Mary was out of town at a conference yesterday, so I wanted to find something fun for the kids and myself to do together. Last week, I found out that a new place opened up on Northwest Expressway in Warr Acres, OK, where an old Wal-Mart used to be. It is called "Incredible Pizza". I asked a friend about it and was told that they opened up about six months ago. They described it as Chuck-e-Cheese on steroids. Oh, and there isn't a scary rat as a mascot either.
As an aside, I'm surprised more kids don't have nightmares after a few hours at Chuck E's. Those mechanical entertainers are downright spooky.
Anyhow, I told the kids I was taking them somewhere new. They were curious where we were going, but I wasn't going to spoil the surprise. Pizza? A surprise? Incredible Pizza is not just pizza. Au contraire, my friends. It's an all-in-one entertainment center.
You pay a flat fee for all-you-can-eat pizza, salad bar, baked potatos, pasta, desert bar and drinks. The price was very reasonable and the food was better than I expected. Chuck E's pizza is pretty bad, so I had that to compare it to.
Once you get your food, you can choose from any of four different dining areas to sit. There is a family room with large tables, an "incredible gymnasium" showing girlish videos, like Kim Possible and other Disney Channel fare, a Route 66 Diner and a Starlite Drive In theater themed room. We opted for the theater and sat through a portion of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington while we enjoyed our pizza and desert. Good cinnamon rolls!
Incredible Pizza also has an area called The Incredible Fairground Arcade, which takes up approximately two-thirds of the building.
When you pay for your pizza, you select a certain amount of money and they put it on a card that you swipe for each activity. It deducts the fee for that activity automatically. This is good when it works, but we often found ourselves swiping the card again and again in order to get it to work, especially on many of the arcade machines.
The kids didn't want to do bumper cars, so we passed by them. The wanted to do the putt putt golf first. We swiped our card, got our putters and balls and head for hole one. They had a nine-hole course and we all agreed that it was pretty lame. The course was not unattractive, but it didn't play well. By the time we got to the sixth hole, we stopped caring about the score. We finished up and decided that one round was plenty.
Next, J wanted to ride the go-karts. They had a fairly small track, but the karts looked like fun. As it turned out, you have to be fourteen in order to drive the fast karts. She could drive the slow kart, or I could drive in a double with her, but that would be a slow kart as well. She was disappointed and we decided not to do the karts.
The kids didn't really want to bowl, but they did want to play lots of arcade games. They had regular video games and a few pinball machines. But the kids were most excited about the games that provide tickets that can be turned in for prizes. You know, where you spend $50 to get a $5 piece of junk.
This is where the frustration began.
As I said earlier, I had to swipe the card many times in order to get it to take too often. But more troubling was the number of machines that did not work properly. The place has only been open for six months, but we encountered no less than six games that took our money and did not deliver the game.
Anyhow, we played for well over an hour and collected hundreds of tickets. It was getting late and we had to leave, so we made our way to the "ticket eater" that would automatically count our tickets and provide a single ticket with the count on it.
They had six ticket counter machines and the line at each one was at least six people deep. Many people had arms full of tickets. As it turned out, the counter machines kept breaking down. At one time, 5 out of the 6 machines were out of commission. I felt sorry for the poor guy who had to reset and fix the machines with two dozen impatient people waiting on him to do his job.
Eventually, our tickets were counted and we went to cash them in for prizes. We ended up with just over 800 tickets, so the kids split them. Z is 13 and he didn't find one thing he wanted to spend his tickets on. He was pretty disappointed. J found plenty of girlie things like rings, bracelets, a purple squooshy ball and a couple more tchotkes.
Incredible Pizza has a great concept, but there are some glitches in the system, as well as some quality control issues. Here are my suggestions for them as they build more franchises.
1) More games. There is plenty of unused space and more games equals more choices. It also would help with suggestion #2...
2) Maintain the games better. There were WAY to many defective or broken down games. Take pride in what you offer. If a game is broken, remove it from the floor and put another in its place. It really looks bad when games don't work , and it frustrates customers when they have to visit the customer service counter again and again to get a credit for money lost.
3) Up the ante on the mini-golf. It's not a fun course.
4) Get some fast two-seat go karts so smaller kids can enjoy the thrill while someone else drives.
All-in-all, Incredible Pizza was a fun experience. But I wouldn't want to manage one of these places without stricter quality control standards.
It's Del.icio.us!
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January 29, 2007 05:00 PM
I would like to see coupons or special offers put in papers or sent in email I have never received anything in email. We could all use a little discount sometimes.
Thanks Janice