Nickel Mania — Attraction in Murray

I never write reviews but the experience I had with the staff was so incredibly disrespectful I had to send out a warning. My wife and I used to love coming here on dates when we were in our teens & early 20s, but since having kids we haven't had the time to. Now that our kids are old enough we decided it would be a really fun family activity to take them here, but boy were we mistaken. Right off the bat when walking in there's probably 3 people at the front, but they pretend they don't see us for 10 minutes straight. One of them (the manager) is just watching the camera footage like a hawk. I thought that someone was doing something illegal and he was watching out for them, I will shortly find out later that he does this because he likes to run this place like it's a high security prison where no one is allowed to have fun. The other two employees are just chatting it up. They see us, but they don't care. This results in our young kids already being fussy and a little annoyed before they even can enter. Them being curious kids, start looking around, and our 5 year old crosses into the arcade area for 5 seconds to look at a machine while we wait. This immediately catches the manager's attention who starts to yell at us to control our kid. Our son immediately comes back over and apologizes, saying he just wanted to look at the arcade machine. The manager still appears annoyed and we see the employees roll their eyes and finally one of them reluctantly comes over to let us pay for our entrance fee and arcade card. We should have left after seeing how poorly the staff was reacting to us just wanting to enter the arcade but we really wanted to give this place a chance, since we've had so many good memories here before. We're able to get over this and our kids seem to be having fun. Our 5 year old wants to play the dinosaur shooting game and our 4 year old decides to join him. We're right next to them the entire time and something in the game made our youngest laugh really loud, which then made our 5 year old laugh really loud too. We didn't think much of it since it's an arcade, which is mainly for family and young adults, but of course, we were mistaken. A few seconds comes by and the kids are still laughing, and I see the manager come towards us and taps my wife on the shoulder to tell her the she needs to control our kids. She looks at me completely confused then back at the manager. He further explains that "everyone" is complaining about our children's noise level, saying that they're being too rambunctious. She's responds with "yeah.. this is an arcade? They're just kids having fun?" He then continues by saying that they've been extremely disrespectful this whole time and that SHE needs to do something about it. My wife then asks him what it is that they're doing that's so "disrespectful" he then looks at me and goes "listen please explain to your wife that SHE needs to do a better job at disciplining your children better". I had never been so baffled at such a display of sexism in my life. He tries walking away but before he does I confront him and tell him "First of all, please explain to BOTH of us what exactly have our children done that's been bothering 'everyone', second of all my wife is not a nanny to our children & you can speak to the BOTH of us when it concerns our family" he immediately starts by stammering about how our kids are being too loud and then goes off on a tangent about how back in his day the mothers were the care takers and that fathers are the reasonable authorities and just a bunch of sexist BS, RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR CHILDREN. We immediately demand a refund but he refuses to so we get out of there as quickly as possible. I was going to give it a couple days and let my anger go away but it has been a few days and I'm still very upset & very disappointed by this experience. I spent some time reading the newest reviews and it seems like all the 1 star reviews are because of this man and the staff members. All the 1 star reviews, including mine, conclude: he is a...

My girlfriend and I used to love going to this place. It was one of our go-to dates that we always knew would be fun. However, today we had to leave 20 minutes after showing up because we were so uncomfortable. The manager of the store came up to us and told my girlfriend that she “needed to pull her shorts down” because there were people complaining. These shorts were completely covering. They weren’t booty shorts, they weren’t even tight anywhere. Keep in mind that this is in the middle of August in 96 degree weather. We were planning on going to the park close by once we were done. We felt so weird continuing to play that we just decided to leave. I asked the manager for a refund on what was left of the card but he refused. Then, he doubled down, saying that “he couldn’t have her mooning customers”. I don’t believe that that comment was necessary, and it leads me to believe that it came from his own personal opinion as a 50 year old dude of what my 20 year old girlfriend was wearing. Once again, this happened only 15 or 20 minutes into arriving at the arcade. Don’t come here if you’re planning on dressing comfortable for the current climate. Either dress in a ball gown and give this prestigious establishment the respect it deserves or stay home. Edit: It seems convenient that less than 12 hours after my bad review someone comes to the defense of the “mom with her kids” who apparently were the ones who said something about my girlfriend’s outfit. After reading a lot of the negative reviews given to nickelmania in just this past year, it seems like the common denominator is the manager. I wouldn’t put it past him to write a fake review defending his recurring weird and sexist behavior. If it actually is a grandpa writing on behalf of his daughter and grandkids (we did not see a group of people fitting that description while we were there), I would encourage them to think a little harder about why someone might want to wear shorts on a very hot summer day. There are a million lights, sounds, and games to play and you decide to focus on a couple minding their own business in the back of the arcade. Don’t claim your own outdated purity culture is for the sake...

The sign outside of the building looks like it's 20 years old. The outside of the building looks pretty run down and old as well. The parking lot is tiny. There have been times there was no parking available and I had to park at Fashion Place Mall and walk over to the arcade. Once you walk in, you are stopped by a big sign saying you have to pay $2.25 for admission and you can buy your nickels right then as well. You're given entry into the playing area and you are free to roam to whatever game you please.

The games look pretty old/worn down, but they work perfectly fine. Some games are newer than others. There is a pretty wide variety of games available. There are partner games, solo games, kid games, lottery games, racing games, old-fashioned arcade games, etc. Unlike Nickel City, Nickelmania functions in a more old-fashioned way. The games require nickels and they dispense tickets. I prefer this method rather than using a playing card like Nickel City. I feel like it's more rewarding to hold all the tickets in your hand rather than a single card that automatically collects all of your tickets on there, however, this is a personal preference. Another difference between Nickel City and Nickelmania is that Nickelmania has less games under maintenance or unavailable than Nickel City. Nickelmania may look less modern, but the purpose of an arcade is to provide fun through arcade games and Nickelmania has done this job better than Nickel City.

Overall, the building is old, the parking lot is small, and the bathrooms are mediocre; however, it fulfills the duty of an arcade and provides entertainment to its fullest extent. At the end of the day, I am pretty satisfied with my visit to...