Squid Game: The Experience — Attraction in New York

The squid game experience was the best!! The actors and staff are phenomenal. The inside when you first has a cool photo opportunities with the doll from red light green light and the piggy bank. The staff are so kind to ask if you want your photo taken with either or both props. Then once you enter they have merch and it is a shop but it still has a really good atmosphere with low colourful lights, it’s calming and it has a mysterious ambiance. They have these awesome actors in the area like the train station guy from the show challenging people for game advantages/hints for your games. Be careful you don’t loose though otherwise you’ll have to do a punishment (similar to how 456 gets slapped by the train station guy in the show if he looses the challenge). In the night market merch shop they have clothes, teddies, figurines, korean snacks/dessert, drinks (including alcohol) a soup/ramen dispenser. Just so many options! They have a photo booth, mini arcade with a giant pac-man and claw machine. They have some seating area where my fiancé and i had dinner. (We brought in some takeout from a place nearby). Then after enjoying all they have to offer you go into your games. They have 5 games and they take exactly an hour to play. (spoilers ahead): First you take your photo to keep track of your score (just like in the show). Then you move to the first game which is adaptation of the glass game from the show, the second game is a marbles game where you have to get it in a shape, then they have you play battleships, then red light green light, and finally a surprises game with the front man! After one the games one person from that last game is chosen as the vip and they get access for free to the vip lounge. Once we finished the last game we were taking pictures and the front man was nice enough to even pose with us for some photos, there’s also some guard mannequins for good photo opportunities. The staff members guided us through the games including the actor guards, and everyone involved they’re all very nice and keep the games going at a good pace. We bought the vip tickets (worth the extra $ btw) so we got access to the vip lounge anyways. When you first enter you get your red mask it’s different unlike the winner of the game who gets a gold one and you get two discounts a person, one discount is for merch (clothing/other stuff), the other is for the snacks. Plus you get a drink voucher per person. They have alcoholic beverages and non alcoholic beverages. I tried 456 and gganbu-rita we found the 456 really strong and good but preferred the gganbu-rita. While enjoying our drinks we watched other groups on the tv go through their trials they had a tv displaying red light green light, and one displaying the glass game. Overall the area was nice with couches and lots of seating in the lounge, it was mostly adult too which was nice as the regular area had lots of kids running around yelling (as kids do lol) but this was a nice relaxing break after the games. Overall this experience is so worth the money, lots of photo opportunities and fun memories to be made. We arrived around 2:30pm with our game slot at 5pm-6pm then stayed after up until it closed after around 8:30pm we wished we had even came sooner as there’s so much to enjoy. If you get the chance to go here definitely spend as much time as you can and enjoy it! Also buy your tickets on their website in advance save yourself the wait since even after waiting in person we heard they sell out fast.

The only thing we disliked (to no fault of the staff/event) is that in our group we had a lot of young children who were constantly screaming/crying/holding the game up. This particularly affected our last game as the youngest kid was chosen and refused to participate and then their family members subbed in for her but then also refused to do what was needed in the game which held us up. So they cut the game short. A bit frustrating but it is what it is. If you have kids under 10 or kids that get scared/misbehave best to skip this. It’s more of an...

If you must go, then dress warmly and arrive much earlier than your ticket time, because you'll be waiting in line for at least an hour under blasting AC. There are also no lockers and you'll have to pay extra for coat check.

When the couple in front of me tried to civilly express how frustrated they were with the lack of communication regarding wait times and overall discomfort, the employees were dismissive and completely unapologetic. I wasn't even the one complaining, but I was extremely annoyed by the (lack of) adequate response.

The only excuses the staff gave were "it's our first day and we're still learning, and also you should have bought VIP instead, we'll always prioritize VIP over you in general admissions." They then called over a manager, who was a bit more sympathetic, but who explained that "we train the general staff to be rude and unapologetic because that's the immersive experience you'd get if you were in Squid Games. Except 1) that's literally no way to treat a customer unless you've previously advertised it as such (they haven't); and 2) none of the actual games themselves gave off any sort of immersive feel, as none of them actually resemble the games from the show.

The games:

Overall games - 2/5. They tried to harken back to the feel of some of the games from the show, but most of them don't even come close to the same feel, and there is no real sense of urgency or actual competition. They keep encouraging you to backstab each other for the win, but there's no real opportunity to do so.

Memory Squares - you line up in lanes and try to remember which squares were highlighted as safe in the very beginning. It's literally memory hopscotch, except there are only 6 safe squares so it's ridiculously easy to figure out (especially if you're not in the first wave of people to go). 2/5

Marbles - They make you think it's the dalgona game from the show, but really all you're doing is playing marbles. Literally stand at a distance and toss marbles into the shapes in the center. Yeah. That's it. Whoever collects the most marbles wins. 1/5

Battleship - You're split into two teams and directed to sit in ships to fire shots at each other from behind a screen. The only ones who can pick are the four "captains" sitting in the fronts of the ships; everyone else just has to sit there yelling (or in most cases, just checking out on their phones). 3/5 if you're a captain; 1/5 if you're a passenger.

Red Light/Green Light - Literally the same as the nursery game, except you can hide behind pillars and big present boxes. If you're caught moving by the sensors, you're out. Overall simplistic, but still better than most of the other games (though I foresee people running into each other and fighting in the future, because this is ridiculously undersized for 24 people). 3/5

Final Round (Last Supper) - The leader from the previous four rounds (who is rather arbitrarily decided; someone from my group of friends was the leader, but we all knew that another member of our group actually should have had more points than her) is selected to sit up front and face another random player. The surrounding players are then again selected at random to pick a player and force them to turn a jack-in-the-box until it opens. I think we made it to three rounds of rotation before it opened up. Incredibly underwhelming and pretty clearly one of the least-invested rounds of the game. 1/5

It's just a cash grab--poorly planned and shamelessly misadvertised. I would not return or recommend for...

My Experience at the Squid Games Event We recently took part in a Squid Games-themed event, and at first, it was an absolute blast. The games were fun, the energy was high, and the overall setup really captured the excitement of the show. It started off as a great time with friends, and we were all excited to compete and see how far we could get. However, as we went through the rooms, something started to feel off. The gentleman who was guiding us through the different games seemed to be purposely eliminating people—whether they lost fairly or not. In one of the games, There was a sequence of colors displayed, aWhen I went to step on a color, it turned red before I even touched it or made a move and I was called out as well as the guy next to me. We did say it out loud what the heck. We didn’t get to move. And the guide just kept it moving to the next game. Also, to us During the red light/green light game, it looked like multiple people were eliminated even though they hadn’t moved at all.

We understand that the goal is to eliminate players and keep the game moving. That’s totally fair. But intentionally forcing people to lose takes away the fun and fairness of the experience. As players, we noticed what was happening. It’s just a game, yes—but part of what makes it fun is knowing we all have a fair shot. We wanted to compete, not just get picked off.

That said, we still made some great memories and had fun with our group. We just hope future events are run with a bit more fairness and attention to the player experience. I do highly recommend this event because it is...