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| - We did my 10 year old daughter's birthday party here today, on a Saturday in late October. The party time was 3:30, and lasted for 2 hours. In this particular package, there were 2 game sessions with pizza in between the sessions.
I'd almost exactly ditto the comments left by Daisy W a few reviews below this, including small crows, a little expensive, awesome host, great time, and even a good fit for tiny 7 year olds in the group, so I won't restate those details here. The party package frankly doesn't add much, even though it was great. For a pretty good chunk of change, you get a couple of tables and some pizza and drinks, and somebody to carve them up and see if you need anything. The host was quite good, but just didn't have to do all that much! For a small group, you really might be better off just doing some unlimited game play passes during a sale and buying some pizza from the snack bar which had abundant tables and seating space.
On the topic of food though, I'll also add for you anti-gluten types like me, they have gluten free pizza on the menu. Didn't try it this particular day, but the regular pizza for the party was pretty good I thought.
Net net, we had an awesome time. It isn't a palatial palace like a Vegas casino hotel or something, but it is a pretty good facility. The laser tag floor itself is pretty good size, with some ramped and enclosed walkways that crisscross the arena floor as an upper level.
Perhaps the best part, the time of day was simply awesome. I'd read a couple of reviews that made it sound like you had to wrestle your way into game sessions, it might be difficult to get grouped up, etc. This time of day at least, it wasn't crowded at all. In fact it was mostly parties, and we had about 2 more parties join us and maybe a crowd of 30 - 35, which fit on the game floor just fine. As a party, and probably since we were small, or maybe because we had a great host, we were always in the "prep" room for the upcoming game first. The first go around, it sounded like everyone was there for the first time that day, and the game floor "commander" spent a bit of time going over instructions. The second time, they were fast, although there was some hold up that we spent a few minutes (maybe 5) of extra idle time waiting in the prep room.
So for party host, crowd level, efficiency of getting into a game, and level of fun, I'd probably give it 5 stars.
But I'm giving it 4 (which in reality would probably be 3.5) because of a couple of things I would criticize: one they can't do anything about, and one they could fix pretty easily.
First, I said this is a "pretty good" facility because I've been to some of the first laser tag places in NY maybe 25 years ago. Those places were gigantic, where you could run around and literally exhaust yourself after a single session. At Stratum, the rules are no running, and the reason for this is pretty obvious - there isn't enough open space to be taking off running, and there are lots of close quarters and twists and turns to create more playing space inside a mid-sized facility. Running is simply dangerous.
The second thing I'd criticize is the length of game play. I think this is an easy fix, because just another 3 to 6 minutes would probably make a world of difference in the player's eyes, and would probably still work within their turn schedules with just a little bit more hustle on equipment prep. I never timed one of the sessions, but for the length of time you spend sitting in the prep room waiting for and listening to instructions, the game play seems kind of short. Not terribly short, but a bit short. We didn't feel like an outraged "Oh man, I can't believe it is over", but there was consistently a "darn it's over already" reaction. (Granted, my wife who booked the party was under the impression it was 45 minutes, so she was pretty bummed the first go around, which is probably closer to 10 minutes). For the business, I suspect that an slightly extended play time (3 to 6 minutes) would have significant return revenue impact. I'd recommend an A/B test using a simple 5 question survey on a couple of Saturdays. Don't tell anybody, but run one Saturday with regular game length and a survey question asking about satisfaction with game length. Then run another Saturday with extended play asking the same thing. I'd bet money that even a marginally higher satisfaction level with game play length would generate 10% greater return business over the following 6 to 9 months.
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