"Report from the Paris Safari Zone"

#PokemonGO: Greeting Travellers! Now that I've caught up on sleep I thought I'd add my report from the Paris Safari Zone event!I had to go over to France from the UK and come back on the same day due to prior commitments on Friday and Sunday, which meant it was all rather rushed. It was just about possible, leaving at 4am and getting home at 11:30pm. The things I do for Pokemon! Because of delays in customs and a delayed connecting train I ended up scanning my QR code at 11am and leaving the mall at 6pm to catch my flight home, giving me about 6 hours of catching after breaks for food.Arriving an hour after the event started registration was pretty painless, and I got my pack 10 minutes after entering the Mall. The staff were friendly, but clearly very busy indeed. I struggled to connect to the game at first, even with the dedicated WiFi, but after moving away from the registration area and stage I was able to connect without any problems. This remained an issue throughout the day. If I went too close to the stage my game would lag or crash. The Mall was large enough that I just avoided it.After connecting I found a sheltered corner, popped a luck egg and clicked on a Pikachu as that seemed an appropriate way to start the event. Shiny! My very first catch of the event was a shiny, my first ever, which gave me quite a false impression of how common they were! I picked up my second shiny Pikachu just before lunch, and didn't catch a shiny Magikarp until 20 minutes before I had to leave. I was so relieved! Despite living in a water biome, I'd never caught one. I talked to a few other players and the shiny rate from this very small sample seemed to be 1-4 per person, though there were a couple with none and one player with 6!The dedicated Pokemon WiFi was excellent. It dropped maybe 15 times during the morning, but reconnected instantly, and after lunch I had no issues at all as long as I stayed away from the stage.In terms of Pokemon the event was fantastic. Larvitar, Chansey, Unnown, Pikachu, Magikarp, Mareep, Machop, Gen 1 Starters, Totodile, Clefairy and Skarmory (?). I mostly caught things manually, letting the Go+ tackle the starters, Machops and other non-essential spawns. I was targeting Larvitar (Pinap), Chansey (Pinap), Pikachu and Magikarp, plus the event Unowns. My final tally was:87 Larvitar47 Chansey123 Pikachu (2 Shiny)148 Magikarp (1 Shiny)19 Unown (S, A, F, R, I)225 or so Mareep, Machop and Starters40 Eggs (6 Pichu (no shiny), 6 Larvitar, 5 Magikarp (no shiny), 4 Sudowoodo, 4 Pineco, 3 Lapras, 3 Snorlax, 3 Militank, 3 Mareep, 2 Skarmory, 1 Dratini)Unown were less common than the London event, though I managed to get all five by lunchtime.As an event there was very little to do besides grind. The only regional available was Kangaskahn and they announced fairly early on that there would be no special raid. There were rumours that the regionals would rotate, but it never happened. Which meant it was purely a walk (or sit) and grind event. While I have no complaints about the haul, going home with almost 600 Larvitar candy, it did feel like a missed opportunity.Additionally the event was very divorced from the location. I know that hosting in a sponsored mall didn't really give Niantic much to work with, but I could have been anywhere. Contrast this with the Big Heritage UK event, where local history was woven into the activities throughout the day which meant that I learned a lot about the history of Chester. Perhaps that didn't matter to all players, but it would have been nice to learn a little of the history of Paris, or the area of Paris I was in, while I played.Overall I'm really glad I was lucky enough to get a ticket, and just wish I'd been able to stretch the trip to the whole weekend and do some raids and explore Paris on the Sunday. I imagine that my very compressed timetable added to my frustrations over the location as I couldn't explore the city.If you're wondering whether to go to a future Safari Zone, I'd say it depends what you want to get out of it. If you want to grind out huge numbers of Larvitar and Chansey with a decent shot at a shiny, go! If you want an Event, with things to do beyond catching Pokemon and walking around a Mall, I'd recommend avoiding the Safari Zone altogether, or going to the city in question and exploring outside. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2woyzZG