"My experience with Paris raids and the Safari Zone"

#PokemonGO: Paris has been amazing.I traveled here from the States with my boyfriend. We got here on Thursday, which was great because we got the chance to settle in, make sure our temporary SIM cards worked, and do some lucky eggs with the new Pokestops.On Friday (the day before the event), we did our first Entei raid at a large mall. There were a lot of people around but we didn't know who was playing, so my boyfriend asked someone if he was there for the raid. The guy just gave him a look and said, "Everyone is here for the raid." After the egg hatched at least 3 lobbies with 20 people each, maybe more, filled up. No one was talking and no one wanted to split into groups and my French isn't good enough for me to have tried to get a group so we just went with it. Never seen anything like it; I don't know if that's what Paris is always like or if there were a lot of people there early for the Safari Zone.After the event was over, two legendary raids spawned outside of the mall. One had a 2m30s timer and there other had a 50s timer - I guess they shortened the times to give us something to do because it was 8:30pm at that point and we hadn't had the chance yet to raid that day because there were no gyms at the event. This time people split into teams at least, but still went in with big groups (I tried saying "On peut gagner avec six!" but that didn't work.) I caught all 3 of my Entei.On Saturday, we decided to go early in case there was a long line to check in. We got there at around 8:30 (the event was officially scheduled to start at 10) and there was already a line outside the door. When we got in the door there was one huge crowd and it was confusing, but I was able to figure a staff person was directing people to different areas based on team (they spoke only in French). While in line, I caught 3 Unown and other rares, so I'm sure the event was fun for those without tickets as well. When we got to the front they scanned our QR codes off of our phones and did not check ID. Then we got our goodie bags and Pikachu hats, checked in to get the event badge, and started catching! The whole process took about 30 minutes.Signal was good all day. I often had signal issues but they almost always resolved within a minute. Having a dedicated event wifi was definitely the way to go.I used the plus throughout the event. I thought I wouldn't because the event was all rare, hard to catch Pokemon but there was just so much to catch. I manually spun stops, manually caught whatever I really wanted, and let the plus try for everything else (carefully checking to make sure the plus wasn't attempting to catch a Pikachu, Magikarp, Unown, or Kangaskhan). I prefer to play without a plus 99% of the time but at an event like this I can't imagine playing without one.I quickly figured out that shiny Pokemon would be the most rare Pokemon at the event, so I prioritized shinies. After catching enough Pikachu to get the Pikachu badge, I would just click to see if it was shiny and run away if it wasn't. I ended up with 3 shiny Magikarp but no shiny Pikachu.The event ended at 8:28 pm (scheduled to end at 8:00). When it ended, I got an error when I clicked on event Pokemon and the stops all said "try again later".Overall, it was a great event! via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2x8c9ZO