I’m planning on doing Sorcerers with the older niece this trip for the first time ever, as we’ll be spending lots of time at MK, and she’s not into M&Gs at all anymore (while her younger sister is all about them at the moment).
I have 3 main questions…
Is it something we can do in little bit here and there, or should it be played on longer chunks of time dedicated to the game? In other words, can we work on a quest or mission or whatever it’s called in 15-25 minutes while the little one does one thing, and then come back to it easily a couple of hours later when we have another 20 minutes?
One day when we’ll have a good 90 minutes or so of nothing else going on is the day when the MK closes at 4:30. After the 2:00 parade the little one is going back to the hotel for a break, and I’ll stay with the older one before we all meet up at HS later. In the TP is says that Sorcerers “closes” at 3:30… will the portals close, or is that just when they will no longer issue new cards or start new games? It doesn’t show a closing time on any other day.
Do we have to do something every time we visit MK, or will picking up card packs count as signing in or something?
You can choose what area to play in, Main St, Adventureland, Frontierland, Liberty Square. You have to start at the portal near the fire station. But within the land you will be sent randomly between the portals. To complete a land you would probably need 30 to 45 minutes, and would be covering a fair bit of ground.
It’s also addictive lol, and if your niece enjoys it she may well want to continue!
You can pick up from where you left off before. But you’d have to remember where you last were. I think I read it can now be played using your magic band. To get the cards you have to go back to the fire station after each game. The cards would be nice to collect.
Without giving anything away, the reason it can take a while is because although you have a map with the portals marked on it, you are given visual clues as to where your next portal is. You aren’t following from portal 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 on the map. You’re randomly sent to your next one, with maybe a picture of something near the portal. You then have to go find it! If you’re wrong it’ll repeat the clue.
Depending on the age of the child, and how much help they will accept, it can be frustrating if they just madly dash from one portal to another where they see people waiting.
Can’t help with the closing time, I would think that’s the fire station, but they could switch things off I guess.
You can play as little or as much as you want. We did it sporadically in the lands. We tried to do a few portals at a time as they are typically close together. I would say that would be 10 minutes if at the first portal.
3.You can only get cards if you have opened a portal the prior visit after you have started the game. When you you pick up cards they can tell you where you need to start again. Make sure you join the game because each player gets a pack of cards.
The reason I said 30 minutes plus was we found there were fairly long queues at each portal.
One day, there was a couple in their twenties playing who EVERY time tried playing about six different cards. Obviously they were die hard fans who were playing multiple levels at once, but it was really annoying for little kids (and parents ) waiting. Where there were CMs to help, they did make them rejoin the line after 2 or 3, but that didn’t happen everywhere
Another day it was really quick. Just luck I guess. And lucky for me that DS then was quite happy to go off and play himself. He loved it, he was 12/13 and is not a fan of many rides.
Thanks everyone… the older niece (10yo) will be into the collecting aspect, and we’re staying at BLT, so it shouldn’t be hard for us to pop in and pick up cards each day. So we have to have a portal currently open, as in be in the middle of an unfinished land in order to get new cards?
I think it just means you have to have actually started playing. If you’ve completed a level or a land that’s fine. It’s to stop people just collecting the cards every day without ever actually playing.
We were told that you had to have opened a portal the previous visit. I believe it’s to prevent you from just collecting the cards. There can be adults waiting at the portals looking to trade cards. I had no idea they were so collectible. I looked and the cards are on Ebay
Some portals send you to other portals without the need to defeat a villain. We played in late August/early September and we never had but one player before us. Mostly the portals were empty upon our arrival. Crowd calendar was mostly 5 or below.
I believe the only place to get cards and start play is at the Sorcerers of the magic Kingdom which is next to City Hall.
ETA we only completed one land but the my 9 & 12 yo boys liked it a lot. They really liked the cards but they also like Pokemon.
Okay, so if we pick them up when we arrive at MVMCP (at 4:00) on our first day then we’ll need to play one portal so we can get more when we return on day 3, but since we’ll be playing on day 3 then we’re good to get more on day 5?
You are also able to get an entire new set of packs (1 pack for each player in your group) when you beat the final villain in the level. You can then restart at a more difficult level (or play the same difficulty again.)
Note on trading: It is a great interaction with fellow players, but not all cards are equal.
Most players stick to trading only Star cards for Stars, Planet cards for Planets etc. (Noted by the symbols on the bottom of the cards.)
Good luck and enjoy! My 5YO is totally addicted to collecting and playing (the park version and the home version…lets not even talk about my efforts to help him gather all of the Lightning cards and Party cards…)
I will be there when you are @Nikkipoooo. We plan to play as well. Maybe we’ll bump into each other at a portal and trade cards!
Are you doing the Pirates Adventure too. I like the idea of getting a free Pirates of the Caribbean FP+ after two missions. Wish you could earn FP+s through SoMK too!
@Aesalon101, So if you complete an entire level in one day, it is possible to get more than one set of cards? My DSs aren’t big fans of rides, so I expect to play this a lot! Also, I have read that the harder levels were so glitchy and took so much longer than the easy level that they were creating a huge bottleneck so they took them offline. Sounds like they fixed it?
That is correct - you will get your one pack per player (as long as you have played a portal since you received your last packs of cards) and once you have defeated all 9 major villains you may go back to the Fire Station and start again which will include another round of cards.
This also doesn’t need to be in a single day if you are visiting MK multiple times your game carries over and you will get the extra packs whenever you finish off the lead baddie.
When we were there in June we started the second level - it is more challenging,but doesn’t really take longer. (You fail more often, but they remove ‘Sorcerers Crest’ encounters so your number of portals is about the same.)
I’m actually starting to get really excited for this… I’ve been worried that the 10 year old is going to be disappointed/bored because it’s usually been either just her and me (so we can do whatever she likes), or we’ve at least had another family that has a kid her age. Our overall TP has lots of divide and conquer periods (which has resulted in having 2 separate TPs in most cases), but I haven’t wanted to really go off into different parks a whole lot so we’re still pretty heavy on the MK. She’s not really a gamer, but I’ve recently gotten her into Pokemon Go and she’s been into reading maps and giving directions lately, so I think she’ll get a kick out of using the map to find portals, and it looks like this will be a good way to eat up some of the time at MK.
How do you choose which area to play in? The portal kept telling us which land to go to (including when we got our first cards). After we defeated a villain in one land, Merlin told us the next land and portal to find.
Ah, ok. I had never played until last week. I used my magic band to unlock the portal during the tutorial at the fire station, the CM used one of our cards when instructed, and the portal told us where to go. It seems like the CM had no idea what was going to show up on the screen.
