Ink Interactive Neighborhood — Attraction in Gainesville

Where to begin . . .I had high hopes for this establishment: as a mom of young children, I was excited to have them play in an imagination-friendly environment that would be comfortable and cool on a hot summer's day; my optimism was quickly dashed, though. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the front desk staff, who were friendly enough. When we asked if they offered any discounts for teachers or military (as someone in our group qualified for these discounts), they said there were no educator discounts but that they did offer a military discount. It was all of 80 cents off of adult admission, which is frankly insulting to service members. If I am remembering correctly, the cost of admission for children over 2 years old was $9, and adult admission was the same. I have been to many children's play facilities in the past and I have never seen a place charge a flat rate for everyone over 2 years old. Parents are there to keep their children safe and should really be given a lower admission rate, if not free with a paid child. But I digress. The first thing I noticed was a lack of central air conditioning. It was a hot day (83 for a high) and in lieu of central AC, they had large fans mounted on the ceilings (the same kind of fan that contractors had used at my home to air it out after a plumbing disaster). That was the only noticeable airflow, which resulted in a stale and stagnant-feeling space that put me on edge. The lighting was dark, to boot, making it feel as though you were in a large closet with poor ventilation. Oh, and did I mention no natural light? There were no windows at all, which (at least for me) makes any space feel more unpleasant. At first, we were pleased with what we saw. There were lots of rooms available for the children to enter and explore, but we soon noticed that there was a common theme throughout the facility: nonfunctioning items. I do not believe there is anyway to quantify how many items were not operational, other than to say that there were more broken items than working ones. The conveyer belt at the grocery store room: broken. The scale in the children's hospital room: broken. The cow-milking station: broken. The countless computer keybords: broken. It truly feels as though INK has gone around Gainesville and collected discarded and nonfunctional items from the dump, then compiled them all in one big building. Of course, I do not expect every single item to work, but it would have been nice if we could have approached each room with optimism rather than "oh, guess what? This thing is broken, too." Despite signage alleging that the facility is sanitized regularly (and slobber boxes posted throughout INK), it did not take us much effort to notice that the dirt, dust, and grime was far more present than I was comfortable with. When I looked up at the ceiling, I could see dust lining the pipes and wires on the ceiling, and the climbing gym behind the police car had dirt piled up in the corners, where my toddler was climbing on her hands and knees. Within 30 minutes of arriving, I was beginning to feel somewhat sick to my stomach and my friend began to have allergy symptoms (itching eyes), which continued after leaving INK. Throughout our time at INK, the staff did not interact with us in any positive way, such as greeting our kids or asking if we needed help with anything (we were given a map at the front desk and told to "have fun); instead, the girls who worked there would simply follow us around, room-by-room, cleaning up toys my children had used. Honestly , this was a bit unnerving and felt as though we were not allowed to make a mess (mind you, it is completely normal for children to dump toys, go play with something else, and come back to the original pile of playthings). I am not sure what a better approach would be: of course, the staff wants to keep the facility neat, but awkwardly following guests around and cleaning up after them is uncomfortable. My 2 cents? Go to Chick-Fil-A , buy a kid's meal, let your children play in the play area. It will be more pleasant...

Things to be aware about this place if planning to do a Party with them.

Do it yourself. The Host packages are useless. The employees are lifeless. They have no kind of “happiness” or even a fake “enthusiasm” for party host. Everything is unorganized. We had to call several times to book the event. The day of the party I felt like I had to figure out when and what to do (even tho we had a party host that you would think would be entertaining the guest and directing the event.)

-Way overpriced for the time slot in the room.

-They never told me I had to come pick up the invations until I asked about them the day of the Party.

They tried to over charge us.

-The place needs a remolding. Super outdated. They don’t seem to clean the faculty often. It smelled and was dirty in lots of places. We was their from 1-4:30 on a Sunday. They close at 5pm on Sundays and we saw the employees running around the Museum about 4ish trying to clean up areas and closing them off so no one would mess that area up. Seems like the employees have to pick up the toys at the end of the day which is fine but also tacky to do when the faculty is still in business hours.

Would I come back? No

Would I recommend this place even if it was free? Nope!

Save your money and...

After hearing about this I decided to visit INK with my daughter who is 7. We walked In and it looked great (you walk into the gift shop area). After paying a reasonable price of $8 a person . we started walking through the learning area. This is where my experience went bad. This place is dirty and the items on display and for the children use are either broken or filthy. I honestly question the amount of cleaning and sanitizing that is done. This place has so much potential to be what it is meant to be which is a fantastic concept. But I won't return and my daughter even said "dad I Dont want to touch that is very dirty" we spent 20 minutes walking around but the lack of cleanliness forced our hand to leave. As I was walking out I asked the front desk lady how often the place is sanitized and cleaned and also how often they update the broken or missing objects. Her response was "we clean pretty often but its mainly like sweeping and mopping and we Dont replace much unless its dangerous" that sealed the deal for me. I saw over 100 kids in this place in the 20 minutes I was there and they were touching everything and it required much more than "sweeping...