The accuracy of this review is disputed. Please see discussion below.
Period of Field Use:
Just once
Date There:
July 2nd, 2006
Paintball Experience:
More than 5 years
Other Fields in the Area:
Used to play at the old Bear Creek, Woodstalk, Venture Games, Carpet Bobs, Mare Isle, etc.
Review:
I flew out from the east coast to visit a Bay-area friend. He usually plays arena-style ball, but I wanted to play some woods games, so we settled on Bear Creek. Neither of us were very happy with our experience.
CONS
• LONG delays between games. Playing from the beginning to the end, I think we managed 8 games. Back in the days of giant woods fields (anyone remember Prime Time Paintball in Vallejo?), 8 games a day was doing good. Bear Creek however isn’t much more than an oversized speedball field, and you should be able to get twice that number of games in a day. Having to chrono before every game is overkill, but even that shouldn’t take that long if the field operators tried to speed things up.
• No pink paint. I never heard a good explanation for why pink paint will cause more problems than any other color, but if you show up with that color paint, you’re screwed. Yes they do have a small sign at the registration desk, but wouldn’t a warning on the web page be expected?
• No field variety. Yes, their one field is nice. It’s good sized, has a good variety of bunkers and some interesting vertical terrain. Playing the same field all day gets old though. If they don’t have the land to add another field, how about playing occasional half-field games?
• Mandatory surrender rule. This is a personal peeve of mine. Whenever a field requires that a surrender be accepted (ie, you can’t turn around and try and shoot the person calling the surrender on you), you start running into people that will use it as a defensive weapon. That’s where a person hiding behind a bunker will tell you to surrender even though they can’t see you, and they don’t even have their marker pointed at you. It should be mandatory to call for a surrender within a certain distance. It should be optional if you want to accept it.
PROS
• As I said above, they have a pretty nice field.
• The people (workers and other players) were for the most part helpful and well-behaved.
This place has the potential to be a really great paintball field. All of the CONS I listed could be corrected without that much trouble. I would not recommend playing at the field until some of these things get fixed.
Dispute: just a quick side not their surrender rule is 15 feet and you need to have your gun pointed at them you cant surrender someone you cant see and the refs are certified NPPL refs
the delays between games are not that long. Granted, the first one might take a while because people are still getting ready. However, the noobies with rentals don't have to chrono, and most of the other people *should* know how to adjust velocity on their markers. Overall, when I go, it takes around 5 mins.
About the pink paint...first, it's pink or red. Second, My friend brought some red paint, and the ref simply checked it. It was a thinner fill(average fill, just like bonus balls). The stuff they're talking about is like the toothpaste stuff, which is just gross.
Field variety..there's plenty, you just need to be creative
Mandatory surrender rule:they must have their gun pointed at you from under 15 feet. they must also yell surrender. If they don't, you may yell surrender and get THEM out. This rule is mainly to avoid bunkering and therefore assuring that no new little kids go home crying.
My bro is a jerk, and enjoys making them go home crying. He claims that they are annoying (I don't agree) He is hitting me right now for typing this... anyway he does this by shooting marbalizers(or used to). It is FAIRLY cold up there (in the morning), and those things bounce a bunch. The result: PAIN.
dude? go there more than once... amost ALL your cons were wrong... you cant say that it was a bad place or a good place if you onkly been there once, they do do the half fied games and you do have to be able to see the other player and be within 14 feet to surrender them. another thing is that they hvae to have the surrender rule for one of their game types, the game is atack and defend, you have one palyer that cant be shoot and killed you have to surrender him... you would know that if you went there more than once. have a great day...
