Pump It Up Alexandria Kids Birthday and More — Attraction in Alexandria

My daughter was excited for her birthday party, but we will never be back. The staff barely acknowledged us when we came in, a lead employee at the front desk was incredibly rude for the entirety of the party, and the rest of the staff barely did anything.

We purchased the classic package and paid extra to add water, goldfish, bubbles, and fruit since outside food is not allowed besides dessert. We brought cupcakes for dessert and cookies for any kid that didn’t want a cupcake. We were told we couldn’t have both and that we had to remove the cookies from the cart and take it to our car.

As they opened up the first room no employee was present in the room and the music kept randomly turning off. When we moved to the second room instead of announcing it like they have at past parties we've been to, they just opened the doors and walked away so the parents had to make sure the kids knew we were switching spaces. The second room did have more consistent music but again, no one in the room to help with anything. The bubbles were disappointing as they were just a small bubble machine plugged into the wall shooting bubbles at the kids’ eye level over a corner of the room rather than a larger machine from the ceiling as advertised.

Moving into the party room for the food was again not organized or well communicated. They did not have the kids line up and cheer the birthday kid in like they usually do and kids just all wandered in. We had to bring our daughter out of the room and have her re-enter properly. I then needed to prompt them about the pizza, ask them to get cups for the kids, and remind them about the fruit which turned out to clearly not be fresh and had gone bad. I ended up having to pour the drinks and give out the goldfish myself.

The final issue was dessert, where we were watched and monitored since we had the nerve to bring cupcakes and cookies. We placed a cookie on each cupcake to try to comply with their single dessert policy. However, after arguing with us in front of the kids about how she was being generous to let us add a cookie to a cupcake, the rude employee confiscated the cookies and marched them out to the front desk. I’ve never experienced such an issue at other establishments with similar rules about outside food or been treated in such a rude and vindictive manner.

We then cleaned up ourselves as the final bill was shoved...

We booked our daughter's birthday party here based on an amazing experience my wife and daughter had at their location up in Maryland. We were sorely disappointed.

The night started out bad as we attempted to bring in some food for our adult guests and were told we could not. We thought it would be fine because we were able to do it at Beehive where we had the previous two birthdays and it was not well communicated that we couldn't. The only place I could find it on the website was in the FAQs, and I did find it in an email, in the fine print, where I missed it. So we admitted we had missed it and asked if we could see a menu to order and they told us it was too late to order any food but we could pay them $21 per item of our own food to allow us to bring it in. This just made it clear that the policy was only about money despite the fact that we were already paying them $400 for the birthday. My wife asked to speak to the manager and the lady claimed that she was the manager. Later she told me that the general manager was the one that talked to me on the phone (admitting that she was not the manager).

Then as we went through our party host was never to be seen. When we did need something we literally had to search the place to find someone who worked there (I finally realized there was a back staff room where all the staff were hanging out.) When we asked for music in the party room they said it didn't work and we had to literally ask them to come out to sing the happy birthday song.

The facility was not clean. On one of the jumpy places we found all sorts of stuff left from previous guests in the crevices. This would have been kind of disgusting in a normal time but is even worse in a pandemic where your website promises increased sanitation and cleanliness. We also had a hole in the ceiling of the party room (shown in picture).

Lastly, they completely forgot aspects of our package such as the ice cream for the kids and when we brought it up at the end the lady who claimed to be the manager didn't know how to refund us for that amount.

Needless to say we do not recommend going to this place for a birthday party. We went to the Beehive playground in Woodbridge the last two years and had a much better experience in...

Great time but you won't get what you ordered/paid for!

We hosted our son's birthday party here. The actual experience is wonderful, and on its own, worth 5 stars. The children, ages 2 - 7 years old all had a fun time. They keep a party (mostly) isolated from the other guests, cycling through the rooms. Everything was clean, neat, and tidy. It was a relief to not have to worry about things like decorations.

The reason I knocked off 2 stars is because there was such a difference in between what we ordered and what we received. 1, we ordered the cotton candy (to be part of the party favors). When we got there, there seemed to be a bit of panic with the workers before they finally said that they didn't have any. Leaves the impression that they forgot to order it, despite someone calling me earlier in the week to confirm with me that we wanted the cotton candy. 2, one person who was there for "free play" was put into our party room. I wouldn't normally mind except for the next point. 3, Looking over photos of the event, I can confirm we had 11 children total (including mine) at our party. 12 only if they decided to count an infant who never played on the structures because, well, he was an infant. Anyway, we purchased the package for 12 kids, so we were still within the package. Yet, when my husband was given the receipt (how odd it was my name on everything but they cornered him to pay so he didn't know the details of what was ordered and didn't know to point out the problems), we were charged for having 2 extra guests! Where did 2 extra guests come from?! Even the one non-party person that came into our room had only 1 child, so it's just so bizarre. 4, we ordered orange Fanta and we were given pineapple Fanta. Nobody likes pineapple Fanta. If they didn't have orange Fanta, they should have just asked us what we would have liked as a substitute - it certainly would not have been pineapple. 5, We ordered the 18 balloon bouquet. Things were so chaotic, I did not stop to count the balloons when they came in. It wasn't until the end when we ran out of balloons (we were using them as party favors) that I realized something was amiss with the balloons. I went through my photos, and there were only 9 balloons in...