Article written by Mythical, GO Hub forum member and moderator.
We are a group of 3 Mystic Players from Sibiu Romania, who travelled over 2000 km to attend the Oberhausen Safari Event in Germany. Seeing how one of us did not manage to get a ticket (QR Code), this report will cover both points of view.
- Doors opened at 8 AM, we arrived there around ~8:30AM
- We waited in line for less than 5 minutes, everything went by very smooth and fast. Being foreigners, we had to present our passports upon registration.
- We received our ‘Trainer Kit’ containing a brochure/map, Team sticker, Team rubber bracelet, Pikachu fold-it hat and the QR Code
- Around 9:30AM, after grabbing a coffee and a quick breakfast to go, we proceeded to register our QR code at the special PokeStop
- The second we scanned our QR code, all the Safari Zone PokeStops appeared
- We checked out all Team lounges and this is how they looked:
My overall experience was very good, few connectivity issues here and there, a lot of GPS drifting, lots of people and good times. I bought a local data SIM card which turned out to be worse than my actual SIM card on roaming.
We had WiFi inside, which worked flawless in some areas of the mall and horrible in others (near the entrance for example). Managed to catch 2 shiny Pikachus, got to level 39 and met Reversal in person. I think it was worth it.
My friend who did not manage to get a ticket…well, his experience was different. The mall area was empty, no PokeStops whatsoever, he had to go to the park across the street from the mall to be able to benefit from the Safari Event spawns. Because of the amount of people roaming around there, connectivity was horrible in some areas. The outside area was filled with lures all day so it wasn’t that bad, but the second you would get close to the mall, things got a bit weird.
My friend would see the spawns from the Lures inside the mall (although he couldn’t see the PokeStops) and if he tried to tap on the spawns, they would become buggy and would change to regular spawns in 1-2 seconds (see video below).
In the picture below you can see the amount of PokeStops available for people without a QR Code. Keep in mind, these Stops were across the Mall, not inside. Overall it was a very nice experience because he managed to catch a lot of rare Pokemon and a shiny Magikarp (his 4th one). Oh, and he also heard a lady say “…ugh, the 3rd Shiny Pikachu today…”.
