LEGOFest Prime, Chicago, IL USA August, 1995
Hosted by Minx Kelly

This was the list of rsvps, I am not sure whether all these made it or not... Those marked with an asterisk were DEFINITELY there. There may have been others. If I missed your name, please don't be offended, but do drop me a line so I can update this list.

*Minx Kelly, hubby, and nephew Patrick
*Peter Fuesz, his wife, Lisa, and one pre-natal legomaniac-to-be
(she can beat us all out on " the youngest Legomaniac to attend a LegoFest " !)
Paul Evans
*Jeff Crites, girlfriend Charise, and one guest(name unknown)
*Lou Zucaro
*Tim Rueger
Brian Williams
Aaron Muhl
*Brian Zemach and son Aaron
*John Sorrell
*John Marlin, and his 2 kids

First, many many thanks go out to Peter Fuesz, who helped the week before the Legofest both in coming up with ideas for games and assembling the various game kits. He helped immensely, and we wouldn't have been able to play quite so many games without his help, (and it was especially appreciated as his wife was very pregnant at the time, so many thanks to her for lending him to the cause).

Many thanks also to John Sorrell, for the donation of great prizes for the games, as well as for designing and making up cool nametags for us all, in laminated color with various Lego bricks and our names. I still have mine and though it didn't scan well, I was able to draw it out fairly well in Neopaint.

The weather was great. We had several tables set up in back as well as snacks inside the house. My sister made us a great yellow Lego-shaped cake, by using a sheetcake pan, stacked twice, using biscuit shaped circles of cake for the pips. Charise also brought a Lego-shaped cake, hers made by stacking "bricks" of cake to look castleish.

There were only about four children, but they seemed to have fun playing with the various Lego stashes all over the house. A few of my masterpieces were admired, like a pirate ship I had designed, my chess set, and other things. Jeff had brought a video from Lego that showed us scenes from Billungsland as well as showed a little bit about how the bricks are made. It was a great video. Jeff had brought all kinds of pictures and Lego Review, an internal magazine for employees of Lego. He showed us the one that featured his Castle list and mentioned R.T.L.

I had prepared a few games, like a huge pickle jar full of cannons, barrels, and treasure chests. It was duct taped shut, and was a "guess the number of pieces inside" game. Of course, guesses were written down on a grid-marked sheet of paper, with a great prize going to the one who came closest, and 2 smaller prizes for those who happened to have their guesses next to the winner's guess. The winner's prize was an unopened set of 6102 Castle Figures. The children had a smaller jar full of minifigs.

We played Lego Bingo, (see description of that under the fun LEGO games link off the main brick page) with tons of polybags prizes donated from John Sorrell and myself. We had building contests, with the kids going first. Peter and I had assembled random odd bits of pieces, and a very strange minifig in ziplocs. Each kit had some basic bricks, mostly the same elements, a wacky mixed up minifig composed of several different genres, and some individual pieces to ensure variety. The goal was to build (in 15 minutes) some scenario or contraption. There was a prize for best use of a BURP, and one for stability. There was also then one last prize for the best storyline or description of said creation. The kids came up with wild stories and elaborate ideas. The most memorable was a virtual pizzeria, with fully automated robotic chef. The grown-ups then built with the same kits, with only slightly more stable, but sometimes less creative concotions.

The next building contest was a blindfolded one. Each player was given 5 full minutes to memorize directions to the set #6020, Magic Shop. That set was chosen because it is basically simple, has limited pieces, and no color duplications of the same type bricks. Again, 3 categories were used for judging. One prize went to the first to build it correctly, one went to the most amusing failure to build it correctly, and in the case of Jeff's friend (can't remember his name) who bungled the job as badly as could be done, he got a Duplo set as a booby prize, and to practice on until the next building contest. The children competed separately from the adults, and only one of them peeked past the blindfold (smile). It was absolutely hilarious watching everyone fumble with the pieces. I recommend this one highly as a party game.

One last game was a memory game, with a platter full of various Lego pieces, figs, trees, flowers, etc. We looked at it for several minutes, then it was covered up, and we each wrote down as many things as we could remember. The person with the most things remembered won a prize.

We had some wonderful discussions of ideas, and I'd like to think a great time was had by all. I was too busy this summer to throw another Legofest, but would love to do it again sometime.

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