GameWorks

Description:

• What do you get when Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks team get in on the arcade video-game action? Grown-up, state-of-the-art fun. High-tech movie magic has taken over all sorts of traditional arcade games and turned them interactive, from a virtual-reality batting cage to a Jurassic Park game that lets you hunt dinosaurs. There are motion-simulator rides galore and even actual-motion activities such as rock climbing. But classic games, from Pac-Man to pool tables, are here, too, though sometimes with surprising twists, such as air hockey where multiple pucks occasionally shoot out at once.

  All this doesn't exactly come cheap. Games are priced via a point system: $5 gets you $7 worth of play points, $10 gets you $16 in game play, $20 delivers $36, $25 brings $50. On Thursday nights from 9pm until the midnight closing you can purchase a card to play for the final three hours for $30. Purchased points go on a debit card that you then insert into the various machines to activate them. But you do get value for your money, which makes this a viable alternative to casinos, particularly if you have children (though it's clearly geared toward a high-school-age-and-older demographic). Children probably should be 10 years old and up -- any younger and parents will need to stand over them rather than go off and have considerable fun on their own. Note: If you don't like crowds, come here earlier rather than later, when it can get packed. They also have a dress code (no excessively baggy clothes, no tattoos or clothing with profanity, no chains, and so on) that they enforce occasionally, and no one under 18 is allowed without parental supervision after 9pm.

• © Frommer's 2012

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Highly Recommended 2009
•  Highly Recommended 2010