Activate Games — Attraction in Oak Brook

What a fun concept! Friendly and helpful staff also add to a great experience.

First thing to note: Activate is not quite at Oakbrook Center, but instead is at a nearby little strip mall, which means you get to park right out front - convenient!

The first thing I noticed upon entering is that the temperature is FROSTY, but I knew this was for good reason. I had heard that this activity is very, well, ACTIVE, as the name Activate might imply.

We were checked in right away, and since we were visiting on a Friday evening, it was rather crowded, so we had to wait until our official reservation time before we could enter.

I expected Activate to be more like other experiences we have had previously, where you are more or less confined to a single room for about an hour. Not so. It's kind of more like a Chuck E Cheese model, but more sophisticated. Instead of tokens, you pay for a solid block of time (75 minutes, in our case) to free play all the games you can. You and all other visitors flit from room to room to try the different games. While each room hosts a particular type of game (some you run around, some you toss basket balls, etc.), you can vary the ruleset when you log in (using an NFC bracelet) at the touch screen just outside the door. This means there is a larger variety of games than there are rooms.

If there isn't a line for the room you want to play in, and if another group isn't already in the game room, you go right in. Otherwise, you log in at the touch screen and wait until it says you can enter. Wait times were never very long, though some rooms were more popular than others. That said, it would probably be more easygoing to visit at a less popular time.

The design is that only your group (whoever scanned their wristbands together before hitting "Start") will enter the game room together. So you don't have to play any games with strangers; they just wait outside the door until you are done. In fact, the Entry door locks while you are inside (Exit door remains open). By that token, if you are an agoraphobe, know that you can run to the bathroom every 30 seconds if you'd like, since you will be going from room to room of your own volition and can take a break between rooms as much and as often as you'd like. Just going by my gut, I'd say some games are only a few seconds long, while others are like a minute or two.

Kind of makes me think of the WarioWare "microgames," for those who are familiar with that concept. Or Mario Party. But the pacing and zaniness made me think more of WarioWare.

As you succeed in the various microgames, you unlock further difficulty levels, so again, you feel like there is a lot to do with even just the handful of rooms.

Instead of Chuck E Cheese style prize tickets, you earn stars, which are tied to your profile. You can redeem them for prizes, like t-shirts. But really, performing well in the games is its own reward.

I really liked our time here. I think I may like Activate even better than some of the other similar concept places we've been to. You do get the chance to be active while playing here, but even if you are out of shape, it's not really a big deal. Most people have at least the level of fitness required to toss a basket ball or jump to-and-fro for 8...

Honestly so much fun! I saw videos on tiktok like a year ago and have been impatiently waiting for this one to open. They regularly send out discount codes. Highly recommend signing up for their emails if you want to save some money. Otherwise it’s $25 per person. With discounts we got it down to $13 per person! They also have a streak discount. I believe they raise the discount percent each time you come. I came with a group of 5, none of us having been before. The parking lot is large enough and has Tesla charges for anyone that cares. They have you sign in when you get there and give you a free locker if you need it. They have 11ish game rooms with each room having multiple game options. Our favorites were grid, mega grid, and climb. The grids are a major cardio workout but insanely fun. Climb hurts your fingers after a while if you’re not used to rock climbing. Thank gawd there’s a ledge you walk on and you don’t have to actually hold yourself up by your arms, I would die.

The laser room would have been more fun if you could see the laser better. It also would have been nice if you could see when a room was empty so you could play the ones that were open instead of waiting on others. Maybe they did have a way to show us that and we just didn’t notice¿ They were missing the trench room and had two hoops instead. I wish there was a breakdown of all the different games so we could plan ahead the ones that sound fun to us. We ended up standing at each room clicking through the how to plays for a while.

There were bathrooms in the back and a water fountain with cups and a trashcan. It would be nice if reusable water bottles were encouraged instead of creating so much plastic waste. The only place to put your bottles is in the lockers at the front of the building. Which isn’t really an inconvenience, but being outside of the game area it has the perception of being less convenient meaning less people will choose the sustainable route.

Overall we had 75 minutes of fun, the staff were super nice, and we would...

Had a wonderful time overall and definitely want to come back again. This wasn't the first time I'd been to this game...center? lol I'm not really sure what to call it. In any case, I had trouble describing to my group exactly how everything works, but then when we got there, the employee who checked us in said that newcomers could get a quick tutorial (which I'd forgotten would happen anyways upon arrival). I thought, "Okay, perfect. They'll run us through it."

But the one thing that was clearly incorrect during the tutorial that was given by a different employee was that when my partner asked something along the lines of, "How long can we stay in each room?" the employee answered, "You can stay as long as you like." I didn't say anything in the moment because I figured I could clear up the confusion once we were put in a situation where we very obviously COULD NOT stay in a room as long as we wanted to (instead of wasting time explaining in the moment). I don't know if the employee just didn't understand the question or if he was overwhelmed by how busy it was at the time. It was just a little tick of annoyance that when we first got to a game that our group really enjoyed and wanted to keep playing, I had to tell them we couldn't stay since another group was waiting right behind us and that we'd have to get in line again.

In terms of procedure, it might be helpful to describe in more detail the process of the game center on your website. Even in the "how it works" section, the heading "select a room" says you can "stay put" which might be technically accurate but perhaps misleading to people who haven't been there before (i.e. a group cannot choose to stay in a room if there is another group waiting to play, but yes that first group could "stay put" and wait in line again for that same room). Perhaps at least add an addendum to something of this effect.

Regardless, other than that tiny blip, we all had a wonderful time! A great way to game-ify exercise for adults and...