20,000 Leagues Under the Game

 You may not know it, but one of the things I collect are board games. Why? Well, as an only child, I didn't get to play them much, so I collected a bunch of Baby Boomer games from my childhood and played them with my daughter. Kid's are great! 

Anyway, four years after Walt Disney World opened, Lakeside released a couple of games based (loosely) on attractions. The most popular (and expensive) is The Haunted Mansion. A good example can fetch a couple hundred dollars. Much less popular (and expensive) is the one I have, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 

I actually think the 20,000 Leagues game is the better of the two because The Haunted Mansion is a rebranded English game called Ghost Train." Also, 20,000 Leagues was the only attraction that was only found at WDW. And, finally, 20,000 Leagues doesn't exist any more. 

So, anyway, here it is...

The idea here is pretty simple. Each player controls a Nautilus and they try to get from their start to the home port first. The trick is that there are gunboats on a movable disc. When players move this disc, if a gunboat gun touches your Nautilus, you are sunk and you have to start over. 

Now what makes this game kind of nifty (in my opinion) is that the subs can move either surfaced or submerged. To submerge, you lift the top off of your sub. The gunboats can't touch you then (you are too short), but there are two problems: 1. You roll a special die which only goes up to three (instead of six, like the surfaced subs) and 2. The sub can hit "depth charge" spaces and be sunk. So, you decide how much and what kind of risks you take. Pretty cool, huh?

The actual game suffers from what I call "The Lakeside Flimsys." The whole game is made of card stock that is just a little too thin to stand up to many playings. The Haunted Mansion Game has the same problem. Still, if you're careful with it, you can play it without damaging it.

I found my copy on eBay many years ago. I just stumbled across it accidently. You don't see many of them, but like I said, they are pretty cheap (about 20-30 bucks if you can find one), so I think they are a much better bargain!

Until next time, keep searching for treasure!