Original post 01 Oct 2007
Okay, here's the deal. I am writing my own review, but there's a more professional one at the bottom, that i found on another website. So you can just scroll down to the ***** if you want.
I've been shooting my friends and co-workers with paintball guns for the past 7 years now. Me and my buds have this twice-a-year game since like 2002 and we always go to Bigfoot Painball. I am trying to watch my language in case there's younger readers, but i am very tempted to use the term, ''Bigfuck Paintball''
It's the only place i ever went, and everybody's favourite. But i've noticed a steady decline of quality since my first time there around 1999.
First time i went there, i immediatly fell in love with their maps. It is said that Bigfoot Paintball is the biggest outdoors Paintball terrain in Canada, and i believe it. Various types of fields are offered. From the islands-and-bunkers map called Waterworld, to the high-grass and small hills terrain of Cambodia, to the dreaded one-sided hills and exciting medieval castles populated with underground tunnels.
The qualities end there. From the unfriendly, over-zealous, in love with themselves, too young, unqualified crew to the just-bend-over-and-take-it prices and policies, this organisation is decomposing like a putrid carcass.
Over the years, i have watched assholes-in-training become super-head-master-i'm-the-top-shit-here. I know this, because they have this hierarchy that you can simply attain by doing initiations, not by being very good at paintball or very good at serving the customers. In fact, that last part, i'm pretty sure they don't mention it to their employees whatsoever.
Newcomers wear the yellow shirts. They are usually shy, try to act cool, say lame jokes, but still try to do a good job. Orange shirts is when you earn a promotion i guess. These staffers are sometimes friendly, sometimes total assholes, always trying to sell you shit. They understand that if they want that blazing red shirt, they need to play by Bigfoot's rules.
Finally, the dreaded red shirts. Often wearing desert camo tactical vests, with their nickname proudly written on it, walking around like they own your life. They are not here to help you. They are here to help the boss make more money, by lubing your waste-processor-exit-hole, and by helping the orange shirts understand how to make you drop the soap. I have also noticed that they same the same lame jokes. Everybody. And they've been saying them for the past 8 years at least. But enough about the staff.
The preparation. They ask you to be there around 8 am, so that we can start playing at 9. Except the map they give on the website is very plain and devoid of useful information. That's what they do, remember that: they make things look simple and easy. The place is situated in a little village 1 hour or plus from Montréal. So you have to leave at 7. Usually, we all meet up at 6 am for team breakfast. That's pretty early. But then, at around 8:30, they announce that they will start explaining the rules.
They go over the regulations pretty quickly, but then start to explain all the cool, nifty, cheap packages offered to you. Bigger guns, better ammo, that kind of stuff. By the time they are finished and you are served, dressed, armed and ready to kill, it's 10. All over-priced, if you ask me. Don't expect to have fun if you don't spend at least a 100 big fat ones.
And so it begins. You first walk to a designed cemetary, where you will go when you die, waiting for your next game, talking with the other casualties about how you got shot up the ass while going up a ladder. By a friend. Then the group proceeds to the designated terrain. Then you play. Then you walk back to the cemetary. And repeat. I remember one year, a friend of mine got frustrated because he said we ''are doing more walking than playing. We're paying to take a healthy walk through the woods''. We actually negotiated with our judge, so that we could simply stay at this terrain when we died, and we immediatly re-played when the game was over. This let us play 4 games in the time we could normally play 2 rounds. We were able to negotiate, because the judge was a yellow shirt, just starting. So he still clinged to the illusion that customer service was important to Bigfoot Paintball. That, and he must have been 16, so maybe we were intimidating to him.
This blog is getting way too long, and i still have lots of complaining to do, so i'll just let you in on a big fat lie they say.
Since 1999, they've been saying that it's the last year you can by a life-membership. EVERY YEAR for the past 8 years they've been saying that, in order to motivate people to buy them. That's a lie, and i hate liars. Also, now they introduced the VIP life-membership. For a small fee, they will actually pretend to care about you. This let you literally cut into line when it's time to pay. They give you this little bracelet, and when they see you at the members-only counter, they'll leave their post to help you. My friend who is a member but not a VIP, was left waiting for 10 minutes however.
So, overall, this place is a GREAT place to play, awesome terrains and very cool scenarios, even if very often, one team is over-powering the other simply because of field advantage. However, the organisation is crumbling, the staffers are recycled schoolyard bullies, the guns and masks are cheap and everything is over-priced. My mask's glass was all scratched, and with the money they are making from fucking people over, i'm pretty sure they can afford better equipment maintenance.
Here's another good review i found on the internet, if you feel so inclined.
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The biggest field in Canada, and also one of the worst when it comes to customer service. I will admit that most of the staff is really nice, acting professionally 95% of the time. However, the two owners are a very good example of how callous and rude a pair of individual quickly become when life puts them in charge of something. I was a regular customer for more than 7 years at this field and saw many thing go wrong.
The price per case is probably the highest in Quebec, starting at 120$ for 1000 rounds of El-Cheapo (Midnight for example). If you want something of a higher grade because your marker needs it, then 140$ is what you will have to drop (Blaze for example) in order to get semi-decent paint in your marker. Rental prices are horrible if you do not want the old Tippman everybody gets and that is, at best, a poor excuse for holding a bottle of CO2. For example, a friend of mine rented a Spyder with nitro (WOW!!) for 100$ extra. At the end of the day, he said he wanted to buy the marker but they would not give him a credit for the 100$ he had already spent on the rental. For a good laugh, link to their site and look at the "Navy Seal" package for 229$, where somebody has managed to attach a tube to a Tippman so it looks (and probably wants to act, check with its psychiatrist) as a bazooka. They describe this contraption (my translation): "Marker developed for army forces training (pity the fool!) combining a high performance marker and a rocket launcher". A squirrel would be more dangerous throwing peanut shells on a rainy day. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that for this price you also get a walkie-talkie. Would have been a good idea to give two instead, so you don't spend the rest of the day talking to the radio instead of talking using the radio. Strangely one could possibly have the strange idea that they only give you one so somebody else would also spent 229$ through peer pressure. Of course, a fellow reviewer said that they were not in the business to make money, so quickly go check on their site to buy Oakley's boots "Elite Special Forces Standard Issue" for a mere 350$ while supplies last.
As a member of a larger group, I was often required to get there around 7:30 in the morning , but the game would not start before 10:30. They are horrible from an organization point of view, and while the opening speech dedicated to the new players is supposed to define security, they will tell people during those speeches to do things that grossly go against to the most elementary rules on security. For example, somebody who gets killed should walk with his marker in the air to the safe zone. No problem there. Of course, if you are dead then you cannot talk, so if somebody talks while he is dead shoot him repeatedly in the head. I had brought a 12 year old kid with me that day, and I was watching him play from the safe zone since I was eliminated. We were playing in the fort, so the kid gets nailed climbing a ladder. However, he was shot so often and so repeatedly that he panicked while on the ladder, neither going up or down but just screaming "I'm hit! I'm hit!". I told him to get down and walk out, but he was probably too panicked to listen. Then the guy 2 feet away from me points his marker my way and says I should shut up or he will paint me. I just left the safe zone and went to pick up the kid before he gets injured. Good thing Rambo did not shoot, because I would have hated to call the police on the field for assault. They also said that if you think you shot a guy and he does not call himself dead, then next time shoot him 10 time to make sure that he won't be able to wipe the bruise. But hey, are you a man or not?
I saw their "pro" team play against beginners. That was so funny, you hear these guys talk about how their "pro team" goes to big tournaments in Toronto and compete, but they always forget to mention that they get their butts handed back to them on a silver plate every time. One should keep in mind that participating in a tournament does not make you a "pro", but making a living out of it does. If you want to be a pro, then start acting like a pro and train, because cleaning used equipment with a rag for 9.95$/hour hardly qualifies. The best part was when they were giving each other high fives for winning against beginners in army fatigue playing on what they call the "speedball" field, which is nothing else than a junkyard filled with barrels and giant tires. The fact that they had angels, timmies and cockers against Tippman was probably not a significant factor in them pulling this awesome win against a bunch of people who probably had 2 hours of paintball experience all together.
The scenery is fantastic and will probably provide one of the best setting one can imagine for outdoor play. The fields are diversified, large and numerous and will provide you with the whole spectrum of physical challenges during your play, from a spectacular forest to swamps to hills. There is also some man-made structures that are very interesting if your play is more scenario oriented. The food is also great and fresh, plus they have a beer permit on site for those of us who must drink a lot of alcohol to forget the fact that the intimate communion one can feel with Mother Earth by spending a beautiful day in the woods can easily be lost if the place in question is owned by two shaved monkeys.
I will give it a four, because the trees and the staff are very nice.
