Centre PLAYBOX — Attraction in Montreal

1 YEAR UPDATE BELOW

GOOD PLACE FOR BEGINNERS. HUGE L FOR MEDIUM / HARDCORE ARCADERS.

I saw all the hype on insta and it’s a new place so I tried it out. Me ( arcade fan since I’m 5 and D&B fan) it was very disappointing. It is very very expensive and the games give at max 5 tickets and there is not a lot of games. The XD dark ride is very blurry and wouldn’t shoot where I was aiming. Claw machines are very very weak. The old arcade on saint Catherine was way way better. ( Amusement 2000 Plus). The only fun thing for me was the spinning cups where I ended like 30 minutes spinning while my little cousin was wasting her coins on some games

If you have no experience in arcade it's an alright place it’s more than ur regular cineplex or guzzo arcade. But if you have experienced Dave and Buster this is a disappointment ik D&B makes their money with the food but still.

They price their stuff expensively and so little return. Bought 50$+20$ for 43 coins and got 25 tickets. Spend 16 on immersive ride ( 4 coin per person ). Prize aren’t that great.

For me it’s an L place. I was embarrassed by bringing my family here. Also I tried by paying Cash 💰 but they wouldn’t accept it. They only take card. L place for dates too

Note for owner / anyone working there: Hi there I put this review at 2 cause it didn’t live up to the hype that I was expecting but I will be surely returning in 1-2 years to see the progress. I would recommend game like coins pusher ( star treck wizard of oz, SpongeBob) or the minions. I would put more games with jackpots. Also it’s lacking typical arcade game like. Big Bass wheel, Monster Drop, The Big wheel, pop a lock, tower of tickets, Chicken Run. These games can replace the claw machine that was very dry, everyone was on the other side of the arcade. Also multiplayer games,even D&B lacks of these but they still have a wide variety, your only fun multiplayer game was air hockey that was unfortunately broken. Good Luck for the future

*1 year Update *

In my original review I said I’ll be coming back in 1 year and it has exactly been 1 year, so I went back to take a look and this is my opinion.

Still a big L BUT, they have added some more games has you will see in the updated pictures ( clear high res pic) they have put a Minecraft dungeon game and multiple ( A LOT ) race game, also added some box shooting games. Honestly my opinion hasn’t changed a lot. This place still feels empty. ( I went 10minute before closing but still it feels empty compared to another arcade on st-Catherine which also had nobody in there)

My opinion hasn’t changed, but a bit happy for those multiplier games. For that I will upgrade my review from a 2 to a 3.

Don’t bring any arcade enjoyers here please, bring them to D&B with the SUMMERRR PASS 🥳🥳🤩🤩. Little kids with no experience this place is a W for them.

Updated, Note to owner: thanks for the reply below, I liked the added multiplayers games, huge W, but still lacking those jackpot games, big bass and those stuff. Also might I suggest to do some sort of summer pass for unlimited fun. As I see multiple reviews criticizing the...

BEWARE OF FAKE POSITIVE REVIEWS: TONS of fake positive reviews posted on the same day... Not very smart from owner. Critical reviews are detailed for a reason. Just scroll through and see for yourself.

My review: Extremely disappointing, such a prime spot and a big space, all that to be the worst arcade in Montreal.

DO NOT GO if you want to have fun with your s/o, read further to understand why.

Let's start with the claw machines, the cost per try varies from 1 token (2$) to 4 tokens (8$) depending on the machine you want to use. They are not worth it AT ALL, the toys are all very small and they don't have any licenses (e.g Pokémon). But the worst is that the machines are filled in a super tight way that makes it literally impossible to actually claw any toy, let aside win. I do a lot of claw machines and trust me I've never seen something like that...

Now to the play machines, the selection of games is very very average, they are mostly from 1 to 2 tokens and they don't have anything that's super fun that makes you want to go back again and again (R.I.P Amusement 2000 Plus). And once again, they found their way to royally mess up in that department too, 90% of the machines that you can use for 2 players we've tried don't work. Like you each put your tokens in the machine, one side is working but the other side is not working, I mean that can happen on 1 machine fine, but it gets extremely frustrating when that happens on literally every machine you try... So if you want go there for a date, you'll just end up super annoyed because there is nothing you can do together. And by the way I don't understand how and why the machines don't work properly since the arcade in brand new.

The staff is nice and polite but they don't give a duck, they'll give back the tokens lost in the non working machines but they don't actually do anything to make the machines work. At some point one person asked me (very politely) to stop playing because they were closing soon.

So yes, PLAYBOX has been an extremely disappointing and frustrating experience and keep in mind that on top of that, that this arcade is more expensive than the others.

I used to think ARKAD was meh but it is a much better place than this one, so I'd recommend it over if you are looking an arcade in Montreal downtown.

I miss the days of Amusement...

I was hyped for this as my girlfriend and I love to go to those places. We went on Sunday. I would have rated this much higher because the games are nice but lots of machines were out of order. Also the machines were not giving tickets that day so we could not exchange our wins for plushies. I would've expected that things would be in working order since they opened recently.

I do not want to generalize for every employee, but I found the service I received at the counter kinda lackluster. I got told that the machines do not give tickets like it was a no big deal situation (and no compensation? more coins?) and the clerk turned the machine for me to tap my card without first letting me sink in that situation. I accepted reluctantly by buying anyways because I already made the trip by metro just to come here. Then I noticed that around 5-8 machines were out of order and one machine also stole my token. I could have gone back at the counter to get refunded but the experience started to already go down for me.

To give a constructive comparison, I went to Claw Me in Terrebonne and the service was on another level. You feel welcomed, you see them roaming around all the time to make sure the machines are in working order, they give you a free water bottle when you do the machine that requires you to run. The machine where you run actually did not give me the reward (mechanical error), but they quickly jumped in to rectify and give me my price, did not even need to go to counter because staff roams around. I ended up spending 150$ (probably too much oops) but the experience favored it.

I suggest to put staff (that know how to repair/fix machines) on the floor in charge of making sure things are in working order (tickets filled, plushies re-arranged, coins refunded when there is an error, etc) and this will make the experience much better, because the games there are super cool. Arcades are mechanical and errors are bound to happen. When there is no help in that area it feels rigged like you are going to Cinema Guzzo where nobody cares about their "has-been" 10 years old+...