PAINTBALL TRIP CANCELLED DUE TO LOW TURNOUT
- AbdulRahman Mohammad
- Oct 22, 2019
- 3 min read
By: AbdulRahman Mohammed
Dated: October 22, 2019
This week's trip to Firstainment (formerly known as 1st Paintball) for grades 10-12 has been cancelled as a result of low numbers of students registering for the trip.
Paintball is a competitive team shooting sport which involves players shooting at each opponents with dye-filled gelatin capsules, otherwise known as paintballs.
1st Paintball, a paintball centre located in Thumaamah, is the first of its kind in Riyadh. It offers combat paintball on decent maps at a price range of 150 to 200 Riyals, along with a cafe for food and drink.
For the past few years, Manarat has organised trips to Firstainment, and while the reviews on TripAdvisor give an overall of 4 out of 5, the feedback of Manarat students has been quite the reverse.
A student who has been on past trips to Firstainment stated that the overall experience was ''not worth it''. To elaborate, upon arrival at Firstainment, there is an hourlong wait before starting the game. The default number of paintballs each player's gun runs out only a few minutes into the game; the player then has to pay an extra 50 to 100 Riyals to refill the gun or attain more paintballs. Moreover, food from the cafe does not taste very well and is served in very small quantity.
It is no doubt pricey to have prolonged fun at Firstainment. Speaking of cost, initially the trip fee was SR200 but the amount was brought down to SR150 since SR200 was tremendous, bearing in mind that this sum does not include the refill price.
This disapproving evaluation of the paintball trip may have been the reason of the low number of registrants; students with past paintball trip experience who did not find the trips satisfactory could have, besides not registering themselves, recommended to their friends to not do so as well.
Other reasons are the high trip fee - which at a reduced SR150 still is high - or it is simply boredom of repeatedly going to the same place; albeit paintball being exhilarating, a change in the trip's destination would have been better appreciated.
The student council should request all students to suggest where they would like to go for a trip. Prior attempts by previous student bodies to have such student involvement in the decision-making of the trip location were in vain; they simply involved voting for either of two locations on a google form. This time round, an improved technique should be used for collecting suggestions.
It is about time, the theme of the trips should be altered from just play and games to other types of trips which are more informative or interesting. This doesn't necessarily mean making the trips dull as enjoyment can be incorporated into such trips too! In fact, what's even more mundane is to just play games. Various better locations for the trips include: museums, factories, community centres, farms, national parks, and historically significant sites, just to name a few. Visiting such places will provide a change from the usual play and will be of great interest to the students.
A student mentioned, "This [cancellation] is in a way a good thing as this will make the student council rethink about where we would like to go. I am looking forward to knowing what new ideas they get for trips as I wasn't intending to go [to the paintball trip] myself. Now that they might offer better options, I will want to go."
This was to be the first field trip of the academic year 2019-2020. There is yet to see what trip the student council brings next and also... whether or not the turnout will be adequate!
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