Well, here we are almost at the end of the Equestrian Festival without any new horse to show for it. Am I a little sad? Yes. I think we all are. However, every single equine in the herd had its own day to experience the festival, which was really cool. It's the last year we'll be able to say that, since the herd will for sure continue to grow.
Jolly's day in the spotlight
Artie and Panda got to be Clara's mounts for the final stages of the Sabine quest line.
They weren't exactly well camouflaged, but somehow they made it past the GED guards with the box of "decorations" on the first attempt this go-around.
Panda made a valiant effort, but we had to redo the "escape from Sabine with the box" race several times.
my favorite line of the whole quest
It's been fun, Sabine.
Even after the quest line was finished, we could do the "chase Sabine" race daily. Fortunately, we had no issues with sinking into the stone ramp this year.
We went all out on "dress like Sabine" day.
Group races with a fellow black and white spotted Appaloosa! =)
It took us until almost the end of week 3 to finish our championship ranks: after competing fairly hardcore the first two Saturdays, we relaxed into doing just one or two a day.
Note the beautiful palomino Hanoverian taunting us. It seemed to be a more popular choice than the dapple gray festival-exclusive Hanoverian.
Here is that rather underwhelming final ribbon and our much more exciting final festival reward, a purple bouncy pony pet!
He either shrinks down to fit in the saddle bag (similar to the yeti) or bounces along at your side in full size.
The final weeks of the festival brought even more new activities!
A new showjumping course with pretty, spring-themed fences:
A race where we chased a chaotically-running HorseyMcHorse around the festival grounds:
They were amazingly fast!
A 4-question horse knowledge quiz, complete with horse models for each question:
Brief riding lessons, which reminded me of dressage but more chill:
It's too bad the actual dressage on the game hasn't taken off more. I steer clear because it is so off-puttingly difficult on the mastery level (circles without guiding arrows? No thank you!), and the shillings reward at the training level isn't worth the effort. I so wish we could do lots of different routines, but WITH the guiding arrows, and make decent shillings doing it. Also, how cool would it be if we could do extended vs collected gaits, leg yields, etc. by pushing specific key combinations? That kind of stuff has been so entertaining in other horse games we've played in the past.
One final new activity: following a trail of fruit carnage to find George the Fjord, who then makes his own merry way back to Ferdinand.
Whew, all that sure has been keeping us busy! We've had a blast at the festival and will miss the celebratory atmosphere. Got to say, as fun as all of the new stuff was this year, I think the ridiculous bouncy ponies were my favorite addition.
Until next time!
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