Dave & Buster's Vaughan — Restaurant in Vaughan

Came here on the day of the storm. When we arrive the reception area sold the Power cards to play in the Midway. There was a lineup to purchase cards. If you are new to Dave N Busters you must purchase a power card to play games. My group purchased the multi player deal where you purchase 4 + cards at a discounted rate. $60 for 500 chips vs $75 for 550 chips if you purchase individually. There's a $3 activation fee for new cards. 7 cards and it came up to $470. Wowsers!!! The midway has games for all ages. Some games will reward tickets while the arcade games do not. I found some of the driving games are dated and need to be replaced. The classic basketball games used to have hoops that move back and forth. Looks like they replaced them with nets that are fixed position. Not as challenging but overall fun if you're a basketball fan. They also have the long distance shooting basketball game as well. There are 2 ways to order. You can scan the QR code on your table to place your order or you can wait for a server to take your order. We ordered 2 Bud light draft beer tubes 100 oz at $36.49 each. It's equivalent to 2 pitchers of beers. Glasses were chilled in freezer to keep your beer ice cold. Now for the food. We ordered 2 orders of chicken wings $15.95 + $1.99 to add fries. We got one spicy korean and one honey bourbon. Wings were breaded and tossed in the sauce. Fries, carrots and celery are served on the side with bleu cheese or ranch dip. Wings were good for sports bar and no complaints here. Fries looks to be the frozen McCain style superfries. The Korean sticky ribs were my favourite. Pork back ribs seemed to be lightly fried with spicy korean sauce, sesame seeds and green onions. Ribs were cooked perfectly and had a nice light crunchy texture. We loved it so much we ordered it again. Next dish cantina nachos $15.95 served with ancho chile chicken served with sour cream, salsa and guacamole. The chips were served in a baked tray and loaded with toppings. This was also a fan favourite as well. We also ordered the Dangerous waters island punch $12.99 which was mixture of Malibu coconut rum, blue curacoa pineapple juice, scratch sour mix and served with a slice of pineapple garnish. Great tasting drink a bit pricey but nice presentation.

Overall the experience was positive. There was a short power failure due to the storm and the staff provided prompt communication regarding the situation. The games were restarted in about 10 minutes. The PA speaker was really loud and really bothered my ears. They should adjust the volume so it doesn't blow our ear drums. We spent about $800 for food and games. Very expensive outing to celebrate a birthday. We could have purchase smaller denomination power cards but we were buying them for the next visit as well. I still had about 380 chips left after playing for 2 hours. Games are half price on Wednesdays if you are looking to get the most out...

Honestly I was very disappointed with my experience at this Dave & Buster’s location. My group played games and ate dinner and there were just a few incidents that really negatively impacted my time.

1. While I understand that my group was on the larger side (15 people) and would have been harder to serve, the level of service we received for dinner was not great. 4 people got their food first, and while I anticipated everyone else’s food to come out in a 5-10min range due to how large our group was, the 4 people, anticipating a similar time range, wanted to wait for everyone to have their food before they started eating. However, they ended up waiting for ~15+ mins for everyone’s food to get to our table. The food was also quite dry which made us feel like the wait was not worth it. We also had to ask several times for enough cups and cutlery for our table as the servers forgot.

2. In addition to the slow service, the servers were fooling around with each other, which led to them spilling a full drink right next to our table. While I understand that accidents can happen, an apology would have been appreciated as the spilled drink was really sugary (aka sticky) and was really close to getting on our personal belongings.

3. My friend and I went into the bathroom, and as we were heading in, I noticed that there were those rope barriers off to the side (note: they were most definitely not blocking the entrance and were off to the side). Once we got in, there was an employee in the bathroom who looked at us and asked us why we moved the barriers to get in. We let him know that we didn’t and that the entrance was open, and he said to us “no no no. If you want to go to the bathroom, go upstairs.” as if he was accusing us of moving the barriers - which felt quite disrespectful and I really didn’t appreciate. I ended up coming back to this bathroom later in the night, and only one soap dispenser had soap and two sinks were functional. I feel as though the man that accused us maybe could have at least filled up the dispensers so the women weren’t waiting in line to wash our hands.

4. Once it was time to pay for our meal, we noticed that there was a 25% auto-gratuity added. While I expected there to be an auto-gratuity based off of our group size, 25% seems quite a bit ridiculous - especially given the issues with our service. We also weren’t given notice of this before we ordered, which I feel like is normally done at other food establishments. I personally feel as though paying $25 for a quesadilla is unreasonable. I also asked for sauce on the side but this also wasn’t disclosed would have an additional cost (though I did think my sauce could have an additional cost, it would have been nice to know as I was ordering).

5. Several of the games were broken, which was just disappointing that we couldn’t play them

Overall, I can’t see myself coming back to this location...

I'm not sure if I visited on an off night or during a time when they were very short staffed but this experience was definitely not one of their finest moments. The greeting at the door was very friendly by security and the atmosphere is energetic and good enough to keep the kids entertained. Disappointing that there's not as many games as there used to be or from what I recall from even a year ago. When my family of 8 attempted to find a table, every table required cleaning. Not just a table wipe, but a full clearance of bottles, glasses, plates, etc. We settled at a table to be cleaned, there were side plates and rolled cutlery amongst the dirty dishes. I saw our waitress come by to bus the table and noticed she left the side plates and rolled cutlery for us to use vs grabbing us new ones. We didn't use them and decided on finger foods with the exception of one of my sons, who we then grabbed a clean fork from the service area. The food was also not presented or tasted as good as it once did or from when I used to visit in the past few years. I used to think that the food was worth the price but this visit was not close to previous experiences. Not sure if it's because we ate in the restaurant in the gaming area. All previous dining experiences were in the dining room. The food used to be presented like so much care was put into the meal, this visit the food looked as if it were thrown together. Perhaps they were short staffed in the kitchen? The ladies washroom located on the main floor in the gaming area looked as though it had not been cleaned all day. Every stall was disgusting and anything close to decent didn't have supplies. There were trails of toilet paper from the entrance to the inside and throughout each stall. You felt filthy walking out of it. Another customer looked at me and hesitated to use the facilities until I directed her to what I thought was the cleanest but warned her to grab toilet paper from a different stall. She was wearing open toe sandals and tip toed through the area to try and avoid any garbage on the floor. I still rated 4 stars based on the fact that all previous experiences were flawless and I feel this was just a bad night. Otherwise I would rate this particular experience as a 2. So we will visit again, but should we find the same experience as the last, it will probably be the end...