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| - Went to a friend's Bachelor Party this past Saturday and our first stop was a group outing to iCombat Madison. Only one of us had been before so we were all interested in seeing what things were all about. Granted, we're a group of 20 and 30 somethings, so not exactly the average age for something like this but who doesn't like shooting laser guns at each other. Their competitor, Ultrazone, had been a staple for us during our middle school and high school years, so I figured this was probably just a step up from that since it had been getting a lot of hype.
The Bachelor's brother booked the reservation, it was $35 a person for 90 minutes of play. A little steep in my mind, but comparable to Ultrazone and this place seems to cater to groups more than your casual walk-in. It's not located particularly close to anything else, so when you go you're going to be there for a while. We ended up having a few people bail at the last minute, and unfortunately they didn't refund the Bachelor's brother for those slots.
While we were all somewhat excited for it, things turned out to be pretty disappointing. The frontdesk girl was helpful and polite, but even right from the get go we were having a hard time understanding how the process worked. You had to sign up for an account, which felt very rushed, followed by going into the room to pick up the equipment before the games. The games are 5 minutes long with different scenarios, totaling 90 minutes with little to no breaks inbetween.
The instruction was extremely rushed through. I couldn't even understand what either employee was saying, and next thing you know we are all thrown into the fire and clueless as to what is going on. I realize Bachelor Parties aren't the most attentative of groups, but we're all smart guys with college degrees so we should still be able to get the gist. Nope, not the case here. Pack lights were going on and off, guns weren't firing, no one knew where to go and what to do, it was a mess. We tried asking the employee who was with us for a while what to do, and he was both rude and not feeling the concept of explaining anything. Yeah, I really needed lip service from a 16 year old, thanks kid.
What added to the problem were the other patrons. A few were just casual folks like us, a Mom and her daughter, etc, etc. But then there were a lot of individual people and another group all of whom seemed very experienced. I'm pretty sure they were members there, and they were not happy at all by us being present. The other team just kept killing everyone the second you'd walk out the door of your "base", or you'd be lucky if you even made it out the door. Again, I know my group was not in high school and at the prime of our lives, but this shouldn't be that much different from the Ultrazone I played plenty when I was. There were even a few employees playing who kept yelling at us for "firing too many shots" and for not "organizing well".
It escalated to the point where I heard some of those "members" who were on our team conspiring behind a wall that they were just going to start shoving people in our group out of the way. Well, this turned into reality, they shoved the Bachelor's brother and an altercation almost started.
I guess if you rent the place out for yourselves and happen to catch more cooperative staff members maybe things would be different. The one guy with us that had been before said he had a much better time when that was the case.
Bottom line, this place has a long way to go before I'd ever recommend them to someone.
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