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LBX Collective
The LBX Show #56 - Hijinks Hotel & Holey Moley Preview, Netflix House, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
Sponsored by Alan-1!
On this week's show, we review BW's visit to Funlab’s Hijinks Hotel and Holy Moly preview event in Irvine. Kevin Williams rounds up new openings from Urban Air to Netflix House while Adam Pratt flags fresh arcade listings and pricing moves.
• FEC Summit agenda, keynote, pricing, and site tours
• New IAAPA North America leadership appointment
• Hijinks Hotel check-in flow, staffing, and score receipts
• Gameplay variety gaps and easy fixes for repeat visits
• Holey Moley’s party vibe and lean F&B seating strategy
• Creative Works’ Detonate and short-form escape formats
• Post‑IAAPA arcade releases, distributor listings, and pricing notes
• Poker plus cranes in Japan and high-spec FECs in Europe
• Urban Air growth, PopStroke seasonality, and brand positioning
• Netflix House Dallas launch, Replay arcade choices, and IP fit
• Rebrands in Europe
• Planet Playskool closure and IP-to-Ops alignment
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SPEAKER_04:Well, welcome everybody to the LBX show for December 14th, 2025. I'm your host, Brandon Wiley, and we have a great show lined up for today. You know, first we're gonna dive into some news you should know, some fun stuff we're gonna cover there, and then we'll roll right into a robust open and shut with Kevin Williams to review all the latest openings and closings and trends from the week. And then lastly, we're gonna hear from Adam Pratt. He is back, although he is under the weather. Uh he's with Arcade Corner, or Arcade Heroes, but he's gonna do his arcade corner as he covers a grab bag of amusement news from this week. So that is our show lined up for you today. Let's dive into some news you should know. All right, well, first we're gonna focus on IAPA's Family Entertainment Center Summit. This is the IAPA FEC Summit. It happens every year in the winter-ish time frame. And this year it's happening in my backyard. It's happening in Glendale, which is not quite my backyard. It's about 45 minutes on the other side of Phoenix, but it is in Glendale, Arizona, February 1st to the 3rd. And it is$100 cheaper than it was last year. It is$499 for members of IAPA. And then I don't know the exact number for members or non-members of IAPA, but you know what? If you're not a member for IAPA, become a member. It's worth it. So join, you'll get a discount on the FTC Summit. Uh, but we're really excited about all the details and things we're gonna be doing here. So, you know, first of all, we're gonna hear from Libby Gill. She is the keynote speaker, she's a leadership expert and author. She's gonna share insights on leading with clarity, engaging teams, and uh you know, basically driving meaningful growth and an industry that's evolving. She's a former head of communications for Universal, Sony and Turner Broadcasting. And so she's just got decades of experience helping organizations navigate transformation and building high performance cultures and teams. And so I'm really excited to hear from her for the keynote. And there's gonna be a bunch of other education sessions and panels and uh just massive opportunities for networking and everything else. And so uh very excited for FEC Summit and just to see all my friends, you know, in the industry. So it's always a great time. We're also gonna be visiting three locations. There's currently two confirmed Fat Cats, which is a Sinnatainment location, and then Pecan Lake Entertainment, which is like a big indoor, outdoor family entertainment center plus. Like it's a big place, it's a really pretty beautiful area, and um excited to go there. Um, it is a bit of a hike from the hotel where we're gonna all be staying in the Wigwam Resort on the west side. Uh, but you can also then participate on the Sunday before we kick things off. That Sunday night is when the first opening reception is. But earlier that Sunday, uh, we'll be doing a wacky golf event benefiting the IAPA Foundation and specifically the IAPA FEC Foundation Scholarship. And that is a separate ticket, and it is available during your registration, it's a hundred dollar ticket. All the proceeds go to the IAPA Foundation, and it's gonna be fun. Normally do a golf tournament. So, you know, instead of the golf tournament, they're doing a wacky golf tournament on at the Wigwam. So that is the update on FEC Summit. All right, next there's another AIPA news. Um, this uh new, we have a new vice president of the North American um executive director, vice president of North America. This was um a role formerly held by Michael Shelton, who is now the uh COO of IAPA. And so he is now filling the executive chairman role. This is Todd Andris, and he is a marketing uh attractions and hospitality marketing leader. He's gonna oversee the regional strategy for North America as well as member engagement for the trade association. And he's got you know 26 years of experience in hospitality, attractions and marketing. And so they really are expecting him to quote unquote bring deep industry expertise and customer-focused approach that will hopefully deliver its value to his members. And so began his career at Bush Entertainment Corporation slash United Parks. And he spent a lot of time in sales and served as a corporate senior director at Premier Parks. Uh, so anyway, he's going to be leading the North American operations and member engagement and uh support for associations events as well. So I haven't had a chance to meet him yet, but I'm sure I will uh meet him at the FEC summit. So if you're planning to go there, I'm sure he will be there uh to get to know people in our industry. All right, the next thing I wanted to talk about is uh where I was at this last week. So I was in LA and uh, well, the LA area, like Los Angeles is really big. So I was first in Long Beach forever gotta kick some ass there on Sunday, and then Disneyland on Monday. That was fun because I was there uh already. But then more importantly, I stayed in in the uh Anaheim Irvine area for a couple of extra days so that I could go to the preview event for the first Hijinx Hotel opening here in um opening here in the US. So uh it's actually co-located with Holy Moley. Holy moly is also a concept that has been created and started by Funlab. Funlab is based out of Australia. You've probably heard us talk about on this show Holy Moly and Hijinx Hotel. Uh, been big fans of what Fun Lab has been doing. There are multiple holy molys already here in the US and in North America, but this is the first Hijinx Hotel, which was opened, which is like a challenge room concept, and we'll talk a little bit about this here shortly. Um, but it is co-located. So it's cool as you can come in a separate entrance, as you can see here, to the holy moly entrance. And then you can also come into a separate entrance specifically to Hygin's Hotel, but there is a pass-through between the two different uh environments, and they really are intended to be different environments. So you're gonna have more of a party atmosphere, and even the F B, the food and beverage program at Holy Moly, different than the food and beverage program at High Jinx Hotel. I'd say holy moly is like a party atmosphere. High Jinx Hotel, also a fun atmosphere, but probably more elevated at the FB level and at the overall experiential and themed level, like kind of like an elevated um experience there. Um, and then even the employees were hired very differently to have different energies and different personalities at each of the different locations. And I will say I was like profoundly impressed by the quality of the employees that they found and the culture that exists within the employees, the energy that they brought to the table. And yes, was it a preview event? Was there a lot of energy? Sure, but the energy was also really driven by the employees. And so um kudos to the hiring team, the hiring managers for both locations, because they did hire very unique people for both locations. And I was thoroughly impressed by that. That was one of the things that stood out to me the most. Um, you know, one of the other things that was a lot of fun at with these preview events is you get to hang out with other people in the industry that you don't get a chance to see very often. And so, you know, I was able to hang out with uh Alex Patterson, his friend from Beat the Bomb. He's the founder over there. And then Michael Schreiber. Michael Schreiber is the um, you know, one of the founders, but executive chairman of Fun Lab. And he was out there to obviously over you know help to kick everything off here. Um, did get a chance to see Blaze as well. She's the current CEO of Fun Lab, but uh, she didn't, I did not get a get a picture with her. Um, but you got Michael Schreiber there on the right. Uh, he gave me a tour, walked around. We we had a chance to kind of really see a lot of the experiences there. And then Alex and then the guy on the left, Chuck Taylor. He's the uh former VP of Entertainment over at David Buster's main event. And uh Alex, Chuck, and I, we got to go around and hung out and tried all the different rooms at Hijinx Hotel and uh like wandered around and had a had a good time uh hanging out together. Uh so figured I'd take this moment here to then just run through a couple of pictures and talk through a little bit about the experience because you know we talked about Hijinx Hotel um, you know, again on the show, and they're doing some things really, really well. And um, so I just wanted to call out some of those things. So we're going to uh you know pull up some pictures here. And um, so the first thing uh they're gonna be a little bit out of order, but I'll I'll walk through them here. But I walked in, they had three different karaoke rooms. These are off of the Hijinx Hotel, so separate from holy moly now. So the first few things we're gonna look at here are from Hijinx. Uh, they had three karaoke rooms slash party rooms, right? They could be birthday parties, they don't have to be karaoke, but you know, if you're there, you can certainly do the karaoke. Um, you know, a little bit more again, and kind of elevated experience you can see there. Each of the party rooms had uh slightly different colors and aesthetic, but they were more or less uh pretty similar in their thing. I thought this sign was great. I apparently can't take good pictures, uh, but it says side effects may include unexpected confidence. Um, you know, we go into this is right outside of each of the party rooms slash karaoke rooms. This is a really good overview. I backed up, so I'm standing kind of over where the party rooms and karaoke rooms are looking out. So they have some F and B bar space, sit-down space, but it's very limited. And I think this is one of the positives that I saw here. Like they want people to be able to feel like they can sit down, have a drink, have some apps. Um, you'll see most of it is standing uh type type stuff, or high bar tops with a few seated areas, but they're not trying to be a restaurant, right? Like we've talked about this before. Like one of the Pinstripe's biggest issues is that they really, I think, overbuilt their restaurant level and didn't have too much restaurant space to their entertainment space. Like the ratio was off. So good ratio here in the amount of food and beverage, um, you know, more like just seating sitting area, and then that feeds into the lobby of the quote unquote hijinks hotel that you can see here on the right. Uh beautiful bar. Um, this is their hijinks bar. Again, like everything in this space is done very well. Like all of the finishes are excellent, the furniture is excellent, the cocktail program was excellent, and everything was customized. They had special drinks for the preview event, but they're also part of their signature drinks as well. Um, but really impressive build out that they had here. Um, so this is the main lobby. The entrance is there to the right, coming into the lobby, and you go and you like register and you check in and you get a little key card that looks just like a hotel key. It's a you know, like a card, um, like a game card, right? But like it's uh, you know, branded like a hotel key room is in a little slip and they tell you your time and the number of players that you have. And interestingly, one of the things that they do, as Michael was uh explaining to me, which I completely agree with, and uh I think that you know, I know Andretti does this and others do this as well. So it's a great little tidbit to learn from. Uh, but that is to make sure that when they come in, they may have booked a particular time if they're a walk-in or whatever, but always say, hey, we're getting your room ready, right? So in this case, he's like, you know, because it's a hotel, right? We're gonna get your room ready and be ready in 15 minutes or in 30 minutes, you know, head on upstairs to the hotel uh to the to the elevator, to the bell bellhop, and they'll take care of you in 30 minutes. Well, what are you gonna do for those 30 minutes? You're gonna go right over to the drinks uh to the bar and get some food or get a drink, and you know, it's gonna increase the per cap immediately uh when you when you go and you do that. So uh I will talk about one of the issues I think that I think they can very easily solve for when uh when you when they come back, uh you know, when we get to the the the room. But anyway, um I thought that you know giving somebody the opportunity to go and get a drink, get a little lubricated before they go up into the hijinks hotel uh was a good idea. They have top scores for the week, and so they have different teams, and so you can get your scoreboard and uh you know it's done very nicely, elegantly um on the wall, uh, you know, again within the hotel, the quote unquote. Now, again, I told you this jumps around a little bit because these two spaces are interconnected. We didn't go up to the rooms quite yet. So we went over to the Holy Mully golf club, just check out some of these, and they had people walking around, these are some of the drinks um that you could order, get very different, you know, bathtub drinks and party drinks, and you know, actually a lot of the drinks, almost all the drinks were done in these uh like kind of red solo, red and green solo cups. And so we all got one of these cups to take home uh with us, so it will now sit there for uh you know for everybody to see. Um, but that is the uh you know, some of the holy moly drinks there. Um, and then you know, again, bar limited seating area, but then the bar for the holy moly side, very different, right? So very different atmosphere. The employees are dressed kind of wacky, they've got funny hats on and stuff, and so um, you know, very different party atmosphere. These are some of the holes, so really impressive holes. Um, each one very well themed. This one was obviously done up like an art gallery. You can put your face in Mona Lisa, which is clever. And uh, you know, each of these holes really driven towards what social sharing, taking selfies, etc. But um you can just see some of the holes here that uh um you know, not I didn't take pictures of all of them. And then apparently I'm jumping right up to the holy moly hallway. So, like here you come in, and the way holy moly works is you pay a certain price, whatever the price is, for a corridor. They have three corridors, and in each corridor there are five rooms, and so you pay for basically a corridor, um, and you get those five rooms. Each room lasts about four minutes. So the overall total experience for Hijinx is about 30 minutes per corridor because you've got your entry and exit and explanation and everything else. So about a 30-minute experience if you don't include like your wait times and your F and B and everything else. Um, so you go into each of the rooms, you use your key card to go into the room. If it's available, right? It's a red light if somebody's in there, it's a green light if somebody's not in there. And so you can transition into each of those rooms. Fairly similar to any sort of adventure or challenge room experience. Level 99, time mission, bamkazam, et cetera, activate, et cetera, right? So, like similar concept, except for the fact that in every one of the rooms, it is four minutes no matter what. So a lot of these others, as you go in, if you don't solve the challenge, you're kicked back out. You got to go back in and try to solve the challenge, or maybe you did solve the challenge, but you do you could think you could do it faster. So you go back in each time. Um, in this case, you go in, you do it once, it's the four minutes, and your goal is to try to get as many points as possible during that period of time. You just keep doing it over and over. And I will talk about that here in a minute. One of my issues though, here is that you are not allowed to bring your drinks in with you into the rooms, which makes sense because the drinks, drinks, some of the activities are going to like knock over the drinks. I wouldn't bring the drinks in either. The problem is the drinks, you could only put the drinks on top of a locker area, like what that was like sort of like at the beginning of the corridor. And if you're in one of these back corridors, if you want to keep like get your drink, if you didn't finish your drink before your time is ready, you have to like try to go all the way back, get your get a sip, and then go all the way back. I really think they could they could do some tables right outside the door. So I can leave my drink here and then and then go and uh go into the room, come back out, get my drink. Now they may be worried about people putting shit in drinks or whatever, like I maybe understand the security or safety of that. So there they could be like a little closet or something. I don't know. So I think there's ways to solve for it that allow me to still be able to enjoy drinks while I'm playing. I know it's only 30 minutes, but if I got my drink and then I have to like put it down for 30 minutes to come back, ice is gonna be melted, it's gonna be diluted, it's not gonna be good. And so I think there's a way to solve for it potentially. Um, but uh, but anyway, that was one little miss there, I think. Now, what I really liked is when you were done, you basically could come here, you returned your keys, but before you return your keys, if you tap on this little H, it prints out your scores, but it prints it out in a pretty cool looking little uh little hotel receipt. So this is the hotel receipt here, and um yeah, it like shows your scores for all the different rooms that you that you did, and um, you know, is is pretty well done. I thought like this is obviously something you're gonna take, put up on a refrigerator or keep as a keepsake. You're gonna go home with this thing in most cases. So pretty smart marketing there. They obviously have the uh the the website down at the bottom as well. So anyway, good stuff there. All right, so just to not spend too much time on uh you know everything here, I thought a few quick call-outs. There, this is their registration for holy moly, so pretty cool, like little carts you can get wacky hats to wear while you're doing it. You can buy some of these hats, and then you get registered, and so you can go in um, you know, again, another one of their pretty cool rooms. I did take a picture of their bathroom. I did wait till nobody was in it, so that I'm not taking a picture of uh somebody going to the bathroom. But one of the things that was great here is I'm a big fan of the all-gender bathrooms where you can just have tons of rooms, they're private rooms, and then you come out, you all wash your hands, and then you go, like it's a great way to just keep flow happening so that you don't end up with like a backlog line for women because you know they're waiting for their their you know a stall to open. There's plenty, they can all be shared. There were a couple of like urinal only. They like literally you walk in and there's only just a urinal inside. So they can obviously fit a lot more of those rooms together as well. So I really like this design of the bathroom, and I think it's a the future is moving in that direction. The you know, a couple of last things I'll call out here. I mean, just their theming was incredible. Like all of the different stuff that they had was uh pretty was pretty epic around. So this was like a little area. They had different little sitting areas for different groups to kind of tuck away. Also, really great private event areas. If you wanted to have a private corporate event, you could rent, you could rent that space. And then you could bring in, you know, vendors like they had here, the Shellfish Affair. This was not part of the Hijinx hotel concept, but they had oysters available the entire night. Um, and these guys just kept shucking oysters, shucking oysters, and they're a caterer that was brought in. So pretty cool catering concept there. And then one of my favorite things is they had a speakeasy through the phone, uh, the photo booth. So they had a photo booth. You could go in and actually take pictures of you know photos of yourself, which we did. Um, and then you would go through the other side of the photo booth into the speakeasy. Now, what's cool is the speakeasy doesn't open unless you've actually taken a picture. So you can't just like slip through. So you have to take your picture and then go into the speakeasy. And uh, I like this sign, nothing to see here, and then a parentheses, definitely not a speakeasy. So they're not trying to hide it necessarily. Uh obviously they could put away that sign if they feel like they're at capacity inside of the speakeasy to keep things moving. Um, you know, the speakeasy itself, you know, it wasn't the most amazing, but it had a really cool space and could also be rented out obviously as a private bar and private space there. So that I think is the uh you know, generally, you know, the the experience. Now, I'll just cover a few. The the one thing that I think I was a bit disappointed with was the gameplay. Now, not the rooms, the themes of the rooms were beautiful, like the gameplay itself, like all worked very well, like it was functional. So I wasn't disappointed there. What I was disappointed in is that they were five games and they all had to do with like putting balls through a hole or tapping a button or pushing buttons based on sounds, like they were all very similar. And then each each corridor had a pixel floor concept or game as well, um, which was like seemed right out of the, you know, like not a whole lot of custom work done on the pixel floor either. Again, theming and stuff inside the room was beautiful. Um, but I was disappointed that the fact that each corridor basically had a ball game, had a pixel floor game, had a sound, had to match the sound to uh to a picture game. So like they were repeats. And so, like, even if I'm coming back again and playing a different corridor, my experience may be very similar to what I had the last time I was there. Again, not everyone has put a ball through an animal's mouth, but you know, one of them had a basketball hoop, and one of them had you're in a ball pit and you're throwing balls. There were a couple of ball pits, you're putting balls in different holes and kind of moving around and all fun games. My issue is that each corridor sort of had like a repeat there. And so I think that they as they really think about expansion and repeat play, one nice thing about the challenge room concept is that you can easily make changes, right? So I sorry easily, but you can make changes to each of the rooms. So you can go in and you can close up a room or close a whole corridor, change out all the attractions in that corridor, then reopen and re-reopen them again as they you know begin to bring in more of these. But I think that would be my one complaint is that it was uh they if I were coming back in as a repeat visitor, I would be maybe a little bit frustrated that my experience down a new corridor wasn't significantly different than my experience the last time I went down a different corridor. Um, the other interesting thing, too, about their four minute model, no matter what. So I'm I'm in there playing for four minutes, is that I'm throwing balls in these animals' mouths for four minutes straight. And, you know, some of them, like that one, like didn't feel like quite too long, but like the one where we were shooting baskets, we're like, oh my gosh, there's like three of us all shooting baskets, we're like four minutes feels like a long time to just shoot some baskets and basketball. So that was the other that was the one other side of the gameplay that was like, okay. It needed to like kind of feel like it moved needed to move on. So obviously they've been running hygiene successfully down in Australia. Uh, and so you know, it could have just been the fact that we went and did 15 of these rooms all in one night, and so maybe it felt a little bit like that. And so uh, but anyway, I think overall I was very, very pleased with what I saw. I absolutely love what Fun Lab is doing. I think they're nailing holy moly that fills a category of space that isn't being met, and then High Jinx Hotel also meeting a really unique, immersive, story-driven category that is not being met currently at the challenge room, adventure room level in the U.S. So uh appreciate Funlab for bringing bringing me, you know, they didn't bring me out there, but for inviting me to the event. Um, had a blast, had a lot of fun, and um, you know, really look forward to uh, you know, the next opening and to see how things continue to evolve and succeed for them here in the US. Uh all right. Well, that uh I believe is almost a wrap. The last thing I wanted to just touch on for the uh for news you should know, because I missed talking about these guys about this during our IAPA guest guest gap review. So I just want to just briefly mention that Creative Works had partnered with the uh had partnered with Amusement Foundry to debut a new attraction called Detonate. And so we took we mentioned Creative Works and some of the stuff. We didn't talk specifically about detonate, uh, but I do think it's interesting to call out. It's a 10-minute or less escape room uh experience for two to six players. It has a uh footprint that's smaller than 25 square feet, and every puzzle self-resets. We talked about the dark dark escape games uh concept um on the guest gab. We did not talk about detonate, and I think it was just important to call this out. Um, I will say the one thing here that may be an issue is that it looks like, as far as I can tell, the puzzles are externally facing. And so one of the things about dark escape games is that you're going into a room, you're doing the puzzle, and yes, there is a camera, but if nobody's watching the camera, nobody's seeing how the puzzle is being solved. If you're doing this on the floor and people are solving the puzzle, potentially somebody could watch and see this whole thing happen and then not be able and then like not be able to solve the puzzle themselves. So unless the puzzle does different things and it randomizes and there's like different settings and versions of this puzzle, which I'm not sure, I think that could be one issue that it has. But otherwise, there's definitely a movement happening here where the smaller format, escape games, challenge games being done even on the game floor and not just in like the challenge room model or concept that we talked about with hijinks. All right, that wraps up a relatively robust news you should know. Coming up next after the break, we will dive right into open and shut. Cashless system from Intercard increased customer spending, debt satisfaction, and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is still proud to be serving the amusement industry. And if you aren't already part of a global family of customers, they hope you will become one too.
SPEAKER_03:Greetings everybody, it's Adam in the Dark uh the Arcade Corner at uh the here at the LBX Collective. I'm at my arcade uh in Salt Lake City, Utah, but um just don't have all the games on yet. I haven't had any customers in yet. Uh sadly, slow for December uh here where I'm at. But uh actually earlier today I was out looking at new locations to move to. So um we'll see where that goes, if that goes anywhere. Uh but yeah, we um let's get into the news. Just so you know, I've been sick all week, so I don't know how long my voice will last here. Um we'll try not to push it, but uh so let's just jump into it. Uh, retro gamer and former arcade hero writer Nick Thorpe has passed away. And so um many of you probably wouldn't know Nick as he he was mainly focused on the retro gaming scene uh over in the UK, but he did write for the magazine Retro Gamer Magazine, which had I believe still is published, uh, but also an online institution of a sort. And um he had actually wrote written for Arcade Heroes between 2008 and 2012, and that's where he got to know a lot of people in the amusement industry, particularly over in the UK, as such as this photo that's on the screen here. That's him with Patrick Michael of Sega Amusements International. Um, the other gentleman there was with a console developer, I think it was I can't remember if it was Code Masters. Um, but unfortunately he passed away um the first week of December uh at the young age of 38. I'm still not aware of what um he died from, if it was a health-related issue or something else, but uh just wanted to recognize him. Um I didn't get to meet him personally since I've not been to the UK, but talking with him online uh uh was always a nice guy to talk to and very talented writer, and so uh he will be missed and hope he rests in peace. But uh on to other pieces of news to catch you up on because last time last I didn't have an arcade corner last week due to some problems with the sound equipment. Um the arcade heroes is uh just hit 19 years in existence, so I've been doing this for almost two decades now. Um been fun to do and plan on continuing to do it, covering trade shows and such. Uh, another piece of news outside of IAPA, really quick to cover, is just if those of you who've been around for a while, well, pretty much everybody should know the name Atari, but maybe not everybody knows the history of Atari and Atari games. I won't get into that, just don't have time. My voice can't stand it either. But uh one thing that they are known for is a lot of creating a lot of games that never saw production. We call them prototypes, or if you want to be more direct, I guess just unreleased games. But 40 years after uh a game had been tested out and not released, a game called Jammon, it's been discovered and it's been made to work inside of emulators like MAME. And uh apparently several other Atari games titles were found on these tapes that uh where they were able to recover some of the data, not all of it. I or they're still working on it. Very tough stuff, uh well, way above my pay grade as to how to deal with that. But had Jammin been released in 1985, it would have been uh the first rhythm game, the first music game. So, what you would do is it would play some music on a drum set, and then you would have to push the buttons in the same sequence, kind of like a Simon says sort of thing. But then it would play it back and the band would jam with it. And so you're basically like doing a recording session. So innovative thing, but apparently it failed testing. So I guess innovative doesn't always equal strong earner, but always fascinating to me that you know, decades later something like this gets discovered. And hopefully they are able to uncover some of the other games there too, like Garfield or ET. There was an arcade version of ET that was in the works. Uh, there was Gremlins, a special version of Gremlins that was under development at Atari, and several others. But um, moving on from that into things that are relevant to our industry right now. Uh post-IAPA, it's always hit and miss. Sometimes there are manufacturers that will list everything right before the show uh or right after the show. Others may take months to list the new products that they showed off. Now, sometimes that may be due to the games that are at IAPA are not in production yet, uh, but other times it's frustrating when you hear about something that is in production and yet there's no listings for it anywhere. And um, I don't really get it uh why manufacturers will do that on occasion. But here's one manufacturer that listed several games that were seen at IAP, and that'd be Coastal Amusements. And so you can see here uh their Hot Wheels Ultimate Speedway won the first place in games and devices of the IAP Brass Ring Awards. So it's congratulating congratulations to them on that. Uh, but all these other games Sports Legends, Justice League, Classic Cruiser, Treasure Wheel, Freeze 5, Wild West Shootout 2, Zombie Invaders, Rollin' Win, Ace Golf, Vortex. Uh, they've all got it listed now, and I believe they're shipping. And if we go hop over to a distributor website, such as Betson here, uh, go to their arcade releases and sort by latest, you can see you know Wild West Shootouts there. Um, but they also have some others listed for like from LAI Games, Kaiju Rampage, Cube Clash, uh Liquid Death by Alan One. Uh Jet Games actually doesn't have these two on their website. Last I checked, uh, Talking Tom Goldrun and GigaShot. Um, I know that G.I. Goe game that they had at the show, they were saying was going to be spring, so still a little while out on that one. Um let's see, Liquid Death, I did get to play that at the show. And Wild West Shootout 2. This had been shown at Amusement Expo, but due to the uh US-China relations, it uh has been had been delayed up until now. Uh, but one thing that I did learn at the show is that Betson would had a non-exclusive agreement to carry Storm Racer 2 in the States. Now I haven't seen any other distributors list this yet. Um, but I also don't know if the price that was quoted to me by Wallop, who is building this in China, is accurate for what Betson's selling it for. Um, so that's where I'm not going to mention what the price is, but I was shocked because I hadn't heard a price that low on a racing game, especially a motion one, in like 10 years. And so, or maybe five. It's like after the pandemic, everything skyrocketed. Uh, but I to be fair, they're not the only distributor that has been listing brand new products. Uh, they've all been working hard at listing this newest stuff that would be carried there. I also know on ICE's website they had the Odin's hammer strike, uh, the the future and mini world and speedrider all carried by BandInamco. But last I checked, Bandinamco didn't have those games listed yet. So sometimes distributors uh get the jump on uh what the manufacturers are listing and don't always understand. To me, logically, the manufacturers should be the ones with the information first and then the distributors. But yeah, again, it doesn't always work that way. Um, but yeah, I would spend more time uh covering this sort of stuff. Oh, if I didn't mention it, uh prime time amusements is where this one's at. Sorry, my brain's a little frazzled. Being sick, it gives you this weird brain fog. But uh yeah, that's the latest updates. So um try and focus on something hopefully when my voice is returned uh next time. But thank you for watching and catch you next time.
SPEAKER_04:Power 15 floor with arcades by Allen One, whether it's perfectly foreign trees to Dr. Pepper's code planned, having official flight something to collect or defending cities from attacking missile command retards. Alan One is something for every venue in arcade floor that will delight your guests. Each game is also enhanced to later each floor. Free app attracts player top scores and brings guests back to your venue for more. Visit AllenDash1.com to learn more. That's AlanDash1.com. All right. Well, I know I had said uh we're gonna do some open and shut there, and we did arcade corner, and that's fine. So we had uh arcade corner. Next up, we got open and shut with Kevin Williams.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, a big hello to everyone. I hope I find you well, Brandon?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, doing well. I'm back uh yeah, I'm back here in Phoenix, as I as I mentioned earlier in the show. But uh yeah, I'm looking forward to uh looking forward to being here for the rest of the holiday season, so it's nice, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:All right, so you're embedded in for the season. Well, we'll jump straight into it. We've still got a lot of facilities to go through. I am curious why we have so many, because uh opening during the December period can be a traumatic process, uh, but some operators have felt that they need to do it. I think we know the reason why, but again, that's a topic for a sound off rather than here. But again, uh if I zip past anything too quickly, you can pause and go back and whatever. So jumping straight in, and Geigo has been playing around with a concept for a poker facility. So this is the Gender Gaigo Get in the Game Oasis Facility uh operation. But now, along with a brand new acquisition where they have taken on board a uh what I would call karaoke, but they would call uh singing venue concept, they have also uh merged into their operation a poker table operation. So if you jumped in the time machine, it would have been two-bit hold'em facility in the US. Uh remember how many of those opened up and disappeared without a fanfare? Well, now uh poker's very strong in Japan, uh, and a number of poker dens have closed down because they're a little bit uh tacky, and now a brand new approach has happened. And one of the additions to these venues that uh Gendo is going to be opening up is the inclusion of a little bit of uh Kittleton style uh crane operation.
SPEAKER_04:This one is really interesting to me. I mean, not that they're opening up poker rooms, although that is interesting in itself as well, especially if there's not really anything unique about them other than it looks like they're very comfortable tables and a really interesting gameplay opportunity, but uh that they're adding cranes and Kittleton style uh you know experiences in with this facility. Like they seem juxtaposed. One's longer form, one's very short form. Um so kind of interesting that they're bringing those two together.
SPEAKER_00:I I get the feeling that they're utilizing the space, and so outside, shall we say, of the main poker area, there will be a selection of crane machines. Uh the translation wasn't going into detail. Uh, a very uh sarcastic friend of mine pointed out that maybe after you've been having a long time playing at the tables, you need to take back something for the kids. There's FIFA left at home. Uh, I'm not going to touch that one, just to say that uh it is clear that the Gander brand is diversifying into interesting locations. Moving on, and our friends at Urban Air continue their rampage uh with about 350 facilities dotted around uh the US. Uh, they have a brand new uh Grand Rapids Michigan facility that's just thrown its doors open. Interesting, I usually get the size of the venue there. It is an ex-department store, surprise, surprise. So I'll take a punt and say that it's a 50,000 square, uh just to be safe. Um, and it comprises really what Urban Air has nailed down as their active entertainment. I think at some point in time they're going to have to push their rebranding even a little bit further, away from just an adventure park, maybe to an active entertainment park, because along with uh the climbing walls, along with the trampolines and the slides and the inflatables, they do have quite a considerable uh attraction and amusement component, even VR in some locations.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean they have karting in some locations as well, and uh even indoor skydiving at a few very very few locations. This looks though to be one of their more standard, uh straightforward active play adventure park locations for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Uh and they have uh in the uh information that was supplied to us, they have plans for quite a considerable number of rollouts in 2026. So watch this space. Uh jumping to Spain and uh in Seville, uh another Ozone facility has opened up. This is a continuation of their bowling and amusement uh with F style. This particular site is a little bit larger than their normal, uh, 12,000 square meters. Uh, and it has along with the uh 24 bowling lanes, traditional bowling lanes, not uh string or uh constructed, but they also have go-karting here, uh, and about 100 to 120 amusement pieces. Nothing to sneeze at, quite a considerable offering. A mule by any other name, though I'm sure they're focused more on the bowling approach, and a 30-chain uh facility with plans for further Spanish openings. And you know, speaking personally, the Spanish market can take this uh based on the disposable income of uh the uh population as well as the available uh real estate.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean it's it's it's big. It it is uh it does some interesting things with the aesthetics inside, but otherwise it's it's pretty much just a big, big open box of uh yeah, big big standard FEC.
SPEAKER_00:It's a big standard FEC stroke uh mule stroke uh bowling alley stroke uh place to hang around. They haven't gone over the top with the branding, but they would argue that their audience is not that sophisticated uh and their market is not that congested where they need to have a USP definer. But I would argue that that will change very soon. Uh off to California from Spain, and uh Lucky Strike has uh opened up uh another venue, 38,000 square, uh 32 lanes here, but I couldn't work out if it's uh uh compacted lanes or full-size lanes. I'll take a risk and say I think they're the compacted lanes that they use for their entertainment facilities. About 60 amusement machines in there, F and B, uh a bar, as you can see from the picture, that's quite nice there. And you know, if we only look at the Lucky Strike uh bowling component of the Lucky Strikes Entertainment uh operation, this is about 360 uh bowlers out there. But as we know, as we've talked about in the past, this is the top end of the quality of their bowling environments that they have under their wing. That said, I haven't been able to chase uh them to find out how fast their uh refurbishment plans are going with their uh existing retinue of sites.
SPEAKER_04:It's such a massive under. Taking to go and convert their bolero sites to Lucky Strike, especially when you know some of the Bolero locations are not the greatest. They're pretty straightforward standard. And they may end up leaving those as Bolero. Maybe they're handpicking the specific sites based on location, demographics, attraction mix, and that's the ones that they're making the transition to Lucky Strike. But uh that is such a heavy lift that they're going through. But I think it's important that they make that transition. Lucky Strike has just such a better brand. Um, and you know, with with guests and with consumers, then Bolero tends to.
SPEAKER_00:I I get the feeling, especially as this is a new build site, uh, that they have decided to put their energies into new uh flagship facilities and then walk back. Because one of the possibilities that we could see here is if you uh open up a brand new facility within the catchment of an existing bolero, then really you have uh removed the need for that uh older, tired, uh more debt-ridden facility. But personal opinion. Uh and then jumping all the way back to uh Europe and Italy, uh, we have the uh the log guys, uh the lots of for us English speakers, lots of games, but uh the for whoever came up with their brand, lot of games. Uh it is an FEC by any uh imaginings, but it's an FEC with a very high quality build-out. Uh I like their themeality of uh the log sites. And whoever picks their amusement definitely has an eye for the attractive. It's very similar to the Chinese high-level FEC facility amusement facilities we see with the polished floor uh uh to create the reflect uh reflection and also going for lots of neon, but it is a brand that has about three facilities out there, and I thought a lot more, but they have, if you go to their website, a lot of new sites in development for their European mix. And so we will be talking a lot about these uh new openings in 2026.
SPEAKER_04:I always think it's funny when you have names like uh you know that that promise a certain thing, right, in the name. So like a lot of games, uh like log, you know, okay. Well, I sure hope you have a lot of games. Um I hope you deliver on that because it's in your name. So you know, you're gonna be stuck with that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it makes it difficult for you to pivot into anything else, right? Yes, uh a lot of darts, uh a lot of pinball, you know. Oh no, we mean we mean games, yeah. Well, yeah. Uh sometimes uh going for that uh European translation can be difficult if that isn't your uh target uh audience or your target language. Um VR, we're going to be talking uh a lot about this, a lot about this in the uh sound off. Uh we have seen quite a spurt of investment into what I call uh immersive arena venues, multiplayer shared reality experiences that are more on an adventure rather than a game uh focus. And uh in Poland, there is a developer of this kind of approach that has rolled out a couple of facilities within their territory, and they've just uh announced uh a brand new version. The company's uh the company uses the term metaverse in their name, and so uh it can cause some confusion when uh when we're doing research into them. But uh this particular facility that has opened up uh is focusing on the Hotel Dracula, uh, which is a kind of a horror but also an exploration, so a walking simulator kind of experience for about uh up to 10 uh people, I think, in groups up to 25 at a time. Uh but again, it's pointing into that direction of the shared reality entertainment approach in LBXR, which we will be touching upon uh in this sector rather than the traditional VR arcade.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, this one. So I'm curious because obviously Blanco Negro they they have other attractions, they have other experiences as well under their banner. Like fairy tales is a really popular one of theirs.
SPEAKER_00:They're a fever light, I like to call it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's that's what I'm wondering. Is then is this Hotel Dracula location or Dracula Hotel location um going to eventually offer the fairy tales experience or some of their other experiences down the line? Like I feel like it would have to in order to keep the repeat visitation happening.
SPEAKER_00:There is no reason why you have a one-hit, uh one experience facility unless that hit is amazing and uh uh blows away uh anything else you can do. It's the argument we have with the cinema industry, which is the cinema industry has to continue to update because you know you can't have a uh a theater just running Rambo all the time because it was a popular film. You have to have other films, and the same goes for uh immersive VR shared reality facilities. And again, talking about uh uh the expanding chain and the VR offering, uh the latest franchisee of uh the sandbox VR operation, again in Italy. You know, you're seeing a kind of pattern on territorial openings going on at the moment, Spain, Italy, where maybe France and Germany has been saturated. Um, the latest uh sandbox facilities opening, that's 6869 sites that they've got there. They didn't make it to 70 for the end of the year unless they've got a big surprise happening in the next couple of days. Um and this particular uh operational franchisee has copied the English model by parachuting in the uh robotic bartender. Um, again, not all of the sandbox VR facilities have that, and that's going to be something that these guys are going to have to think about in their branding because what happens if I want to go with my mates to a sandbox VR experience and I suddenly find out that it didn't have the robot bartender that I liked so much? You know, these are the issues about branding and positioning, which can make franchisees' customizations difficult.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, especially when it comes to F and B. So if you expect most sandbox VRs don't have FB component at all. Um, but the ones that do, it's like a nice little addition, right? I can watch my review, you know, I can I can go do my post post-experience watch like and sit down with a drink made from a robot. Um and that's uh that that adds an extra layer of, well, one increase in per cap, but an extra layer of uh uh experience, guess experience. But I don't I can't walk into a sandbox VR and assume that it's going to be there. And that I think is the issue when it comes to offering F and V. If you're gonna have a variable attraction mix, we've talked about that before as well on the show. Um, that if you have, especially if it's wide variety under the same brand and you know one of your locations has carting and one of your locations doesn't, this this is something that Urban Air runs into a lot when you have your franchise attraction mix. Um not just Urban Air, but other brands as well. But especially when it comes to F and B. If you're coming in and you don't know that there's going to be, you're expecting there to be some sort of drinks or food, and that's not there, that's a problem.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think they realize that yet. Uh, it's going to bite them in the bum if they if they don't think more about the guest experience. And it's one thing that I'm noticing with a lot of companies post-IALPA that they are realizing that they haven't been putting enough energy into their guest experience uh offering as well as their competitive positioning. But we can talk about that later on. Moving down and around, and uh bullseye, not the most original name in the world, though I'm I'm not sure. Maybe in Oklahoma, it's a fantastic name for a competitive socializing venue because this is clearly a competitive socializing venue. Uh Spirited Target. Yeah, well, I'm more interested in the uh the eating the darts uh and the drinks uh side of this because the axe throwing component is bays, and the bays that they have at this site are very similar to golf bays. They they are much more laid back and open planned compared to the more cage fighting alternative. Uh they have uh their darts traditionally uh placed, but they've also parachuted in one of the first installations of the 501 interactive mini golf uh LED screen. And I'm really fascinated uh to uh to get my hands on the reactions to that, how well it plays and how well it fits, because it's going to need to have some attendance support because this is slightly different to how most players would be familiar with playing a mini uh mini golf uh environment. But anyway, it's um it's an interesting sized site. Uh I get the feeling that bullseye is the beginning of a chain. Uh, I couldn't do too much digging in the time I had available into the background of the owners of this operation. But, you know, I I get the feeling that uh Oklahoma City is a test site for a wider diversification.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I mean they've they've done some interesting things here. I mean, with the well, first of all, the name. I mean, look, they're obviously it's axes, darts, and drinks, although they leave out the mini golf as part of their tagline. Um, but the spirited target practice, same thing, leaving out the whole concept of minigolf. Although you could argue that the mini golf, the 501 version of mini golf is much more target practice than standard mini golf. Um, but they the I cannot tell, but I'm but my assumption is because on their site they say it features a high-tech simulator that tracks scores for their axes. So my guess is since 501 doesn't have an axe throwing component, it's probably Lasertron's axe throwing um uh system, is my assumption. And then you've got obviously 501 darts and 501 golf uh for the you know to round everything out here. But uh it will be interesting to see how the 501 golf. I think this is probably one of the first installations, at least non-sanctioned or non-sponsored installations of the 501 golf system that we've seen in the wild.
SPEAKER_00:I had put money down that 501 was going to put their first of their uh mini golf screen-based uh experiences into a DMB, but as we'll be touching on in sound off, changes within D may have uh uh precluded that particular deal going forwards. I don't think that is a LaserTron Axe Rower system. I think it's another company. Funny enough, a company that we uh reported on in our Stinger report coverage at IALPA. But hey, uh, we need to go to Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, no, we don't.
SPEAKER_00:No, we don't. Uh growing uh the franchise. I was surprised how quickly uh Pop Strokes has got to 20 facilities, uh to be honest. Time flies when you're having fun. Uh I wonder who's having fun. Uh the Tennessee uh facility here, 77,000 square. Um they keep on saying uh mini golf indoors and out. Uh, I think what they're trying to say is entertainment indoors and out, because there's nothing inside that site other than a couple of puttering, you know, mini mini greens. The the the focus, the key focus of the experience is outside. Um I know they'll argue that one, but you know, I've I I've seen the reviews of uh their facilities. They really are going to have to consider on a secondary entertainment component for these, no matter what they say. Uh they have got an audience situation, which is a nice problem to have, which is they have uh a strong attendance, but that strong attendant wants something a little bit more after they've played their round and uh had at least one drink or something to eat. And I I'm I'm expecting to uh to hear that Pop Strokes is going to broaden its entertainment offering at some point.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and this is probably inevitable. I mean, one of the big things about this Nashville location when they first announced that it was building, that they were building it, is that they were going to put some uh some of their holes inside because while Nashville isn't you know isn't inundated with crazy amounts of snow, it does get snow on occasion and it does get very cold. Um, and so the fact that you have a facility that is not a year-round facility that really you know isn't like a typical seasonal location. People don't think about Nashville being seasonal, um, but you now have created a seasonal attraction, a relatively seasonal attraction that can be an issue or one that will like be impacted by implement weather. Um I will say though, Pop Stroke does have excellent F and V. So their food is really good. And so it is uh, you know, as you have to, if you're going to have a single attraction model, your food and your drinks have to be really good and top tier. And I've been to a number of Pop Strokes, and every time I've had a great dining experience.
SPEAKER_00:The dining experience is uh uh uh excellent. Uh if you know the team behind uh the Tiger Woods group as well as the dining group, they they had their heads screwed on when they looked at this process, and it is really eatertainment, though they would like to call it that. It is uh play the golf but stay for the food uh and the drink and then hopefully the social environment. I was wondering if this was going to be a venue that was going to embrace a little bit more of their golf uh tournament, TV tournament system, but as that has disappeared in a puff of smoke uh this year, I'm thinking that they are going to have to think of some kind of social entertainment glue that is going to support that. And you touched upon, you know, the interesting point here is that you cannot make this seasonality. You can't close the site down as soon as it gets cold outside. You have to have, uh if you're going to build in these localities, you're going to have to have an indoors component. And if you're going to move into the indoor golf market, then the brand of or the play style that they're offering doesn't work that well in in an indoor environment. But they were going to learn these lessons the hard way because I get this is the beginning of uh their move into less temperate climbs.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then the big one that a lot of people seem to have missed because they were too busy talking about uh the Netflix uh deal um to buy Warner Brothers. Uh, we uh had the second Netflix house open, and also we had an interesting reveal, but uh we'll we'll go into the reveal in sound off. But here with Netflix House, the Dallas facility opens up a hundred thousand square previous department store, all of the boxes ticked, and two attractions, as all of these sites seem to go for two key attractions, one being a uh survival game, based upon obviously uh the Fantastic Success of the Squid Games uh franchise, and the other one being more of an escape mission room kind of uh uh uh experience based upon one of their less popular franchises. In my personal opinion, I'm not a great Netflix uh watcher, and then and then we had the first appearance uh of Netflix replay, the most originally named uh arcade zone in our industry. Very interesting. That's 21 amusement machines placed in its own themed environment. And we've been looking very closely at the machines that they selected to put into their first uh true amusement space, and I'd love to have a conversation with the team behind it why they picked some of those machines. And on the day of the visit to the opening, they even had problems with those amusement machines that they had there. So, you know, it's it's a learning phase, uh, such as we've now learned that the uh Las Vegas facility has now been pushed into 2027 opening rather than at the end of 2026.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Uh probably to give time to incorporate the learnings from these two locations. I hope. Yeah, I mean, the I when I look at the Netflix replay, why can't see all of the uh pieces that they have there, at least on their site? Um, it is uh clear that they're trying to at least align the amusement pieces with their with their Netflix brand. So they uh they have a one-piece machine, they've got a sort of like a quasi DDR, um, but focused around K-pop demon hunter songs.
SPEAKER_00:And so, you know, they're trying a thing to did you notice they had a one-piece machine. Now, where would they have been able to have got a one-piece machine from? We don't have a one-piece machine in the Western amusement market, but we do have it in the Japanese market. So some deal has been done here.
SPEAKER_04:Well, and the one that uh at least the one that I can tell, it's it almost seems like a quasi-redemption piece. Yeah. Um, uh, but uh, I don't know if they're gonna have if they have redemption or if it's just being used as just a competitive uh piece, but it does look like an existing experience that was rebranded around the one piece, uh, the one piece IP.
SPEAKER_00:It it's interesting. Uh, the yeah, the the really badly shot social media of the person walking around the site didn't spend that long in the arcade side. So I can't answer the question about merch uh or a uh redemption component uh or how the games are being played activated. Hopefully, in the next couple of uh days we'll have a better video going around that. But this is really interesting. One of the other big surprises is that they put in a active interactive floor and uh themed it with uh the floor is lava, yeah. Uh, but they have a floor of is lava uh entertainment package. That package is with our friends at Sandbox VR. And what is missing from this facility?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:A lot of people have missed a lot of things about this particular slide. Uh I get the feeling. Sorry, go please, Brandon.
SPEAKER_04:Well, no, I'm disappointed actually by the floors lava. Obviously, they branded the room around the floors lava, but it's just a standard pixel floor and like the standard pixel game experience. Like there's nothing unique at all. It's like truly right off the shelf, and the gameplay is probably going to be right off the shelf gameplay from what I can tell from the videos that I've seen. And so, like, that's a little bit disappointing. Like, you know, there's there's 17 other FECs in the Dallas market that probably have the same exact pixel floor. So I don't really know what they're bringing to the table differently because the floor is lava, is not that that IP is not going to bring somebody in if it's the same kind of quasi, like I don't want to call it boring, but you know, uh same, same old, same old experience.
SPEAKER_00:We'll touch a little bit more about this uh in Sound Off. Then moving into the shots uh and the rebrandings. Uh our friends at uh Fun Zone have uh rebranded their uh laser tag arena operation. Now they've uh pivoted towards the laser zone uh branding. Now you have to understand here that the German usage of laser tag has gone through various uh changes over the years as they've had to dance around uh the usage of guns within their society and then to the embracing of the popularity of laser tag. But we're now seeing uh a consolidation across uh the European laser tag industry, and that is coming with a lot more uh rebranding. uh and a lot more reinvestment into uh those operations well i mean actually i think uh sorry the one thing i'll say here is um you know it if this is one case mo in most cases i'm not for uh rebranding and really pigeonholing yourself to something to your like your your main attraction but if you are only truly purely laser tag just embrace it and call yourself laser zone so and obviously i you know like so i appreciate that they've they've made that shift actually it's it's probably going to be much more alluring at that point because people know what they're coming into when we enter the new year we will be entering a period where a number of anniversaries are taking place and not just anniversaries um marking decades but uh also anniversaries marking the usage of terminology and things have moved on and things have changed quite considerably and one of those things is the uh toxicity and I don't mean toxic in a bad way but I just mean uh a changing of opinion of how certain things are being perceived by our current generation audience rather than our previous uh audience without going into too much details the term laser tag comes with a lot of baggage and maybe being able to upscale the audience perception of what you're offering before they even think about what they're going to be doing with their entertainment is uh is something where we all see a lot of companies now looking at rebranding. Maybe moving away from go-karting to karting is just a a simple example of uh that approach uh thank you to our sources out there um I got inundated uh with the news of uh the uh Planet Play School uh facility in New Joycey uh going for a little bit of a burden uh the staff have uh stated that it's closed uh Hasbro is tight-lipped about this the franchisee is tight-lipped about this the only way I could find out about this was through TripAdvisor and through the information that our sources had given us but this is quite an interesting black eye uh at the time of the opening of uh the Planet Play School we all raised an eyebrow about what the entertainment value was going to be as well as the expertise of the operator to actually create something that wasn't just uh a lot of colour scheme and enlarged uh maquette models and actually had a play value that was worth the money uh to go there. By the looks of it uh the audience voted them out and I think our friends at Hasbro are going to have to take a step back and reevaluate who they give their IP to uh if they don't want to have a series of openings and then uh 14 months down the road closes.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah this one is tough uh especially when they had such success with Hasbro City in Mexico to then roll out something here and and to have it not work out you know with what I what you know should have actually been really alluring given their target demographic their target age target age group. And so you know who knows I mean was it a location was it bad operations was it just did they pay too much for the IP and partnership and they couldn't make their money I mean there's a number of things that could have gone wrong here.
SPEAKER_00:But this is uh they are going to have to go back to the drawing board and figure out how they're gonna leverage their play school brand for sure they're gonna have to go back to the drawing board uh they're going to have to reevaluate what their play school brand is because you know as I said at the time what the hell is Transformers doing there if you're going to go for a play school uh brand based on the Hasbro operation it's it felt to me uh the management team may have bitten off more than they could have chewed uh and again I am concerned that a lot of the lessons that were learnt in the reason for this failure are going to be brushed under the table because uh it it will be embarrassing to certain executives that they drop the ball so publicly on a concept like this but we will dig you can't hide on this information forever as the industry knows to its uh Shagra. Anyway that's a quick rundown uh before the uh new year falls upon us uh again it's going to be a very busy year next year I always say that but this one has been quite a busy one but I get the feeling that uh next year is going to be twice as busy um to keep up with this acceleration make sure you're getting your Stinger reports make sure that you're reading your uh entertainment social arena you can now understand why I started the entertainment social arena with all of uh the competitive socializing that's going on and we've got some news about that coming soon also make sure uh that uh you can supply us information via our LinkedIn or via our email and uh that just leaves me to uh uh hope that everything is going okay with you Brandon getting ready for that magical day coming towards us at high speed yes indeed indeed so we have one more before uh we have one more open and shut before the uh we take a we take a one week hiatus for the holidays but uh looking forward to the next one speeches 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.
SPEAKER_04:Curious visit radius.co and ask about your free market analysis that's r-a-ydiusco all right well we have a standoff number 102 with Kevin Williams this Tuesday December 16th and uh that is really it that is a wrap for this week's LBX show this is Brandon Wiley signing off stay tuned and keep kicking at the
