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The LBX Collective aims to inform and educate, create opportunities to connect with industry peers, and to spur collaboration, discourse, and cross-pollination of ideas in the location-based entertainment and experience industry.
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LBX Collective
The LBX Show #28 - Dusty Planets, Gold Tickets, Foamplosions, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
On this week's LBX Show BW and friends explore innovative strategies entertainment venues are using to attract repeat visitors and stay competitive in today's market.
• Dusty Planet in Rhode Island launches a space-themed mini-golf concept with custom 3D-printed merchandise and branded balls
• Legoland Hotel California implements golden ticket hunt promotion, giving guests reason to explore and return
• Orlando Science Center creates "Mess Fest" with foam explosions and science experiments to drive engagement
• RPM Raceway sets world record for longest indoor go-kart track by connecting three separate courses
• Dave & Buster's continues international expansion with new locations in India, adapting format to local market
• Four key strategies for getting repeat customers: collecting first-party data, email/SMS marketing, retargeting, and keeping attractions fresh
• Entertainment venues globally updating their brands and attractions to remain relevant in competitive market
• Several major closures including Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in Maryland and UK's Playland showing industry consolidation
Visit lbxgalaxy.com to join our online community where you can connect with others in the industry, share ideas, and ask questions.
Tuning you in. Now to the LBX Show with your host, brandon Wiley, brought to you by the LBX Collective your community to connect, engage and inspire.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, welcome everybody to the LBX show. This is number 28 for May 11th 2025. I'm your host, brandon Wiley, and we've got a good show lined up for you today. It's just like me in a couple of segments, so we don't have like crazy. The next week will be. I have a few other people and stuff involved, but we're going to kick things off with the news. You should know We've got some cool things lined up here, and then we're going to ride into a promo pro tips with Chuck DeMonte, and he's going to cover four ways to get people to come back into your center. And then we finish off with a robust open and shut with Kevin Williams, while we dig into key trends from all the latest openings and closings, but also including a lot of international expansion. So, with that being said, let's dive right into some news you should know.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, yesterday, may 10th, was National Mini Golf Day and, after completing a soft opening over the weekend, dusty Planet, a new entertainment location in Providence, rhode Island, held their grand opening. And so they held the grand opening yesterday, may 10th, on Saturday, and the Dusty Planet's nine-hole course is themed around space and adventure, with alien-themed decorations and hand-painted walls, they say, immersing visitors Within the venue. You can purchase a range of beers, wine and cocktails, as well as soft drinks, and there's a couple of arcade machines also available in the venue, and then a crane game with a range of plush prizes. So you've got to get your cranes going. And you know what I'm going to pull up their website because I just really like the rough around the edges approach to this venue.
Speaker 2:Normally I think I would give totally shit on this website, but actually I think this is done intentionally. I think this is a tongue in cheek thing, because nobody makes websites like this anymore unless you're doing it intentionally. This has a very 1990s website feel to it. So I love, like the welcome to the dusty planet. Like the logo is a little bit wonky and, uh, you know they've got this stuff here and that that's been as you move and again, like this is just good, it's just good. I just really like it. Visit us in onlyville, I guess is where they are in providence, rhode island maybe, unless that's the name of their space planet you're visiting is the onlyville and guess is where they are in providence, rhode island. Maybe, unless that's the name of their space planet you're visiting is the onlyville and uh, like you know, they just got your pretty standard stuff here.
Speaker 2:But you want to like what they're doing is they're they're actually taking it, um, you know, a lot farther than they actually needed to for a little nine hole mini golf place. Like, first of all, they've got a bunch of little stuff you can shop that they 3D print. So they got a bunch of little 3D prints of oh, I didn't realize it was a video. So you know, we've got some 3D printed stuff. Oh, this is just going to their Instagram, all right. So you know we've got the dusty planet and like these little aliens that are on skateboards and hoverboards and you know that kind of stuff, and they've got stickers.
Speaker 2:Like clearly they're just trying to go for like a really niche feel to everything that they're doing and um, anyway, but they've even done like the little touches. So this is what I like about their. Their touches here is that they've done um, this is this, where is it here? I liked this one, so, oh well, I thought I could. Oh, there we go. So, even on their balls they did daily planet balls like those are the little touches that, even though you might be a small nine-hole course with some kind of unique oddball theming, your 3d printing, like those kind of touches are so important. How they could have just taken those balls, taking the colored balls and put them in a rack like in a self-serve. But no, they printed the the on them, they went the extra distance for it, and I think that is the kind of stuff that those touches that pay off in the long run for them. Again, here's some of their merchandise that they've 3D printed, and so, anyway, just thought I would cover the Dusty Planet.
Speaker 2:Congrats to them for opening, and it seems to be that there's something about mini golf right now that is really, really there's a lot of mini golf creators. I think this is one of the things I like about mini golf as a, as an attraction not one I would put into my venue necessarily, but it is. It allows the people who are putting the mini golf in to be super creative, to be able to go and do whatever they want with the holes, and so sometimes you see the kind of standard boring stuff, but then you get really wacky, creative stuff that just makes it ever fresh and evergreen. And as long as they're continuing to make changes, I just love that. That's what I like about mini golf and why it's so alluring and sustainable over time for people to come in and have this type of experiences. So, anyway, that is the uh, that is the dusty planet, and I'm very excited for those guys. Okay, uh, the next two things I'm going to talk about. I still have three. The next two things I'm going to talk about is the Lego land hotel California in Carlsbad is pulling a page out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Speaker 2:On Monday this last Monday the theme park unveiled the golden ticket hunt for its hotel guests, and so we've got that here. This is the little golden ticket and they say when a guest checks in, they'll redeem their Mr Gold keys for a chance to unlock a unique surprise. They said in their Facebook post, and the Legoland California advises hotel guests to keep their eyes peeled for the golden ticket, which would be hidden around the hotel. Once the golden ticket is found, the hotel says to bring it to the front desk to receive a special surprise. So I don't know if they're hiding just one golden ticket every day or if they're hiding multiple golden tickets and you have a chance to find it.
Speaker 2:I actually felt like the level of clarity around this was not great, and so they're doing this pretty cool concept, but they don't seem to really be marketing it or advertising it very well. You could go to Legoland California's website, and it actually doesn't say anything about the golden ticket. So I think what I like about this idea is that they're doing something to enhance the guest experience, to create something unique, ideally to get some press and get some people to do some last minute bookings to Legoland, but, again, I think they're falling short on the amount of marketing that they could be doing for something like this. It is, though, a good example of things that obviously they're Legoland, they're big, they've got lots of budget. This is something very, very simple, very low cost that any venue could do this concept you could take a golden ticket and hide a golden ticket every single day in your facility, and anybody who takes that golden ticket and brings it up, gets a branded t-shirt for your venue or gets a little plush or some mascot or some other little tchotchke of some sort, and so this is the kind of thing that you could do not continually, but for a season.
Speaker 2:For maybe a week, it's a golden ticket week, a golden ticket month or whatever, and every Saturday and Sunday you hide a golden ticket, or every Tuesday and Thursday you hide the golden tickets. You want to get people in on those slower days. Whatever it is, this is a great concept and a cool idea, something very easy to do and also drives that extra guest engagement and gives you something to market to your past customers and to the community in general to get them to come in. It's always about coming up with these unique concepts, these unique things to get people to come back into your venue over and over and over, even if it's for an hour to search around for that golden ticket and they didn't find it. What are they going to do while they're there for an hour? Maybe play some attractions, maybe play some arcade games, maybe do some cranes, maybe get some food that you're bringing them back in and keeping your brand top of mind by doing these types of things on a regular basis. So that is Legoland, california's golden hotel, golden ticket with Mr Gold Keys.
Speaker 2:And then the next one is actually from a science center. This is Orlando Science Center and that is time for their mess fest. Mess fest started yesterday and is going on all day today. Actually, by the time you're listening to this it's going to be over. But they say that you're getting ready for the ooziest, gloopiest and downright messiest science experiments ever. And they have a bunch of stuff. It's going to be at their Lock Haven Park Museum and it's gonna be a bunch of science based experiments that you know get messy. So things like Alka rockets, like alkaline rockets right, you put in some alkaline into some soda and then you know it blows, it shoots up some marble art in the mess hall, goo based art at the slime bar and a returning favorite called Foam Splosions, and I've got a picture of a foam splosion here where, just like, foam goes everywhere, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:And the Mess Fest is part of the regular science-centered mission, so there's nothing extra. They actually have an acrobatic show called we Flip as well, and then they have Messy Earth Story Time and then other appearances by local artists that, uh, you know are familiar with messy circumstances. I don't know if that means any finger painting or other stuff. And then actually last night, saturday, they did they. They screened the 1997 version of flubber starring robin williams and that was part of their story time cinema, which is a children's film series that was going on saturday night. So this is just a great idea.
Speaker 2:Again, there's no reason why a family entertainment center or location-based entertainment location couldn't have a mess fest of their own on a May afternoon or on a July afternoon or whatever. These are the types of events that you can do on one weekend a year or every couple of weeks. Just have a different type of event like this that brings guests back to your facility, gives you something to talk about in the community, gets you something to go and talk on your local news. I can guarantee you that they probably had some local Channel 5 Orlando news people there covering the mess fest and getting the Orlando Science Center's brand name out there and awareness lifted. So these are just a couple of good examples I've seen come through the last week of things that you could definitely be doing inside of your facility and definitely worth keeping just your ear to the ground for this type of stuff, and I'll try to grab these kind of things when I see them as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, last thing, some news you should know is Long Island Go-Kart as Mega Track smashes the world record. So they've actually. Let's see if I've got a picture here. Oh, I don't know why I had dusty planet at the end there. Well, all right, I think I have a video of it, but it's it would take me a second to grab it here. I'll throw it up on the screen in just a moment.
Speaker 2:But the these guys are. It's RPM raceway in Farmingdale and they officially celebrated their entry into the Guinness book of world records. So they have their 2023 Daytona 500, um winner Ricky came and he did a solo lap around the 3,515, uh, square foot track. They call it their mega track and it actually is a combination of their three raceways. So let's see here. Oh, it's playing, so I'm just going to. Well, it was playing. I don't know where it went. Well, it's on New York Post, and New York Post is terrible about throwing tons and tons of ads all over the place and you can't click. You have to click through everything. It's quite absurd, frankly. All right, so we'll go ahead and share this tab, get it up here on the screen because it's pretty cool to see.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, while it's playing, they actually have three individual raceways that are about 1500 feet, and they went through a multimillion dollar revamp from November to April where they installed an elevated new level. They configured the course to actually be interchangeable in six different ways, including the world record racers uh, longest, um, you know, longest track. So this is pretty innovative. They spent a bunch of money to rework their three different tracks they had, so they have three independent tracks, but you can then interconnect them in different ways to have different tracks. And so this actually feeds a little bit into the conversation that we were just talking about here, which is what can you do to drive a visitation? Well, if it's the same track that you're doing over and over and over again, eventually you're going to get tired of that track. But if you know that you've reconfigured the track and there's six different ways that I could race, now this gives me six different chances to come in and have a different type of experience racing experience.
Speaker 2:Anyway, that is the uh. Well, now see the post. Thanks, guys, you're going to start throwing all that shit everywhere. All right, um, but you know, anyway, thanks New York for at least covering that for us. Uh, so, yeah, that is, uh, you know, one of the coolest things. The course opened to the public last Monday for $30 a race, so it's a little pricey, but it is the longest course of um, you know, so it still should be a lot of fun. But, um, anyway, yeah, that's uh, that is the news you should know. Coming up next, we've got uh, what are we doing? We're promo protests. Chuck D'Amati yeah, looking, digging it. All right, let's go.
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Speaker 1:Intercard. Hello and welcome to Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. That is me, and today I want to discuss how do we get repeat clients. Now, I'm sure if you are experienced in business operator GM, you know you've been working in really any industry. They always say it's easier to get a return customer as opposed to getting a new customer, and that is definitely true. So what are some great ways to get people to come back to your location-based entertainment center? So I'm going to give you four ways, with one bonus item today.
Speaker 1:So, first and foremost, collecting first-party data. That is super important. Now, what is first party data? It's basically email, phone number, address, other information where you could reach out and connect with these people. So you have their contact information basically. So that is first party data.
Speaker 1:So that is step number one and probably the biggest one and the easiest and best way to ensure you could do other strategies. So one, get first party data. How can you do this? If you have a location where people sign waivers great, hopefully they're opting into email marketing when they're doing that, or just marketing in general, and you're collecting your information through that. Great way to do that. Other ways you could do that you could do Wi-Fi capture. If people want to sign and they're sitting around and they want to get on your Wi-Fi in your location, have a service where they need to sign up and opt in for your marketing and they can get into your Wi-Fi. Right, those are two really great ways. Other than that, you could capture it different ways. Get creative in store to capture people's emails and contact information that are in your location, right?
Speaker 1:So, again, number one, getting first-party data is super important. Number two now that you have that data, you want to email and SMS marketing people. Now, sms can be expensive. I do think it's a valuable strategy, right, but these are direct communication channels. Okay, they've been to your location, they know who you are. It's easy to get them back. Make sure you're emailing them with promos, new things that are going on, events right, get in front of them. The biggest thing for getting repeat customers and really any even new customers is top of mind, right. Top of mind marketing. People need to remember you and think about you when they're thinking about, hey, what should we do this weekend or tonight, or where should we bring the kids, or where should we go with our friends? Right, your brand name needs to pop in their head, right, so that's top of mind. And again, if they've been there, that's you know, already got a leg up against competition. And if you're staying in front of who cares if they delete it? They see your name SMS. They don't necessarily look at it, they see your name at a super powerful brand recognition, right? So, one get their first party data. Two, start emailing and SMSing them.
Speaker 1:Three retargeting Now that you have this data, you could upload it into things like Meta, upload it to things like Google Ads, and you could retarget them specifically with specific messages, specific promos, Get them to come back into the location, buy tickets, book up events, whatever, right, retargeting. It is super powerful. You've all seen it before, where you visit a website or go somewhere and things sort of follow you around the internet. Right, that is retargeting. You could also do that sort of physically when you're getting people's information. They've been in your location. Now you can retarget them, right, if you've collected information from them. So retargeting is super important. That's number three.
Speaker 1:Number four keep it fresh, right, so think of ways and reasons to get people back in, right, so, if they've been to your location and it's the same attraction that you've been open for a couple of years. Maybe it's time to do some new attractions or update something. Right, add a new element to your location. Okay, maybe it's time to start doing an event. You know, we've recently been talking to people who you know, for example, one one location we were speaking with. There they're an act throwing place, but they do like this, these, like they have these events where they're doing like line dancing and they have an influencer coming in and doing this line dance because they have the space and sort of. They reinvented themselves and figured out other ways to get people to come in there, right. So, you know, get creative. How do I get people back? They've been here already. They've experienced what we've had to offer. How do I keep that fresh? Okay. So that is number four, a great way to get people back. You got to keep things fresh, okay, you don't want to have the same offer over and over and over over five years, right? Change. You know, make people want to come back and see what's new, okay, uh. Or events, right, uh. And then last bonus item five automation. So I left this as a bonus item.
Speaker 1:Not everybody, you know you really need to get waiver data to do this, uh, this email automation, um, cause you want to get. Uh, you want to get. I shouldn't say you don't need waivers. You need to get some certain contact information, like birthdays and and or special events, right, and what you want to do is you want to automate emails to people if they've booked a birthday party with you before or an event with you before, right, when it's the anniversary of that event, start sending them an automation. Like hey, you booked a birthday or an event with us last year, like you want to book with us again, so have that automation. If you have data on when their birthday is right, start sending them an automation when that birthday is getting closer.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's really going to help you to get those repeat customers, um, and if your technology uh is up to speed for that, which I really suggest. If it's not, you know really look into that and how you get the like technology there's. I can go on forever about how technology could really help you uh improve your marketing, uh, so if it's not, I would suggest you look into that. But again, all all great ways to get repeat customers and, as I said, repeat customers and, as I said, repeat customers are always easier to get back as opposed to a new customer. So go do some marketing and start making some money, all right, awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for that, chuck. And you know what? One of the things that I used to talk about a lot when I was running Hound was the value of getting that first party data. So thank you, chuck. So much for reinforcing that. If you can get that email address, you can get those birthdates, you can get some of that information. There's so much that you can do with it, and so find ways, as many ways as possible, to get that kind of information. So thanks a lot for that, chuck. All right, coming up next, we have the Open and Shut with Kevin Williams.
Speaker 3:Hey, a big hello to this latest Open and Shut Again, another crowded one, so we'll jump straight into it. Seems to be a pattern here, I think, and there is a specific pattern here of some of the facilities that I'm not going to be touching on. So when we get to the end, let's see how many of you have spotted that pattern, a game within a game. So we start off with our first Electric Shuffle. Usa, who have been gradually opening out more of their gamified shuffleboard facilities, americanized this 70,000 square facility, 11 shuffleboards, which I think for 70,000 is a little bit lower than normal, but from the pictures we've seen, it's very nice, open plan themality, slightly different, brandon, to what we saw in the London facility, the original London facility, and again they are pushing the dine and play model to its max.
Speaker 2:Well, when we had a chance to visit the Electric Shuffle in London, we decided we liked this you know their general aesthetic the best out of all of the different places, or at least I decided that but out of all the places that we visited and you know I'm glad to see that they're still expanding. They're doing well, but they're making some changes to accommodate for the US market. I still just hope that they're able to survive the long term with the single attraction play model we always talk about.
Speaker 3:We will use this, all of our listeners and viewers as well as ourselves. We will use this as a barometer, flight Club and Electric Shuffle. Can they survive as a single entertainment entity? Anyway, moving on, dave and Busters, always Dave and Busters.
Speaker 3:I think this is the last time we may actually see a new Dave and Buster's with the original eat, drink, play, watch moniker. Little Bird on the Branch has rumored that the watch part may fall off the signage as part of the rollback, though, again, you know, a large bag of salt. We need to actually see what happens. 22,000 square, so mid-range on size, 100 amusement pieces, which is again, not violently large, not violently small. And the interesting thing about this is, from the pictures that I've seen, the competitive, socialising, social bay areas weren't present, but there was social entertainment games in there. I need to see a video around this facility, uh, in michigan, uh to, you know, to get a handle. Hopefully, maybe one day we'll actually get to kick the door in, but as you can see from the picture, this is a converted um uh department store or grocery stores the American.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it looks like some grocery store or something they converted, so I imagine lower ceilings and it'd be definitely an interesting one. It seemed to me to be one of the smaller Dave and Buster's that we've seen in a long time.
Speaker 3:There's a whole food somewhere missing. Yeah, and Dave and Buster's again, but from the indian diaspora this case. Uh, and what a difference a couple of thousand miles makes. Uh, the traditional dave and busters layout, but writ large with a much bigger spend. Uh, very impressive, the mumbai venue. From what I've seen of the video walk around, I would say that it is much more a boutique, bowling, amusement and F&B environment rather than what I would call a traditional Dave and Buster's layout. But again, as we've said before, when franchises travel internationally, they change their clothes accordingly. Interesting here this is the second Indian facility to open, very close to the last opening, and this is part of the 20 rollout across India and Australia that is planned for the next five years.
Speaker 2:This is almost like Dave Buster's is finally beginning to learn a little bit of something from Main Event. But maybe that's just the Indian franchisee. I don't know if they're franchising or if these are licensed locations. Franchising Okay, yeah. So maybe they're just picking the best of what they see from the Dave Buster's overall pool of attractions and putting them in.
Speaker 3:The franchisee is a very experienced corporation in the hospitality and mall sector and they also have a very large pool to select from. The Indian market has some of the best, that's not some of the worst, but some of the best FECs and mixed-use leisure entertainment facilities out there. Smash, for example, originates from that area and they can cherry-pick what works and what doesn't work for the audience that they want to encourage their facility. The audience demographics for an Indian Dave Buster's is not the demographics that Dave Buster's US is aiming for, except for Canada maybe. But anyway, I digress An interesting one here. So we've gone from India to let's go to Zimbabwe, and Africa is beginning to see competitive socializing and social entertainment taking off, as all territories that have a strong audience are seeing. We talked about the South African facilities and the Egyptian facilities and now we can talk about Zimbabwe, which is getting its first. But should we say a pure boutique entertainment facility under the Tables and Pins brand, which I expect to see rolled out into more than one facility. But it's nice to see something like that appear outside of the usual suspects that we touch upon.
Speaker 3:Moving on and redevelopment this is a pure redevelopment, again touching on something that we talked about in SoundOff, about reinventing your brand, one of my main questions to myself. Well, we're seeing our friends at AJ's Family Fun Center in Michigan Michigan again who've decided that they better keep up with the Joneses and make sure that their brand is fit to attract the new audience. And so they have rebranded themselves Game Time Fun Park and they've done some additions. They've added some new attractions, but at the moment they have a large go-kart course. They have added some more to that course. They have batting cages, which they traditionally had, they've put in larger amusement components and I know that they've added some F&B. But this is an example of a company that says we can't stay the same in the current market. We need to up our game. And if you are an operator of a facility and you're still sitting on a five-year-old brand that hasn't seen a lick of paint for a while, you better do something to survive.
Speaker 2:It seems to be. I noticed that they merged some of their existing tracks together to create a larger go-kart course and this seems to be a trend. I don't know if they're planning to keep them. You know, have them where they're separate and they can also merge them together if they're going to have just this one big course now. But there was recently some news about well, we're going to actually talk about it a little bit earlier, but about the RPM Raceway in Farmingdale and they recently got the Guinness Book of World Records thing for the longest course. But they merged three of their tracks together to make that longer course. So I wonder if this is a newer trend now to extend the race time for guests.
Speaker 3:I need to speak to a friend of mine who's an expert in the go-karting sector. He runs a company that specializes in that and I think one of the trends we're seeing with the recent changes in code regarding go-karting if you're going to upgrade your course to protect against cornering, there was a couple of instances a few months or years back where go-karts achieved a speed that ran over the protective barriers and those barriers now have been upgraded with safety codes. I wouldn't be surprised if older facilities that go through the process of updating their courses think, you know, while we're doing that, let's just upgrade the whole of the circuit, you know, add better drainage and stuff like that. The outdoor karting experience against the indoor karting experience comes with opportunities as well as pitfalls. Moving on and we go to the Philippines and the Philippines is embracing competitive socialising or, in this particular case, boutique bowling with a strong F&B component and amusement. So I would say this is a mule with bowling colors on.
Speaker 3:Really, one of the things I was interested about was the mix of stuff that they have here. They have table tennis, they have billiards, virtual reality, arcade games, basket ball, shooting games. They have it all. The spaghetti moment, as I'd like to say, but from from this particular territory, you can have the spaghetti moment and hope to attract an audience that will be virginal to all of these experiences. Your competition is not going to be as great as if you tried this in Texas, for example, and India again. The appearance of a brand new chain called Rebound. I call this a chain because, from the research I was doing into this, it is supported by our friends at ASI and it does seem, by the walk around and the layout and the quality of build, that this is really going to aim at being a competitor, shall we say, to the other FECs and bowling entertainment facilities that are in the diaspora there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. I can't find anything online about them so far. But you know, I don't really understand the name. I feel like Rebound should have been something for an inflatable park or whatever I mean it's.
Speaker 3:They're going for a kind of leisurely spin on that. They don't just they will have their bumper cars, but they have their bowling and I think they also have some ping pong in there so.
Speaker 3:I think they're just grabbing at the Rebound branding. There are a lot of facilities in our industry that actually do use Rebound in North America for trampoline parks, as you were saying, and I also was surprised that ASI hadn't encouraged them to get a website operational. But I think that this is the first facility and this is the toe of the water. But again, once we have more information or even possibly a video walk around that I can share without breaking any confidences, then we'll do that.
Speaker 2:It is a clever logo. It has a clever feel to it. It feels a little bit like from the early 90s, maybe depending on if they'd changed the colors a little bit and then the joystick. So I mean they did a good job with the branding.
Speaker 3:But yeah, there should be a website if they're going to be on it. Their social media page is very jolly, so we say yeah, sega. I have talked about this in SoundOff. The first of Sega's rollout of their permanent entertainment facilities, which are really retail attainment the Shanghai facility through its doors open. We could actually now get to see the facility, this flagship facility, and the interesting thing for me from this was that they do have entertainment in the space. It is very small, only a few units, and it is very specifically aimed at branding and promotion.
Speaker 3:But this can be called a retail attainment facility and I'm looking forward to seeing what the results are from this first flagship opening and how it will be redeveloped for their Tokyo facility, which I'm led to believe will be opening soon after this one. We have a, let's say, an existing brand has gone through the ringer again, but in this case the facility has gone for adding more of the competitive socializing element to their mix. So, uh, bernie's party of bernie's um in belgium has uh gone through a little bit of rebranding. They've also tidied up their carting and their bowling and they've dropped in uh competitive socializing through shuffleboard and uh interactive darts. I don't think they're gamified, I think they're just interactive, and they've improved their F and B. So again an example of building a better facility.
Speaker 2:So I've got a really accelerated flyover here. It's like really fast.
Speaker 3:My video. They walked through and took it.
Speaker 2:They didn't do that, but yeah, you can see that it's an existing karting experience that has now added uh expanded its component ah, okay, so they were. They did have any, because the track is really impressive. I mean it's part of it, but then, yeah, you have the entire entire, really nice looking facility.
Speaker 3:I think there's karaoke obviously in there. Here we go. Now we're getting to the social entertainment side and the escape room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Interesting mix. I mean I always wonder when you see escape rooms added to an FEC, especially when it's just one or two. Very European yeah, we've seen it work fairly well. When you see like an escapology, where there's actually multiple rooms dropped into a very large FEC environment but having one escape room it seems like a bit of an odd addition. It does seem like they just tried to fill in the space with whatever they could.
Speaker 3:Having done the metrics, knowing how long a escape room or a mission room or a command room stays relevant before you have to think about stripping it, redeveloping it and repromoting it, because again you have to throw into the mix that hey, we're brand new or we've gone through a refit. I think a number of these facilities that are parachuting in and escape room may be looking at, maybe later pulling it out completely and putting in a different attraction. So that kind of gives us a line in the sand that in about 24 months we're going to be seeing another selection of redevelopments. Let's hope we're still going at that point in time. So finally, I think in this mix we have India again in the mix. India isn't the trend that I'm picking out in this one, but all the same we're seeing a trampoline park that is adding attractions to their facility brand-new build but part of a 20-chain operation. So it kind of tells you that there is a very professional and established out-of home entertainment sector in India. I've had the pleasure of presenting to the Indian amusement attractions association and you know these guys know their stuff but they also have a very sophisticated audience that you know. If you want to see a market that knows how to go for the highest earners as well as the lowest earners and generate revenue from that. This market does this, this particular chain. They've just received an injection core investment quite a considerable amount of money, and they're planning a rollout of another 10 new facilities. So watch this space when we're talking about the next load of operations. But you can see from this coverage that we've had a number of Indian operations. Excuse me Now for those of you who pause the video and look back, the other trend that I was kind of pointing to in there was the number of mum and pop startup kind of retro arcades that were covered there.
Speaker 3:So you know, for all of you, rewind the video and just look at the list of those ones that I zoomed past A considerable number and that kind of makes us think that some people are transferring their retirement funding into their hobby and starting up a hey, I've always wanted to run an arcade, let's open it kind of approach. I may have to come back to that in a sound off and look at that in a little bit more detail. Shots Platform this is kind of relevant to the sound off that we're going to be doing, but this was a console video game. Uh social entertainment facility part of a chain of two. Uh. Sadly, their canary war facility closed down. I was going to take you to this one, brandon, but I thought I don't want to waste your time. Well, I'm happy I didn't waste you, yeah, exactly survive, uh, but uh, we were.
Speaker 3:We're now all eyes are on the Shoreditch facility to see what they're going to do to try and reinvigorate the brand afterwards. All-star Sports Oklahoma. They've been going for 33 years, so this is an established park, go-karts course, amusement, batting cage, what I would call a traditional. Now, not a lot of information on why they closed their doors. You know the handwritten sign stuck to the front usually tells us of quite severe situation.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't be surprised if this one is up for sale, as is our friends at Tempin Alley in Ohio. They are also. You know they've gone through a rebranding, redevelopment. They have a 24-lane gravity facility and we know the price that these guys are asking for. So you're not going to get a lot of change from $7 million to purchase this particular iHo Entertainment facility. I would like to walk around with my calculator and actually evaluate what I'm getting for my under $7 million, but this may be an interesting sell as in, it's a going concern and there are other reasons why the owners need to move on yeah, well, so you know, I guess two thoughts as to your point.
Speaker 3:There is no website for these people yeah, well, there isn't, because it's.
Speaker 2:It's a bolero or owned location, and so everything that bolero does they wipe out whatever websites it did exist and they put one single page on the bolero website to to that location, which is absolutely terrible, but that's what bolero does to that's what bolero does, and for some reason, bolero feels that this one can be, uh, divested from their vast operation, which tells you a lot yeah, well, this is what is like I would be a little bit concerned about if I'm coming in, especially going to pay nearly $7 million for this, which is effectively a bowling alley.
Speaker 2:And yes, it is a going concern, but historically, bolero does not do a great job maintaining their facilities. Once they buy them, they tend to see a decline in year-over-year sales and everything else, and so I feel like if Bolero even decides that this is and they acquire a lot right Things, that aren't necessarily great.
Speaker 3:Bolero are lovely people and they work very hard with the cloth that they have given. But in many cases, sadly, facilities fall by the wayside and have to be moved on. Sadly, facilities fall by the wayside and have to be moved on, Moving on, and our friends at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor learned that they also had to move on. The Six Flags merger you know, the giant Six Flags entertainment conglomerate that is now being formed, third largest entertainment facility operator in the globe has decided that the Maryland facility, in corporate speak, is not a strategic fit for the company's long term growth plans. God, an accountant really did write that one, I expect. This facility is now being bidded on heavily by other entities that would like to take on this. This site has had some investment put in it recently and I wouldn't be surprised that it still is quite a profitable operation. But from what our friends at Six Flags Entertainment are planning with their strategic operation, it just doesn't fit the mix. And this won't be the last time we say that Six Flags Entertainment has decided to divest one of their operations Playland interesting one.
Speaker 3:I've talked about a number of UK facilities that have suddenly come to a shuddering halt. This one is the latest one. It's been going since the 1920s. It's had some money ploughed into it. It has some money from the council, the local government injected into it, but it's also been going under some constructural work and it seems that some liens have been called on non-payments for work that was carried out and that the part looks like that it's in the possibilities of not reopening after that. This is an ongoing situation. It's only popped up this week as a possible permanent closure. So if I get more information on this I'll share that.
Speaker 3:And then not a closure, but well, a closure in part, but also a sign of the times. Our friends at Lagoon changed their logo and I noticed that there were no animals in their logo, only to wake up to the news that they have removed, closed permanently, divested themselves of their zoo component. So they are focusing heavily on their amusement park component and repositioning that, while moving away from the ownership and operation of the zoo. This is not unusual. Running a zoo in the modern market at the moment, with all of the requirements, both legal and morally, regarding the keeping of endangered species to the best of your abilities, is not really the best fit for a theme park, as Walt Disney learnt, having an amusement park as well as a petting zoo doesn't always work out well, and especially now in 2025, with all PETA and all of the other agencies that want to ensure the best care for animals, it may be better just to focus on one thing rather than splitting your operation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's hard unless there's a reason for the animals to exist, like a Disney's Animal Kingdom, for example, where it's just part of the overall theme and experience and you need the animals alongside the rides in the theme park.
Speaker 3:Amusement park lagoon is an absolutely beautiful um long-term like legacy park, and so I've really enjoyed the pictures I'm showing there of their latest refit of uh uh, one of their retail areas, and the level of engagement and quality is amazing, which you can't do if you're also cutting half of your budget looking after endangered species.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Anyway, that's the rundown from me. Anything that I touched upon that you want to go back to Brandon.
Speaker 2:No, I think we're all set for this week, looking forward to the next one.
Speaker 3:Well, I wish you all a good one and speak to you soon.
Speaker 1:If you run a location-based entertainment brand and want to attract more visitors, check out Radius. They use real-time location data and customized marketing strategies to help brands like yours stand out. Radius can boost your foot traffic and build a loyal customer base. Plus, they're offering a complimentary local market analysis to show you exactly how they can help you grow Curious, visit Radiusco and ask about your free market analysis. That's R-A-Y-D-I-U-S dot C-O.
Speaker 2:A-Y-D-I-U-S dot C-O. All right, I hate that. This throws me there in that like little tiny screen. I'm like what are you doing? Why am I there? Anyway, all right, well, that was fun with Kevin there.
Speaker 2:So you know we're about wrapped up here. So I just wanted to quickly remind everybody about the LBX Galaxy. Visit our online community where you can go and get connected with others in our industry throughout questions, where hopefully other people are going to be able to go and answer them, share other ideas and concepts that you have, and any other new products or whatever you've got going on. So go join the LBX Galaxy at lbxgalaxycom or scan this QR code and get rolling there. All right, and then this week we have Sound Off. Number 73 with Kevin Williams Comes out on Tuesday, may 13th, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And then the next week I should be in Istanbul and so hopefully doing a live recording of this show while over there. Well, it won't be live, I'll be recording live, but anyway you got it. So, anyway, that is a wrap for this week's show. This is Brandon Wiley signing off. Stay tuned and keep kicking ass.
