With the objectives clearly put in place, we began the process of designing a new course. As a reference, we had the schematic as well as what mini golf obstacles were part of the 2019 rental. Additionally, we knew the space allocated on the street but we were expecting that potentially on the morning of the installation that some space may be eliminated. A new course schematic was created and it was submitted and approved by the festival committee. However, lingering in our minds was that possibility of having less space due to more vendors taking space on the street than in 2019. We also had to consider the flow of attendees on the street which was not only going to include the 9 holes but vendors as well.
Our standard 9 hole mini golf rental is a total of 29 pieces along with (3) obstacles. This custom course was going to be a total of 36 pieces including a final hole to capture the last putt, (4) obstacles and a registration tent. The fairways, pieces with the cups and tees are typically placed on carts in our warehouse in preparing for the event and then wheeled onto our custom designed 20 foot box trucks. For this rental, a production decision was made to stand up the pieces in the truck and to bring additional smaller pieces of tees, our bank shot fairway and more dog leg left & right fairways. Since our courses are modular & versatile, we wanted to have the flexibility of changing holes during the installation. This would allow us to create holes that may have not be the ones that were approved but still create holes that would be entertaining, challenging as well as in some cases be longer but using less square footage.
Our crew arrived early morning the day of the festival equipped with the approved course design and the knowledge that there is a possibility of hole changes while on site. As expected once we had holes 1 through 5 placed, we were instructed by the local police department that we had exceeded the boundary that they had put in place for a thoroughfare access way for pedestrians. No problem whatsoever as we changed the orientation of hole 3 with one our newer fairways that we call a dog leg with mid rail and shorten slightly hole 4 with a smaller in length tee. With that modification completed, we then moved on to completing the course when more vendors arrived as well as we were informed that a stage was being erected for this part of the festival for musical entertainment. We were prepared and took out signature bank shot fairway and a dog leg right for hole 6, a dog leg right for hole 7 and a dog leg right and elevated final hole for hole 9. The changes of the orientation of these 3 holes were both visually appealing, entertaining and still provided a significant distance from tee to cup while providing the needed space for the additional vendors and the musical stage.
The completed course was enjoyed by festivalgoers of all ages and we witnessed hundreds of players that were families enjoying their round of mini golf.
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