ENTER
THE DRAGON’S
LAIR
Dragon’s Lair has been a paintball site for
over 20 years but now its owner, Ray Cain,
believes the future lies in airsoft
I
t started quietly, with just a
single posting on Arnie’s saying
‘New Airsoft Site – FREE Open
Day’ but this was the beginning
of something really special…
How often have you heard a site
operator say “Come and play on my site
for free and all I want in return is for you
tell me how I can make it better for you
to play on”? My guess is probably not
too often – but that is exactly what Ray
036
October 2011
Cain did when he decided to open up
his paintball site to airsoft.
Ray, his wife Jean and their son
(also called Ray) have been involved
in paintball for over 25 years and their
site, “Dragon’s Lair” was one of the
,
first independent paintball sites to open.
Over those 25 years Ray has continually
worked to improve the site, making it
one of the best-loved sites in the UK
– and one of the safest! He has seen
paintball at its best but recently had
become disillusioned with the antics of
certain companies who, he felt, were
more interested in making money than
looking after customers and, in Ray’s
book, the customer is paramount.
Ray and I have been friends for a long
time, having worked on rival paintball
publications, so when I was asked to
be editor of Airsoft Action and was
looking for site reviewers Ray was
one of the first people I called. He
accompanied me to Ground Zero where
I was meeting Neal and Dan to finalise
the magazine launch arrangements and
cover their walk-on day.
To say that Ray was bitten by the
airsoft bug would probably be putting it
mildly.
On the journey back to Essex we
talked of little else, other than the
possibility of turning Dragon’s Lair into
an airsoft site. He needed to speak to
someone with more experience and so I
arranged for him to meet up with Ratty,
from BadgerTac. The meeting confirmed
what Ray already felt and he decided
to see if he could make it work – which
lead to the posting on Arnie’s and 26
players turning up on 3 July, including a