Danger Zone (Sheffield)

...we'd been looking for at Danger Zone in Sheffield.

WHERE IS IT?

Dangerzone is located on 100 acres of woodland at The Strines, off the A57 near Sheffield. If you want directions, the best way is to go to the dangerzone website (www.dangerzoneuk.co.uk/site.htm) and click on the map link.

WHAT FACILITIES ARE THERE?

The facilities are... basic. There is no car park as such, but there is room ...
...track approaching the place. The 'building' you'll head into first is dirt floored and has a roof of somewhat worse-for-wear tarpaulin on wooden beams, over some aged but basically sound tables and chairs/benches. This area is where you'll fill out your insurance forms, get kitted out with your gear and where you'll come for lunch, if you're there all day. There are facilities to make tea and coffee (for free!) and a hatch leading through to a kitchen ... more

In the last 18 months my friends and I have made 4 attempts to play paintball in and around Manchester. We have twice been thwarted altogether, by double-booking and flooding, and on the two occasions when we got to play we were dissatisfied and vowed not to return. Imagine our relief then, when we finally found the fun day out we'd been looking for at Danger Zone in Sheffield.

WHERE IS IT?

Dangerzone is located on 100 acres of woodland at The Strines, off the A57 near Sheffield. If you want directions, the best way is to go to the dangerzone website (www.dangerzoneuk.co.uk/site.htm) and click on the map link.

WHAT FACILITIES ARE THERE?

The facilities are... basic. There is no car park as such, but there is room for perhaps a 15 - 20 vehicles beside the rough track approaching the place. The 'building' you'll head into first is dirt floored and has a roof of somewhat worse-for-wear tarpaulin on wooden beams, over some aged but basically sound tables and chairs/benches. This area is where you'll fill out your insurance forms, get kitted out with your gear and where you'll come for lunch, if you're there all day. There are facilities to make tea and coffee (for free!) and a hatch leading through to a kitchen from which you can purchase sausage sandwiches (£1) cans of pop (60p) or bottled water (£1). There are two toilets although they appear not to have functioning taps! There is also a rather more hospitable looking pavilion for occasions when there are more people around than can be housed in the main area, though we didn't go in there. Also, there's a mirror with the word 'Weltometer' written above it, so that you can check out any bruises you may have sustained during the day - nice! If you have any valuables you want to store, you can get a locker for a £5 deposit, of which £4 is refundable. Granted, all that may sound like an atrocious affair, but nobody goes there for the home comforts, they go to shoot people!

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UPDATE: Having just been again, I can tell you that the seating area is much nicer, with the old wooden frame and tarpaulin replaced with the pavilion that off to one side last time. Although the place looks nicer and is more comfortable for this, there is still no running water in the gents (I can't comment on the ladies, obviously) and they are a bit pongy to say the least!
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The paintball games themselves are conducted on a series of 'fields', which are areas of woodland with boundaries of blue rope. I can't tell you exactly how many there are, though the website says that there is a choice of 18 games, so I'm guessing there are also 18 fields. These contain mostly just trees, in some cases rocks and such other equipment as is necessary for the scenario for which the field is designated (see below).

WHAT SCENARIOS CAN I EXPECT?

Having only been once, I've not played all the various scenarios, but I can give you an idea of the sorts of things you can expect. All the games had a 10 minute time limit, though most games were won outright before the time limit expired (barely, in some cases). All the games are played twice, with attacking and defending roles reversed or with starting bases exchanged.

Capture the Flag

This is a mainstay of paintball sites and covers a number of variations on the same theme. Most commonly, opposing teams will try to capture a flag from one another's base or from a neutral area, and return it to their own base or transport it to some other designated area. On the day I went, we started by attempting to capture flags from each others bases and return them to our own base.

The second capture the flag game we played involved capturing a flag from the middle of the game area (a different field, this time) and delivering it safely into the enemy base.

Later on we played a third variation where the flag was positioned in the middle of a bridge over a "mine field" (I walked across it after I'd been shot and my retention of both legs leaves me fairly sure that this was a mine field in name only).

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UPDATE: On my second visit we played a fourth variation on the theme where the two teams have to capture a flag that hangs at the far side of the arena, take it inside a hut and then defend the hut for ten minutes (or just wipe out the opposition as we did!). ********************************************************************

Defend/Storm the Fort.

In this game one team defends a wooden fort, which they cannot leave. The attacking team must capture a flag, hung at the rear of the fort. This would clearly favour the defending team, since the fort affords them excellent cover, so to even things up the attacking team has infinite lives i.e. after being shot, they do not leave the game area, but instead return to their start point and begin again.

Downed Chopper

In this game, a wooden mock-up of a helicopter sits in the middle of the playing area. Three members of the defending team are positioned inside the chopper and cannot leave until killed. The remaining defenders start at the rear of the area and cannot advance beyond the chopper, but must attempt to defend the occupants of the chopper from the attacking team (reasonably easily done, since the only door to the chopper faces the defenders side of the field). The attacking team once again have infinite lives and they'll need them if they want to storm the chopper and kill its occupants. There is also the matter of the flag, which hangs from one of the rotors of the downed chopper and must be delivered through enemy lines to a wooden tower at the rear of the defenders side of the field.

Streets

This game takes place in a mock up of a street, with 5 small huts on either side of a crate and barrel strewn 'street'. The defenders start in the huts and cannot leave them, whilst the attackers start in a 'landing craft' at one end of the street. The aim is for the attacking team to retrieve 10 large paint tins from inside the huts, to which end they will almost certainly have to kill the occupants of the huts too. Again, the attackers have infinite lives, returning to the landing craft when shot. If things weren't bad enough for the defenders, the huts have locked doors and shuttered windows (in addition to the odd open window and door) which can only be opened from the outside!

MY OPINION

Firstly, for those who haven't played paintball before, you should know that it hurts! Actually, I think it hurt more at this site than it did at the previous outdoor site we went to. As the owner of the place told us during his safety talk, in his experience, being hit by a paintball either hurts or it really hurts! That said, I'm a big girly wuss and I was OK. I have a few bruises to show for it, but only one that's still sore (three days on). I guess that is the reason why the site has an age limit of 12.

After the trouble my friends and I have had in the past, it was a breath of fresh air to find a place that was well organised and staffed by reasonable, friendly people. Since there were 22 of us, we asked to have our games to ourselves (they require a minimum of 20 to do this), which is just what we got, a simple promise that the sites we've previously visited have failed to deliver on.

Whilst most of my group took our own helmets, purchased after previous bad experiences with shoddy equipment, the masks, overalls and guns on offer seemed to be in good condition, at least as good as, if not better than those we'd previously encountered. The level of protective gear offered seems to vary from site to site, but in this case head protectors (padded mesh hoods to be worn under the mask, providing padding for neck and head areas not covered by the mask) were offered, but protective gloves were not provided (though they could be bought for £6.50). The overalls we were given were also in good order, clean and largely free from holes.

The scenarios and the fields on which they were played were varied enough that it didn't feel like we were playing the same game twice, even though the concepts for the games tended to vary little. The staff, as mentioned previously, were friendly and were happy to go along with what we wanted to do, e.g. not rushing us between games if some of us wanted a cigarette break. A common way to end the day at many paintball sites seems to be an 'every man for himself' game, where you can stay in the game until you run out of ammo or until the pain from being shot repeatedly gets too much. My friends and I aren't fans of this idea, so the marshal was happy to let us play one more regular game to use up our remaining ammo, even though this took longer and lead to us not finishing until 5 p.m., half an hour after the suggested 4:30 finish time! In fact, those groups booking for only half a day were told that they could stay on if they wanted, another display of surprising flexibility and indeed generosity on the part of the site owner.

Those booked for a whole day were also entitled to lunch, which consisted of a polystyrene cup of soup and bread, followed by burger and chips and finally a choice of biscuits. Whilst the food was simple and not of the quality you'd expect in a restaurant, it was satisfying enough and left everyone full and content. Again, I was impressed to note that no restriction was placed on how much bread you had with your soup or how many biscuits you had, and the left over food was offered out once everyone had had a portion.

At the end of the day, everybody was given a bottle of beer (over 18s only, of course) and the owner gave out three awards to such teams as hadn't left yet; the Rambo award (for the highest individual use of ammo), the welt of the day (for the worst injury) and player of the day (as nominated by the marshals). Each of these awards entitles the winner to 10 half price entry fees for them and their friends. Furthermore, because the Marshals commended our group for being very pleasant and well behaved, we were given a voucher for 20 free entries! Needless to say, we'll be going back!

PRICING

VIP deal 1 costs £12.50 for a half day or £15 for a full day and includes 100 paintballs, free tea and coffee, lunch (all day bookings only), beer and awards. The second option, inventively called VIP 2, is essentially the same but includes 700 paintballs and costs £35 or £40 for a half or full day. Extra paintballs could be bought at a cost of £5 per 100, or £4.50 per 100 for purchases of 1000 and over. Again, the owner said he was happy to honour this reduced rate even if one person was elected to buy paint for everyone, rather than insisting on individual purchases. You can also buy smoke grenades and flash-bang grenades for £2.50 each, or three for £6.00. Apparently some sites will insist that the marshal throw these grenades for you, but the owner of this site told us that he'd paid the extra insurance so that the players themselves can throw them. Personally, I couldn't justify the extra expense, although the flash-bangs certainly scare the bejesus out of whoever they happen to land near!

Something to take note of if you do want to book paintball at this site or any other site in the UK, is that you should avoid 'Go Ballistic'. From their website, they appear to be an actual site, but they are in fact middle-men who book you in at actual paintball sites. Whilst they appear to offer competitive prices, you will end up paying more for paintballs (£6 per 100 rather than £5) and will be exempt from any special offers particular to the paintball site you're going to. If that's not bad enough, it was through booking with Go Ballistic that we ended up double booked and thus drove for around 45-60 minutes only to be turned away.

So there you go, Dangerzone paintball - painfully good fun!

(The catagories below are clearly nonesense, apart from value for money, price and comparison to similar products). 

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