Review: Wasaga Beach Paintball Adventure, Elmvale, ON

[Kozure]

The Basic Details

Website: http://www.wasagapaintball.on.ca
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/wasagapaintball/
Airsoft Event Organizer Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/666227026777937/

Location: 3600 Vigo Road, Elmvale, ON, Canada, L0L 1P0
Admission: $25 + tax, cash, debit or credit card. Rentals available.
Hours: Event-based. See Facebook event page for details. Commonly Sundays, 10 – 4.
Field Rules: http://www.wasagapaintball.on.ca/airsoft.html


Getting There

Wasaga Beach Paintball Adventure is a little east of Wasaga Beach and a long shot up from Toronto along the 400 and Highways 53, 26 and 29. All-in-all it’s a 75-90 minute drive, depending on traffic, but that could potentially stretch longer on holiday weekends depending on when you leave. As such, it’s just at the outside edge of my 90 minute driving time radius from Toronto for reviews.



It’s well signed and easy to find, and a simple turn-off from Highway 92 onto Vigo Road. The complex is huge and impossible to miss.


First Impressions



My first impression was this was the largest and most professional paintball field I’ve yet to encounter. That said, most fields I’ve been to previously were indoor, with a handful of outdoor places. Probably there are larger facilities in the States and perhaps elsewhere in Canada, but I haven’t yet encountered them. It’s readily apparent that the main clientele of this field are paintballers, from the dozens of sponsorship posters and banners to the large number of paintball group games and events going on concurrently when I arrived.

Staff were very friendly and directed us to the Airsoft prep area, where a small number of airsofters were kitting up. I kept on looking around and being impressed by facilities and little touches that made it clear that this place had been around for the 25 years as advertised, and they had learned their lessons well along the way.

I was greeted by Jeremy Booth, filling in for his brother Vincent who had twisted his ankle in a previous game and couldn’t make it out that day. He was very friendly and I enjoyed speaking with him. Overall my first impression was very positive and I looked forward to trying the field out as soon as we could get ready.



Admission / Rental Equipment / Pro Shop / Facilities



Admission was $25 plus tax and the admission desk accepts all common forms of payment. The pro shop is mostly limited to paintball gear, but they do sell bio-BBs and green gas as well as a variety of smoke grenades. HPA is free with admission. They offer hydro testing of HPA vessels and they also have a free "power station". (an extension cord with a power bar - chargers are not provided).

The field has a single Airsoft rental package: $53.10 ($60 with tax) for a rifle, goggles and 1000 bio-BBs

The field also has the capacity for private field rental for Airsoft events, $44.27 per player with their own equipment, 1000 bio-BBs and 4 hours of play.

The indoor snack-bar carries chips, fruit, fudge, freezies (great idea!) chocolate bars, water, energy drinks and soft drinks as well, all for reasonable prices. Lunch food is on offer between 11 AM and 1 PM or so in the form of Burger John’s, a small BBQ grill manned by a friendly older gentleman named John. They have a $7 meal deal, with a burger or a sausage, bag of chips and an energy drink – hands down the best lunch deal at a field I’ve seen yet.

They also offer chicken or rib on a bun (not part of the meal deal) and some gluten free options.



Three separate covered staging areas, each with eight large picnic tables provide ample staging space for many players.



Two indoor bathrooms with flush toilets round out the luxury accommodations here.

There is a small testing area with a self-serve chronometer, as well as a larger shooting range with a number of targets at various distances.



The staging area is immediately next to the paths which lead to playing areas, and the demarcation of the safe area is very clear and well signed.



The town of Wasaga Beach, with dozens of restaurants and shops catering to the tourist trade, is only five minutes away.

Field / Terrain



(note map names for various sections of the field are outdated in some cases - )

The field is very large and divided into thirteen areas which are roped off with yellow cord. Areas range in size from the very small “Lockdown” to the very large “MIA/POW Camp”. Terrain ranges from almost completely open with urban structures and obstacles in “Lockdown” to very forested with far fewer man-made cover. Organizers are easily able to combine several fields into a single playing area for use with larger groups. For example, on the slightly outdated map above, the three larger central fields, “Valley”, “Ridge Runner” and “MIA/POW Camp” can be combined when the number of airsoft players exceed 60 or so.

Lockdown is a sort of CQB/kill-box kind of arrangement, with a very small playing area and lots of man-made obstacles and cover, designed to have a sort of "prison yard with surrounding police vehicles" theme. There is a small amount of trees on the north side.


(yes, that's a paintballer with rental equipment and gear in this photo - I came back to the field later in the day after our games were done)

Tippman (“Junkyard” on the map above) is larger, again with more man-made obstacles than natural cover, but with more space and a few military themed fortifications as well as mocked-up wooden tank, cannons and helicopters.





G.I. Town ("Blackhawk Town" on the map above) is a larger mix of forest and structures designed to resemble houses, sheds and fences, with a few larger buildings for CQB. The terrain is mostly flat, with a canopy of trees to keep off sun, but not much undergrowth, allowing for fast movement, especially along and next to the large roads and paths.







Crossfire Creek is a small to medium-sized field with hilly/sloped terrain and natural and man-made cover. A creek runs through the middle of the field, presenting an interesting natural water obstacle.



There was a smaller turn-out of players than is typical for a walk-on game day, about 25-30. Due to this, we were mostly limited to smaller fields. The fields are arranged so that joining them to make larger fields is very simple.

As with many fields whose primary focus is paintball, there is a lot of paint on various surfaces, maybe more than some other fields I’ve seen. If you’re worried about getting paint on your kit, it will happen.


Game play

Due to the August holiday weekend, it was a small turn-out of 25-30 players. We started with some simple single-life team deathmatch games on “Lockdown”, switching sides a few times as later arrivals joined the fray.

We then moved to G.I. Town, playing a slightly modified team deathmatch, where players had to return to the spawn area at a walking pace, move a token (in this case, a poker chip) from a bowl into another container, and then return to action. Because game-play was informal, a count of kills for each game was not taken. Switching sides again a few times, we broke for lunch.

The afternoon consisted of a few games at Tippman, again with the chip-based spawn limiter, and finally ending off at Crossfire Creek as players started to drift off for day.

We didn’t play any scenarios or special games; the organizers felt that with the limited number of players, simple deathmatch scenarios were best.

Personally, I find that you can organize interesting scenarios with numbers as small as 20 or 25 with a little effort and buy-in from the players, but I understood their rationale.


Referees / Administration

Our assigned ref/game controller had not moderated an Airsoft game before but, as always, the principals from paintball carry over easily. He took a mostly hands-off approach, allowing us to play and only really involving himself to call time and ending the games. The brightly striped red and safety yellow vest stood out easily.

It seemed like a well-behaved group and I didn’t see any missed hit-calling or questionable behaviour.

The organizers kept a brisk pace in getting people back into the game, which I appreciated. His attitude was “people came here to play, right?” Jeremy was very firm but fair with the chrono, and I saw him nix a couple of guns for firing too hot, asking them to switch to alternate weapons.


Possibilities for Improvement

Honestly, I can’t think of much here. Possibly if more Airsoft-related kit was sold at the pro-shop? I think Airsoft players always prefer that paint not be everywhere, but that would make this not a paintball field, and it's clear that paintball is this field's bread and butter.

Even with small numbers, I prefer to see more interesting game variants and scenarios. A minor quibble, though.

Any chance you can open a satellite field closer to Toronto? (Only for Airsoft? )

Overall

This field is really well run and structured. A nice variety of terrain (and I had seen only a third of it), top-notch facilities, friendly staff, reasonably priced food. The organizers from Sir Games-A-Lot were friendly and accommodating. The staging areas were clean and spacious, and the fields were interesting and presented unique tactical challenges at each one. There are a lot of “extras” that aren’t as common at other fields, such as flush toilets, shooting range, access to a chronometer, a variety of BBQ options, pay lockers, etc.

All that said, this is first and foremost a paintball field. The great guys at Games-A-Lot are terrific for organizing game days and occasional milscrims, but there isn’t someone dedicated to Airsoft here on site. Hopefully that will change someday.

TL; DR Version

Extensive, almost “luxurious” (by comparison) facilities, excellent terrain, and knowledgeable organizers make this a field worth visiting, in spite of the 90 minute travel time from Toronto.


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Christopher "Kozure" Ono

An Endnote on Photo Quality
My smartphone camera lens covers acquired little micro-scratches within a fortnight of me buying the phone and have been taking blurry/foggy images for a few months. I recently read about how to fix the issue and have since repaired them, but these images above as well as most of my other review pictures up to this point are blurred/fogged. I acknowledge their crappy quality, but now that I’ve fixed the issue, I look forward to my future reviews having better images.

[hunter1234]

Woo cant wait