Avoid these events at all costs
Firstly I have given 1 star purely because I had to. Otherwise it would have been NO stars.
I was so looking forward to a weekend of airsoft in a disused shopping centre, well that's how it was advertised, and subsequently paid £95 each for me and my wife plus £210 for a hotel as the event was in Rochdale. Oh boy, what an absolute waste of money. Where do I begin with this?
Event location was dangerous. Rubble, rubbish, hanging cables, broken glass on the floor everywhere. No attempt had been made to make it safe for the players.
There was no allocated safezone where you could remove your face pro, de fog, take on fluids safetly. Just a dark, no lighting at all, room classed as a "control point" that was open to the opposing team to shoot into. 450 players turn up and the first words out of the organises mouths "we didn't expect you all to turn up"?? Everyone paid a £45 deposit. Of course they're going to turn up.
All airsofters know before every game day all weapons have to be chrono'd and tagged to show they meet site safety limits. For this event it was 350fps across the board with a max weight bb of 0.28g, but no snipers were allowed and single shot only. Chronoing on day 1 was not made compulsory and players were later found exceeding the fps limits using heavier weight bb's. 1 player was caught at 500fps using a 0.4g bb.
Marshalling was atrocious. When complaints were made they either shrugged their shoulders or gave no response at all. On the odd occasion you might get "what do you expect me to do about it". I witnesses 1 Marshall shoot a player 3 time from under 10 feet to "get his attention". When challenged on why he did this, his response was "because I can". By mid afternoon most players were at there wits end with the lack of marshalling from the AI staff. This led to players from well know site, Warzone airsoft and paintball, stepping in to try and deal with the issues as best they could. This just got them a lot of abuse afterwards by the AI staff.
All commenting on the AI500 Facebook page was disabled so players used their own social media and the Facebook team pages to air their views, concerns and dissatisfaction to the days events. This was met by the organises blaming the PLAYERS. This undoubtedly led to a lot of backlash towards the organisers who began removing comments, blocking members and threatening police action. We hoped that day 2 would be better but we were wrong. They first started to Diss all the players that had commented on facebook. Continued to blame the players for the "short comings" of the previous day but this time they were challenged directly and it was excuse after excuse after excuse. No apology for their unprofessional behaviour. Game play was due to start around 0900 but after they were called out about chronoing weapons they decided they should do it. Chronos were all set to 0.2g even if use was using a heavier bb. So a pointless exercise. The marshalling issue continued and again when challenged they did nothing. It was a shocking weekend and AI500 team should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. They clearly have no clue what they are doing and a clear disregard to players safety. Would I attend another AI event......... Not a chance.
There is so much more I could day but I'd be here all week.
October 1, 2022
Unprompted review