You know that awesome TV show, The Amazing Race? My husband Mike has long said he would love to do that, but I am not up for eating super weird foods. The travel part I dig because I am great with directions and love seeing new places.
Well a few weeks ago Mike and I got to have one of the most fun experiences we’ve had in quite a long time doing something a little bit like the Amazing Race, but locally here in Houston. I learned about the Capture the Cruze contest through my participation with Houston Chevy Dealers as a brand ambassador (check out the vacation contest they are hosting now!). Capture the Cruze was a contest held downtown on June 11 and the winning team would get a brand new Chevy Cruze!
The contest involved using texting or the SCVNGR smartphone app to find locations all over the city and answer clues for points. Whoever ended up with the most points after two hours won the car! I figured the odds for winning a new car were higher than any other contest I’d ever entered and even if we didn’t win it would be a fun bonding experience for my husband and I.
We showed up at Jones Plaza in the theatre district at 10 am that Saturday morning armed with our iPhones, sunscreen and water to deal with the 97 degree temperatures. After chatting with my friend and fellow ChevyGirl, Greis Perez, we scoped out the Cruzes parked there, got our team t-shirts and got ready to race. There were about 150 teams of two, young and old. I did a bit of preliminary research online to see how the event had gone down in other cities and I knew that if we wanted to seriously have a chance to win, we would have to be strategic and really hustle. Thank goodness for all the running I’ve been doing recently!
When they started the clock, the SCVNGR app on my phone suddenly showed Trek for the event with about 40 different locations. The game map was a much bigger area than I had anticipated, stretching for a couple dozen city blocks between the theatre district and the courthouses, over to City Hall, the library and way up to the Houston Pavilions area. It may not seem like a big area when you’re driving, but we had to cover it entirely on foot.
At each location on our phone map we had to answer a question that required us to be in that exact spot. For example we had to read certain signs on buildings and add numbers together, figure out dates in Roman numerals, and a few other logic puzzles. Each question gave you three chances to answer it correctly and if you missed all three you lost those points and had to move on. Well we totally blew the first question, twice because we answered in numbers and the third time because of my phone’s auto spell correct that didn’t like Roman numerals. Three points…gone!
After that we never missed another question. It took me a little bit of time to get oriented via the map before I knew exactly which way to head between locations, but once we got the hang of that we were really on a roll and sprinted between spots. Our strategy was to head to areas where there were lots of challenges close to each other and avoid the far reaching spots on the map.
I was just about to enter the answer for a challenge when the app suddenly went dark, signalling the game was over. By the end of two hours we had about 74 points, and I figured we were serious contenders for the grand prize. Totally soaked with sweat we headed back to Jones Plaza and each guzzled three bottles of water while we waited to hear who won.
It turned out that the third and fourth place finishers won tickets to an Astros baseball game and second place won a new iPad2! We didn’t win but we ended up placing seventh out of 150 teams! Two more correct challenges would have put us at least winning the iPad, if not the car. The girl who won looked super excited and didn’t even have a car, but I think her team may have cheated because she was clearly in top physical condition while her partner looked like he hadn’t even broken a sweat. Teams were supposed to do every challenge together. Doesn’t matter to me though, she clearly needed the car and even said she had the money to cover the taxes, gotta LOVE that, smart girl! I think everyone who finished ahead of us was about a decade younger than us, which made me feel pretty good.
Mike and I worked together very well and we really did have a blast exploring a part of the city we hadn’t spent much time in before at all. Chevy’s Capture the Cruze was a fantastic experience and I highly recommend taking part if it comes to a city near you.
