"Ups and Downs of the Safari Zone in Dortmund: My personal experience"

#PokemonGO: Currently sitting in my hotel and have some free time, so here's my report of the past 3 days. Thought you guys are interested. I'm trying to be as detailed and objective as possible, so you get a good overview of how the Safari Zone generally went for me and for others and possibly showing what the future might bring.DAY 0: The day beforeMe and 3 friends started driving to Dortmund on Friday. It all went pretty well and we got there at ~3pm. My hotel is located right next to the park, so I thought I'd walk and check out what the staff is preparing. I took some pics and made 2 Reddit posts about it, trying to be a bit more detailed. You can check them on my profile.I noticed that the Pokéstops were turning off and on the whole time. Whenever I restarted the App, the park looked completely different.Walking around, I spotted the YouTube Squad at a Team Lounge. But they seemed busy, so I was too shy to say Hi.After 30 Minutes, I left the park to visit a supermarket. When trying to get back in, I noticed that the tickets were 1-time use only. 3.50€ well spent. (other 2 days were free)I then spent another 1.50€ to get a perfect Wailmer that got reported. Just a few other people getting it, NOTHING compared to the Spawns that would come later this event.DAY 1Me and another 3 friends met at ~8:30am. 30 Minutes before the event began.This is where it all started. Our entrance was poorly organized. Please take a look at this beautiful MapThe red line started around 6am - 3 hours before start. However, the blue lines formed at 8:30. At 9am, blue was allowed to enter the park first, making red really angry. So red started walking towards the entrance (yellow dot), forming a huge crowd of people in the middle of a street. I took several pictures and videos of this. Album Video PlaylistNow, it would not have been that bad. But people weren't allowed to enter until 9:45am - leaving this huge crowd getting bigger and bigger instead of smaller. It even got tighter due to cars trying to get through, as it was in the middle of a street.When the gates finally opened, I got in pretty early compared to others. I think there were only 4 staff members to check backpacks. But they were pretty quick so I personally think that's reasonable.Also note that AFAIK, this was the only entrance with these problems. Others should've been fine.Now comes the fun part: service not being available at all for the whole time waiting in line AND in the park. I only got into the game at the Team Lounges which had Wi-Fi, getting a glimpse of what's going on in-game. Also, no special boost in-game for Team Lounges. One had a Pokéstop that's there on normal days but that was it.The crowd in there was huge, I could barely even walk. Literally every Trainer currently in Dortmund was in that park. Quick Video of a small parkThen a 100% Larvitar got reported at the other side of the park and I quickly got it! Had to restart my phone, the game and cell services for 10 minutes. Video PlaylistAt this time, Niantic already tweeted out that the city now had the same spawn rates as the Park, so we decided to go there instead.Looking back at Park Visit #1:• 2 hours waiting• 30 minutes in-game• 1 hour running around without serviceDriving to the city, my friend noticed they couldn't get in, while everything ran perfectly for me. It later turned out lots of people temporary lost access to their accounts for 5 hours because they used an Incense. That's Game breaking bug number 1.I walked around alone, got some shinies and ate a bit until my friends got back in again.Normal Event Gameplay experience from now on.I later visited the the Park again. In there, I met Nick - my personal highlight of this day. He seemed really tired but was nice to everyone. He's also shorter than I expected - even shorter than me and I'm only 16 years old.Another 100% Larvitar appeared (didn't get this one) but the crowd was HUGE. Probably around 2000 people on a very small space. It was located on the other side of a pond, so everyone had to pass a small little bridge, really making everything real cramped. VideoI then went to a Silph Road Meetup but quickly left after I heard marcoceppi talking a bit about what's going on. I just feel uncomfortable in big crowds of people being double my age.The Event was supposed to end at 10pm. However, it lasted through the whole night.That's it for Day 1. It was generally pretty fun for me but let down a lot of people.DAY 2This time, we decided to visit the city first. Everything went well there and we got some sweet 100% Pokémon. I didn't take a lot of photos but here's one of an 100% Unown U from a LureThe crowds at 100% Spots were massive but this time we had more space available compared to yesterday's 2nd Larvitar. I never saw so many people running at the same time to a supposedly random spot, forming a assembly of people getting bigger and bigger.We then tried raiding but that was impossible. Video of the crowdAfter that, there were 2 more Level 5 Eggs, but I noticed one disappearing randomly and one changing into a Level 4 Egg (it showed the Level 5 egg on the gym, when I clicked on it, it updated to a level 4 egg)At this point, one friend and I noticed that we both could not 1) search for Pokémon and 2) interact with gyms. We later found out that we both caught an Unown F with GoPlus. However, only DORTMUN were available. This Unown F glitched out the whole game. Whenever you tapped on it, the screen began to flicker real fast, showing wrong numbers and having a ball of light all the time. This Unown was untransferable, seemingly leaving no way to fix the issues. However, I could trade it to another Account and now everything's fine again.Now, I wanted to enter the Park for the last time. This time however, my 0.5L bottle didn't get accepted for the first time. (only 0.3L were allowed) I got through 5 times with a 0.5L bottle before that.At the end, I walked around the park. Nothing interesting except I was nearly run over by Reversal, Holly and the Japanese Guy, being filmed by a professional camera team and a huge crowd following them.I thought the Event would stay a little longer again, but it ended exactly at 6pm, just as it was supposed to.Also, I originally wanted to meet all the YouTubers and do Silph Road Handshakes with them, however Reversal was the only one tweeting out his location, making it really hard to find them. Generally pretty disappointing, as they seemed to be more focusing on video shooting rather than meeting their fans.General ObservationsBoosted Pokémon:Unown DORTMUN, Corsola, Larvitar, Ralts, Slakoth, Aerodactyl, Mudkip, Treecko, Torchic, Phanpy, Roselia, Magikarp, Pikachu, Swablu, WurmpleShiny Rates:The second day seemed to have increased Shiny rates. On day #1 I caught 6 shinies, 14 on day #2. I know that these are not enough data points but I heard a lot of people noticing the same thing. Could be RNG, but this only makes sense, as Day #1 was disappointing for many people.Eggs had everything in them. From Spheal to Chimeco. I was hoping for Shiny Babies but the only baby with a possible Shiny variant I hatched was a Pichu.No special RaidsNo special surprises.Summary:• My entrance was poorly organized• First few hours had a lot of Connection Problems• Bug where people couldn't access the game for 5 hours because of an Incense• Bug where a glitched out, untransferable Unown F didn't let you search for Pokémon or interact with Gyms• Impossible to do Legendary Raids, making Niantic remove/change them• Reversal was pretty much the only YouTuber who tweeted out where to meet him. Really disappointing, as I would've wanted to meet them all.My Opinion:Event was pretty fun overall. The park is nice, the things they set up were cool and the feeling running for a perfect monster with 500 people by your side is unique.Gameplay was OK - kinda tiring doing the same things for one whole weekend.Pretty disappointed there were no YouTuber meetups or special surprises, as these got teased a bit.Would I go again? Probably. Would I travel for more than 5 hours for this? No. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2KGz8kA