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I wanted to share with you my recent experience at this birthday party factory. It's sort of a Peter Piper Pizza on 'Roids, complete with Laser Tag, Bumper Cars, and a Bowling Alley. combined with a Salad/Pizza buffet. There is also a bar serving beer, wine and 'Rita's (it may possibly be full service)
While Amazing Jake's caters to group events like birthday parties, anyone can walk in an plop down a hunk of cash to eat, drink and play. There are multiple themed rooms where you can enjoy your meal. Some of the rooms included a movie room, showing kids movies, two rooms with sports themes, and a few others. Buffet prices are about what you'd pay anywhere, $7.99 per adult for unlimited buffet, $3.99 or $4.99 for the little kids. The birthday party price is $9.95 per kid and includes unlimited soft drinks, the buffet, 10 tokens per guest, a room and a server.
Of course, don't put your wallet away quite yet. Every attraction has an individual price, or you can purchase unlimited use wristbands, the pricing for that (I think) is $5.95 for the little kids attractions and $10.95 for most everything (bowling is extra). The a la carte prices are pretty steep in comparison (e.g. $5.25 for a single Go cart ride), so I'd recommend the wristband.
One very important thing to know about your Amazing Jake's birthday party is that while parents are allowed in to drop and pick up their children, if they stay the length of the party you will be charged a buffet for each parent. Some of the attending parents knew this, others didn't. I would suggest that if this s important to you that you somehow make sure the parents know the deal..
Review:
The reservation process went smoothly, we made our reservations on site (I think you can also do so on-line and by phone) and were handed a set of invitations, with the instruction to arrive 15 minutes early. We chose to have our party at 10AM, a little early, but we had other things going on that day. We arrived at 9:40 and the doors were locked. After a few minutes we were allowed in and asked to wait. We then spent the next 15 minutes waiting at the entrance lobby while our room was prepared. I do not understand why they could not have been a little more organized for the first group of the day. None the less, we were shown in to our room that was nicely decorated. We had been warned that we might end up sharing our room, and in fact we did end up doing so. My wife asked if we could have the location where we could see most of the arcade area, and we were informed that we could not. Off to a bad start.
You are invited to stay at Jake's all day, but for your birthday party, you only have the reserved room for 90 minutes. We chose to allow the kids to play for 45 minutes and then site them down for pizza, cake and gifts. This strategy worked well enough, except that locating the 10 kids in this warehouse was a bit of a chore, and the kids in laser tags would be in there about 10 minutes at a time. I managed to have the kids located in about 10 minutes, leaving us only 35 minutes left to eat and scoot.
OK, the food:
- They offer three soups, I enjoyed the roasted Tomato and the Thai Chicken. Both were very good
- They offer three or four pasta dishes, I had a little bit of Cajun Penne that was nicely spicy
- The salad bar was complete and fresh
- I had one slice of pizza which I thought was unremarkable. The sauce was bland, as was the pepperoni. I would give them good marks for the variety of pizza's they offered.
- There was a wide selection of desserts, which I managed to avoid
I keep thinking about Sweet Tomatoes as I review the offerings here, it is quite similar.
All went well, our server was quite helpful, bringing in pizza and pitchers of drinks for the kids, lighting the cake, cutting and handing out the cake. and of course, picking up our mess :) Midway through our visit, she approached us, apologized for the early confusion, and gave us a bag of 200 tokens for our trouble. Ahh, now we are feeling better...
But wait, the boys are telling us that they were not allowed on the bumper cars because they had the wrong wristband! We paid the $10.95 fee, what was the deal? My wife spoke to the bumper car operator, who gave the predictable "Uh, it wasn't me" response. My wife complained about this to one of the managers, who gave us a credit for $95! Holy cow!
Conclusions:
Our cost, after a couple of extra adults, 7 big kids and two smaller kids came to about $225. Adding the tip for the hostess it came to about $25/person. That's not dirt cheap, but compared to other parties we've had, it is pretty competitive with renting a bounce and doing it at your house.
I could really see getting together with another dad or two and taking the kids there in the evening, enjoying a beer or two in one of the sports rooms while they kids run around. I'm guessing that's where my $95 credit is going to go.
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