Pros:
+ Beautiful wooded location, with elevation changes and a stream that comes into play on eight holes. Tees are rubber and they're on graded boxes, so they're flat and fine for play as long as it isn't wet.
+ Don't let the wide open first hole fool you: with the exception of hole #10, you're deep in the woods until the final hole. This clever design gives you a welcome relief midway and at the end of your round
+ The local club has built wooden bridges to help you across the creek in about a dozen locations
+ Lots and lots of navigation signs - sometimes on the holes indicating doglegs, and always helping guide you to the next hole. These are big metal signs with white arrows on blue backgrounds
+ Basket placements are the strongest part of the course design, ranging from short basket #2 atop a rockpile, to the long #9 basket on top of a ridge behind a stone wall, and lots of nicely tucked away baskets calling for shaped approaches. Two sets of basket locations, adding variety for multiple plays
Cons:
- The old style Mach V's are so hard to spot in the woods. The difficulty is increased because the same models are used for both the shorts and longs. The local club went to the trouble of placing small color-coded flags with numbers on the tops of the baskets, but in this era of brightly-painted bands, these baskets aren't a good choice for being visible in the woods
- The tee signs are also old style DGA's - the white fibreglass kind with the stick-on numbers, tree decals and throwing lines. I know these are less expensive than custom signage - and they work pretty well on open courses where you can see the basket, or where there's no elevation change. But on a heavily wooded course like this, they don't do a very good job of illustrating the hole
- Yes, there are two sets of tees and two sets of baskets. But the two tees were frequently very similar shots, because the tee boxes are located so close to one another. Your choice of baskets makes a much bigger difference to how the course plays
Other Thoughts:
~ I was surprised to see that Mill Brook was built as recently as 2018, because it feels like it's from an earlier era of courses. At times it felt more like throwing discs while hiking in the woods, rather than playing a wooded disc golf course
~ I'm trying to figure out why I didn't enjoy my round at Mill Brook more than I did. It's a good course in a very pretty setting; it gets a lot of love from local volunteers, though it could be made better with upgrades to the baskets and signs. I was often frustrated by having to search for the basket which wasn't visible from the tee, and I felt like some of the fairways were poorly defined. But most of these "flaws" come with my being a first-timer playing this course. After a few plays, I'd know where the baskets are, know what the designed throwing lines are, and enjoy the differences presented by the two sets of baskets. I rated it a 3.5, and certainly understand why others might give it another half-point
~ In the meantime, if you're going to visit Mill Brook, try to latch on to a local. Failing that, I think the most enjoyable first time around is to play the Short baskets: they're a little bit easier to find, and you'll see the Long basket locations as you head to the next hole