Northern Lights Arcade — Local services in Grapevine

While we go to Great Wolf Lodge for my kids to enjoy the water park, my husband and I enjoy the opportunity to sneak away at night and play arcade games as a sort of mini date. Of course, we are always spending our winnings on things for our kids. This time we had such an amazing experience. Caitlin, who appeared to be the head of the repair team tonight, did an AMAZING job at training Ethan while also getting everything done and managing the entire arcade with a relatively small staff. New repair person Ethan had started just recently (I saw Caitlin training him over the weekend) and was already able to start fixing things solo. If he couldn't fix it, Caitlin was right there to take care of it while he went to fix something he was comfortable with. AMAZING TEAM WORK!!

Ethan at the ticket counter (same name, different person) was very patient with us as we counting our coins from the Wizard of Oz Coin Pusher and chose our prizes. He was so helpful even after working a very, very long day.

In terms of the prizes, thank you for having a wide variety of prizes for a wide variety of ages and neurotypes. Our toddler has autism and we are very picky about what we bring home for him. We try to find sensory pleasing things that he will enjoy. We even got our neurotypical daughter a few fun prizes. It is always exciting to be able to choose things we know our kids will love (I'm especially excited about the rubber ducks that feel like basketballs)

The number one thing is that Great Wolf NEEDS to get better AC in the arcade. I thought the last time I was here it was my pregnancy making my hot but I'm 7 months post partum and sweating after leaving the arcade. And I was sitting there just playing games. Meanwhile the staff were rushing all around to keep all the games running properly. For an area as mentally stimulating (read: addictive) as the arcade, people are already forgetting to drink water. It could be VERY dangerous to let the temperature get as hot as it does. And when it's full of people and running machines, it gets VERY hot. However, the staff made our experience pleasant enough to still...

Great wolf penny pinches you for every activity, (ex:$15 parking, $15-$30 lockers, kids activities to start their wand game it's $17, then to purchase a wand it's $20-$60, then you gotta buy a power character for another $17, $30 pizzas, $14 chicken sandwiches, $10 normal sized soft pretzels, etc..) so when we went to the arcade and saw the cost of credits it seemed cheap. That is until we went over to play. The games take 7-15 wolf paws(credits) to play. So you zoom right thru. Then my son was playing the wild west ticket game and won 1473 tickets. We already had 396 so at time to get our prizes it only read 500 tickets. When I had Chris, the tech, come make it right he basically called my son a liar. We told him to check the cameras, he walked away out of arcade returning 5 mins later. He wanted to check the game. My husband watched him swipe his control card the machine read error:8. Another customer came over and got the techs attention. He leaves then comes back again and says the game us fine, nothing wrong.then only gave my son 400 out of the 1400+ he was owed. Then when we further questioned it Chris called security cause we wouldn't let it go. I will never come back to this place. I may be only one person boycotting them, but at least I know I'm not the one being literally SCAMMED by...

TOTAL RIP-OFF

If you get the Paw Pass for like $60, you'll have enough credits to play perhaps five games. The credits seem cheap, but the bait and switch is that the games cost something like 15 credits to play, so when you have 60 credits and feel like you're going to be there for hours of fun, you're not.

The guy at the counter is up-front about it, too. "Yeah, you'll only be able to play a couple of games with what you get with the Paw Pass. I recommend this deal to get more credits for another $30."

Instead of ten minutes of fun, you'll get half an hour.

The games themselves are just okay, but some are in a state of disrepair, and when I asked the guy why a ticket dispensing game didn't give us tickets he kind of shrugged "some of these games are pretty old, I don't know."

I get that he's just the guy at the counter, but he had no interest in making it right or making it fun.

The whole...