When it comes to family fun time there are a few choices and very few of them end up being fun for the whole family. There is Chuck E. Cheese where a kid can be a kid and an adult can sometimes too but that means as an adult that you can’t just run off to skee ball or pop-a-shot without a kid being nearby or you just look kind of weird, and then there is the food. Which isn’t good to say the least, but it is also inexpensive and comes with prizes at the end.
The other big arcade type place is Dave and Busters. This one is more geared towards adults but they do have plenty of activities for the kids. It is also a lot more expensive than Chuck E. Cheese and not all kids are going to enjoy those games. Then there’s Apex Entertainment which has the exact same issues as Dave and Busters and then all the local restaurants with one or two arcade machines.
Put that all together and either the kids are giving up kid time to take care of adults or adults are giving up adult time to take care of kids. It is an interesting dichotomy and can, and has, created fun family moments.
Yesterday we tried another option. A new business in Town Center called Draftcade. It is basically a bar with a few vintage arcade cabinets, pinball machines, skee ball, and pop-a-shot. For $10 a person you get unlimited play on any machine and have the option to order food and drinks. The kids got milkshakes, I got a cream ale, and Lara ordered the pineapple cider she enjoys, and we all had a really fun time playing games.
Also the chicken tenders. We didn’t have any left over. This is the first place the kids have eaten all their chicken tenders. I will say that the hot dog I ordered tried too hard to not be a hot dog. I ordered it because it was a chili cheese dog made with a half pork-half beef sausage, but no one bothered to tell them they needed to smoke that bad boy before grilling it and to serve it in a hot dog bun and to not weigh it down with cheese whiz. It ended up being a poor imitation of a DC half smoke.
The end result wasn’t about food quality, but about family fun and in that regard Draftcade knocked it out of the park. I have a feeling we will be making our way back there and I might be sticking to more app type food and not trying that non-smoked halfie again.
David Huzzard Writes 