided in writing by Geocaching HQ. Please note that we plan to continue experimenting with the Adventure Lab® platform and these guidelines are subject to change. Adventures that do not follow the current guidelines may be removed.

 

 

Saying that I  inadvertently found answers online for two stages of an AL; just looking for info of the site and the question asked when triggered was answered there. 

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3 hours ago, Mausebiber said:

NO, see Sightseeing @ Munich International Airport, geofence set to 100m

But "Munich Airport" at MUC fits the description of the OP pretty well. The 5 locations are all in the middle of a runway, and are therefore impossible to reach. The geofence must be in the order of 1 - 2 km radius.

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1 hour ago, baer2006 said:

But "Munich Airport" at MUC fits the description of the OP pretty well.

 

5 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

they are all set to maximum distance for triggering. All questions are multiple choice and/or the answer is contained in the description for each stage

 

The question was ALL set to maximum" and ALL questions are multiple choice and I answered NO provided one sample.

I think his question is answered.

 

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In may, we flew through Chicago, and each of the two major airports there has an AL - reading the logs I was surprised to see logs that indicated that the cacher never left the airplane and was able to complete it.  Other logs indicated it was simple, and could be done from anywhere in the terminals.

 

Sure enough, we could get the questions all from the same location, and they were all simple multiple choice so no chance you would not be able to get the right answer (though some of the choices were obviously not the right ones!)  We only passed through Midway, and got 5 easy smilies.  I imagine the O'Hare version is similar, the write up is nearly identical as are the titles (Sweet Home Chicago and Sweet Home Chicago (Midway)) and they are called "sister caches", two different CO's.

4 hours ago, Hügh said:

 

These, to me, don't "feel" like Adventure Labs. However, I suppose that they don't indisputably violate any of the guidelines:

 

We took the smilies anyway, but hubby didn't get a state souvenir for Illinois.  I had previously done a virtual at the same airport and that earned me the Illinois state souvenir, but time didn't allow us to grab that one so he could get the souvenir, since AL's apparently don't get you a real "find" in the state they are located in.

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8 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Isn't an Adventure Lab supposed to require using the location to answer the question?

 

Early on, if I recall correctly, there was a recommendation, if not an actual guideline, that the questions were supposed to be something that could only be answered by being there and couldn't be easily guessed or found using something like Street View. But now they seem to have gone to the opposite extreme with multiple choice questions (the default setting) which require at most four random guesses to get the correct answer. The question now is almost pointless.

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I did the one at Chicago O'Hare without getting out of my seat.  I did the one at Colorado Springs, CO without getting out of my car.  I agree that these don't real like much of an Adventure. But they were there to pass the time.  Now,  how did I miss the one at Toronto-Pearson?

Edit:  Oh, it wasn't there yet when I was there.

Edited by NanCycle
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1 hour ago, NanCycle said:

I did the one at Chicago O'Hare without getting out of my seat.  I did the one at Colorado Springs, CO without getting out of my car.  I agree that these don't real like much of an Adventure. But they were there to pass the time.

 

1.This is exactly what I'm talking about.

 

2. Try reading a book.

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1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

I want to make one along a runway that is set to a short distance and you can only finish them (or trigger them) sequentially while the plane travels the runway taking off :lol: go! go! go! *tap*tap*tap*tap*  Remember the phone can even be in airplane mode, as long as the gps works. ;)

I'm rooting for you, although I doubt it will be approved. :-)

 

The ones I've seem have all been "in the terminal", so it would be technically possible to go to each location if you were in the airport. I didn't know people were doing ones with stages that were impossible to reach. Meh. Yeah, I understand people looking down on the idea, but I'll just decide whether or not they're worth me doing without worrying about whether they shouldn't be allowed because I don't care for them.

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5 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

I want to make one along a runway that is set to a short distance and you can only finish them (or trigger them) sequentially while the plane travels the runway taking off :lol: go! go! go! *tap*tap*tap*tap*  Remember the phone can even be in airplane mode, as long as the gps works. ;)

 

There's one like that I did that was in a train rather than a plane, where passing through a location was meant to open up the question which you could answer a little further along the track. The trouble was, GPS reception inside the train was pretty poor and I never got within the geofence as we passed through. Since it was a sequential AL, that was it for the day.

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With these broad WPs, I could see someone placing a non sequential one in the ocean for cruise ship passengers. Say in the Pacific, on regular cruise routes. How wide can the area be for each WP? Kms?

Added: I know if you visit a WP you can later answer the question from somewhere else. I have done that for questions that needed research. Can more than one WP be saved like that for later? IE, visit several WPs, but answer them later. Then again, you need to have wi-fi, and I never have on any cruise ship I have been on.

Edited by Goldenwattle
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52 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

With these broad WPs, I could see someone placing a non sequential one in the ocean for cruise ship passengers. Say in the Pacific, on regular cruise routes. How wide can the area be for each WP? Kms?

 

According to the Builder, the maximum geofence radius is 100km. I'd expect a cruise ship one would bump up against the guideline that access must be free. Actually the same would probably be true of an airport runway one. For the train one I mentioned, there was always the option of driving to the locations, which I ended up doing for the one I missed from the train.

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5 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

The trouble was, GPS reception inside the train was pretty poor and I never got within the geofence as we passed through.

True sometimes just in the airplane the gps reception can be rough; but I haven't really tested how fast the gps is on ground, where there may still be cell tower reception; only really tested while flying, but I think slowness in gps detection may also be related to the speed  of motion and constant major adjustment... /shrug/  It's more a fun idea than a serious consideration :P

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5 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

With these broad WPs, I could see someone placing a non sequential one in the ocean for cruise ship passengers. Say in the Pacific, on regular cruise routes. How wide can the area be for each WP? Kms?

Scary thought. I think I'm seeing why they archived virtuals. If you allow anything, eventually people come up with ideas that are ridiculous.

 

5 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

I know if you visit a WP you can later answer the question from somewhere else. I have done that for questions that needed research. Can more than one WP be saved like that for later? IE, visit several WPs, but answer them later. Then again, you need to have wi-fi, and I never have on any cruise ship I have been on.

I don't know all the details, but my experience from doing ALs is that if you get close enough when you are in the stage's "See details" screen -- i.e., it stops saying "get closer" and unlocks the "answer" button -- then you can answer later. From what I've seen, you can put off answering for all the stages of the AL, and even other ALs at the same time. But you do need to be in each stage's "See details" screen at the right time. It's not good enough to have the AL open and displayed on the map. The app doesn't notice that you're close enough unless you're looking at the stage's details.

 

As you say, the real problem is wifi or cell data. Wifi and data have no bearing on getting closer or on unlocking the question, though. But it is required to load the AL in the first place, and I find the AL app "forgets" the AL so often that it's dollars to donuts I'll have to load it again -- and hence be out of luck if I don't have connectivity -- before I manage to get close enough to all the stages.

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If an adventure lab somehow encourages illegal behavior and is reported, it will likely be removed.  Otherwise, as NanCycle said, there is no approval process.  That makes it a lot less expensive for HQ.  You should see some of the stuff that gets in!  Misspellings galore (including location names and answers), multiple labs having the same question at the same spot, etc.

 

Think about them as nothing like geocaches and you will not go far wrong.

 

FWIW, I actually like the airport ones.  It gives me something to do there.

Edited by fizzymagic
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As an experiment, I reported an airport AL with locations in the passenger-only terminal areas and on the runway/tarmac - all obviously intended to be locationlees.

 

I don't know how long the review process for reported problems takes, but it's been over a week and the AL is still active.

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I swore I just did an airport AL that Was about different airlines  on my recent trip to Hawaii. I can't find it in my recent views or on a search. Frustrating because I only got to do 1 earthcache to get my Hawaii souvenir and these airport ALS. The Honolulu one shows but this one was in Vegas I'm pretty sure and I had to use a search to get exact spelling. I never got the Phoenix one-completely forgot.

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I honestly don’t see the reasoning behind getting ad labs removed because maybe they stretch the rules. If GS takes down one, then all should be taken down. Same goes with rest stop ad labs. I personally have had one removed along with  19 other COs. The labs were not bothering anyone and in fact, they very much appreciated. Unfortunately someone complained and they were archived. Many rest stop ad lab art exist all over still but for us, one person got ours and ours alone removed. 
You don’t have to find every cache. Let folks play as they want. 

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On 4/3/2023 at 4:32 PM, rnrgrl said:

I honestly don’t see the reasoning behind getting ad labs removed because maybe they stretch the rules. If GS takes down one, then all should be taken down. Same goes with rest stop ad labs.

 

Every single Adventure Lab in the entire world that does not relate to its GPS location should be removed. Period.

 

Groundspeak's failure to address the widespread problem of deliberate 'play anywhere' ALs is shamefully negligent. They remove what gets reported, but do nothing about the larger issue and remain silent on it.

 

All of the geocachers who are knowing and deliberately placing the airport, rest area, geoart, etc should be ashamed of themselves for violating both the spirit of the hobby and the written rules (Require players to physically visit Adventure Locations) in the name of "fun" (actually: padding numbers because of your unhealthy hypercompetitive quantity-driven mentality).

 

Side note: I did a rest area AL a few days ago. It actually asked questions based on informative signs at the Welcome Center and took me to a statue I wouldn't have otherwise noticed. That's what a rest area AL should look like.

 

My Premium Membership expires in September. If Groundspeak continues their half-assed response to this issue it's unlikely I will renew, and will largely quit geocaching as a result.

 

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5 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

My Premium Membership expires in September. If Groundspeak continues their half-assed response to this issue it's unlikely I will renew, and will largely quit geocaching as a result.

 

That's your call, of course, but I encourage you to not let how other people play the game affect your enjoyment of the game.  I'm personally not a big fan of lab caches and I created a second (basic member) account to find lab caches for when I need to find that type in order to find a mystery bonus cache based on an Adventure.  Some people are all about the numbers and good for them if that floats their boat.  I found 30 caches last year total but they were caches I enjoyed finding, and I'm still a Premium Member to support the hobby which has opened up so many doors for me.

 

Here are two rest stop Adventure "power trails" (without the trails) near me that people use to greatly increase their numbers.  I believe the first one can be done from one's car and it's around 150 lab caches, the second I don't know about but there are over 50 Adventures that make it up.  I ignore them, others enjoy them, my numbers are small compared to lots of others but that doesn't bother me.  I don't feel more pure or wholesome about my cache finds or numbers, I just like certain cache types and am not into others.

 

IMG_3750.thumb.jpg.9358d5d5f12d35e38f4a4bf07a539c47.jpg   IMG_3751.thumb.jpg.e31b34a6cef69a6bc56343c6c58fc7ea.jpg

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9 hours ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

I encourage you to not let how other people play the game affect your enjoyment of the game.

 

There are a lot of legitimate ways to pad numbers with ALs. I am fine tolerating ones that are legitimate but seem uninteresting or outright lame, just as I do for regular geocaches.

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There's a difference between taking advantage of the framework within the spirit of the activity, and taking advantage of loopholes that promote an activity that's not in line with the spirit of the activity. "You don't have to find them all" applies nicely to geocaches you simply don't like or prefer... But we report problem geocaches that break guidelines (or they don't get published). ALs don't have that same ability. So the AL map may be littered with locations that are still in line with the intent of the AL activity that we may choose to skip, but we're also seeing proliferation of ALs that simply have nothing to do with [precise] location and are just to pad numbers.

The difficulty is the arbitrary aspect that geocaches are physical so they take space in the real world, while AL locations are virtual so ultimately they don't "affect" anything but icons on a map and statistics that affect no one.  ... but, it also affects the presentation, expectation, reception, and implied spirit of that activity. The more you allow things that are actually against the guidelines, the more the general/uninformed public think it's normal and allowed, and get angry if it gets "taken away", blaming the perpetrators (not TPTB but those who report) and vilify them.

It's a hornet's nest. And complacency is letting it grow so no one wants to touch it, let alone kick it =/

Edited by thebruce0
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