Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 160-Party On Wheels
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The party doesn’t have to be across town when it can roll right up to your driveway. We sit down with Amado Galasso, owner of Entertainment On Wheels in Wyckoff, NJ, to unpack how mobile entertainment turns birthdays, graduations, town days, and milestone celebrations into effortless, high-energy events. From climate-controlled video game trailers that seat up to 32 players to racing wheel simulators and photo booths, Amado shares how his team builds experiences that keep kids engaged and let parents actually enjoy the moment.
We go deeper than consoles. Amado explains why casino nights—blackjack, roulette, craps, and Texas Hold’em—are perfect for 40th, 50th, and 60th birthdays, bar and bat mitzvahs, and corporate socials without the complexity of real-money play. You’ll hear the nuts and bolts of outdoor movie nights with 16–20 foot inflatable screens, big sound, and concessions, plus smart licensing tips for private screenings. For schools and towns, we talk high-throughput inflatables—soccer darts, Velcro hatchet toss, sports targets—and modular obstacle courses that fit different spaces and move big crowds fast.
What really stands out is the adaptability. When indoor trailers were off-limits, Entertainment On Wheels pivoted to pop-up, distanced gaming stations so kids could celebrate safely. Today, the warehouse is packed with new ideas: foam parties for summer, gaga ball for gyms, portable mini golf requested by schools, and a “stick catcher” reaction game loved by young athletes. With trained attendants for casino nights, laser tag, photo booths, and game trailers, plus strict cleaning and prep, the team keeps events smooth, safe, and memorable year-round.
Planning a winter birthday, spring graduation, or backyard cinema night? Get inspired by the practical tips on booking windows, capacity, and tailoring activities by age and theme. If you had the party come to you, would you choose a movie night, a casino floor, or a head-to-head obstacle course? Subscribe, share with a friend who’s planning an event, and leave a review to help more neighbors discover local businesses bringing joy to the block.
Entertainment On Wheels
Amato Galasso
825 Windham Court North, Suite 1 Wyckoff, NJ 07481
(201) 444-0045
eowparties@gmail.com
entertainmentonwheels.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Doug Drohan:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. It is 2026, and our second guest of this year is Amato Galasso. He is the owner of Entertainment on Wheels, based in Wyckoff, New Jersey, a town we know pretty well. Welcome to the show.
Amato Galasso:Thank you very much for having me.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, so um, you know, I'm bringing the podcast to you, but you guys bring the party, uh, as you say, we bring the party to you. So you know, tell us a little bit about like entertainment on wheels. Initially, I thought, oh, you're a DJ, but that's not what you know.
Amato Galasso:Oh no. No, we don't really we do offer DJ services, but that's not our primary business. So we uh started off as uh video game trailers. We were one of the first companies in the area to do it, and uh so we basically have a large 28-foot or 34-foot trailer full of video games, both indoors, outdoors. Uh, we roll right up in front of people's houses uh or to like school events, town events, and all that, and um just basically keep our kids entertained. They have a ton of fun inside, allowing the parents to also enjoy the party. So it's uh pus on both sides. And uh, once we're done, we just basically pack up everything, roll out, and you never knew we were there. Wow. And how many people can it fit at one time to play games? Our larger trailer can accommodate up to 32 guests playing at the same time. Yeah, so it and it's all heated and air conditioned, so it's uh climate controlled all year round. We run parties basically 24-7, uh 365 days a year.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, wow, wow, that's really cool. And um, you know, one of the big things my son, who's 12, is into F1 simulator. There's a place that opened up on uh Route 4. It's actually my neighbor's cousin. We checked it out before they actually opened. But for Christmas, this kid, my son, got this uh kind of a chair with the steering wheel and the brake pedals and all that, and and it's pretty cool. Um, do you guys do that kind of um, you know, I mean, with your video games, I guess they can play anything, right?
Amato Galasso:They they could play anything, and we do actually have two racing wheel simulators set up in our larger video game trailer. Okay. So that's an added bonus. Uh, yeah, we play a game called Need for Speed, which the kids seem to love. Uh has a bunch of different uh racing circuits. It's got driving, drag racing, off-road racing, uh street racing, all kinds of fun stuff. Um but that's not all we do with the trailers. Our company actually offers about 200 different types of entertainment options. So between bounce houses and uh, you know, obstacle courses, movie nights, casino nights. I mean, you name it, we pretty much have it. Yeah. So all right. Tell me, tell me a little bit about the casino night. So casino nights are more for fun. We don't do them as fundraisers because there's a whole licensing thing with the state. Um, but we do them more for like, you know, if we uh really thrive on like the 40th, 50th, 60th birthday parties. We bring all the tables, the equipment, live dealers, uh, so that way the guests are fully entertained. They get the full casino experience. Right. Uh we've actually done a lot of bar mitzvahs and bot mitzvahs lately too, which has been pretty funny because they are considered adults at 13. So the kids are having the uh the kids are having a lot of fun. The parents are jumping in and they just make it a full experience. Uh, so we do offer uh blackjack, roulette, craps, and texas hold and poker are the four primary games. And uh we can accommodate parties up to 100-150 people playing at the same time.
Doug Drohan:And they're not allowed to use actual cash, I guess.
Amato Galasso:It's just no, no, no actual cash, it's all plate money. We bring chips. Uh they you know, at the end of the event, whoever has the most chips, you know, they'll usually the hosts will like give prizes out or they'll do like mini raffles, but it's all non-for-money, you know, they just do it for fun.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, no, it's it's that's cool. Um, and then you do like I I ask because I there's like a group of guys, we do Texas Hold'em, but we do it for money. Yeah, you know, but I think a casino night could be fun.
Amato Galasso:Casino nights are definitely a lot of fun, yeah. They're they're like a lot of fun. Everybody gets you know all pumped up and energized. Our dealers, you know, they know how to keep the crowd going, you know, having a lot of fun with them, you know. They look the other way when the you know, when the guest makes a mistake. So, you know, we're not really doing it for money, we're doing it so the guests can just entertain themselves. Right. And can you do them outdoors like in the summer? Yep. We do outdoor, indoor events. Uh, we've done a lot of like, you know, we can do them underneath the tent or even just right outside. You know, we've done a lot of pool parties where we brought equipment over and the guests will just come over and they'll hang out throughout the night and then just go jump back into the pool.
Doug Drohan:So one of the things that seems to grow in popularity now are outdoor movie nights. You know, I think it's been romanticized in movies, you know, and uh it's more the more people build these uh outdoor spaces in their backyards. Um, you know, they they might put a TV in, but it's not a big, large screen. So how does that work during a movie night?
Amato Galasso:So again, we come with all the equipment. Uh it's a giant inflatable screen, uh, anywhere from 16 foot to 20 foot normal. And uh we have you know sound system uh with 800 watt speakers, full you know, projector with high definition quality. So the um, you know, the movie night just runs usually it's about two hours. Sometimes, you know, with these movies they run two and a half to three. We don't charge extra for that kind of stuff. We can also provide all kinds of concessions for the event. So if they want to machine, yeah, cotton candy, snow cones, you know, depending upon the ages of the guests and all that. So we uh we make it a fun experience. And the movie is basically whatever movie they want. Correct. The guests would have to provide the media because if we provide the media, then we have to do licensing. So being that it's a private home event, they can end up just uh they just provide the media, preferably DVD or Blu-ray, but we also can stream certain on certain medias.
Doug Drohan:I uh I used to work previous to this um business. I worked for Nickelodeon and Viacom for 13 years, and I was in the home video international consumer products home video division. And before that, I was in the record industry. So I have a garage filled with DVDs and CDs.
Amato Galasso:Yeah, oh I'm sure.
Doug Drohan:Although my DVDs are kind of old now, you know, and I and I have a Blu-ray player still, because I'm like, you know, I wish I still had my CD player, that's gone. But um, yeah, so obviously if there's a movie somebody wants, it's probably you can still buy DVDs on Amazon, I'm sure.
Amato Galasso:Yeah, you can pick them all up, but that's not a problem. You know, nine out of ten of our guests will do it that way. Um and funny you mentioned that because we back in the day we did actually own a movie, uh movie rental company. So yeah, a small store back in Waldwick, uh early 2000s, yeah. Until you know, now that the print uh it was a mini kind of, it wasn't a blockbuster, it was an all you know, we just had our own brand. So we we had a ton of fun with it.
Doug Drohan:I mean, I don't know if you're a New York guy, but Kim's down in the village was a place where you used to rent videos, Kim's on uh Bleaker Street. I used to live there. Nice. That was really popular back in the when we're talking the 90s.
Amato Galasso:Yeah, exactly.
Doug Drohan:The 90s into the two early 2000s, and then it kind of died off. So you say back in the day. So how did you get into this business? Like when did you start? When did entertainment on wheels uh you know hit the road?
Amato Galasso:So it started in 2012. Uh my sister actually had seen the video game trailer uh as she was driving around, wanted to have it for her son, and noticed that the cut she called the company up and they were just like, Oh, we're fully booked for months. So that triggered her to say, you know what, we should get into this business. And um, at the time I said, you know what, uh, why not give it a shot? We had a cafe open at the time, so we figured we could parlay and have you know, bring like concessions, party type of stuff for the video game trailer. Um, over the next couple of years, we slowly started expanding. We did the movie nights, we got a laser tag system. Um, and then 2015 is kind of when we went and exploded. And we back, you know, we've been adding like bounce houses. Uh again, we do photo booths. Uh we have four different types of laser tag systems, nerf gun wars, all kinds of fun stuff. So yeah, you know.
Doug Drohan:And was it initially like geared towards kids, but now it's evolved to adults over the years? Correct.
Amato Galasso:It's it was originally just kids, basically the video game trailers where like the target age was like you know, seven to about 12 to 13 years old. And then from there it just slowly started expanding more and more. So now we offer varieties of stuff for, you know, even we can even do like second and third birthday parties as low as that. So we got all different fun type entertainment options.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, yeah. Now, you know, a lot of people I talked to were um in business in in 2020. Uh and most of them it was a really tough moment when everything shut down. But for you, I would imagine by the summer of 2020, um, with you know, summer camps closed and nobody really going on vacations, it might have been a great year for you, was it or no?
Amato Galasso:Um, it was tough. We had to do a lot of pivoting actually because you know, the video game trailers, you couldn't use the trailers because everything was enclosed inside. So we pivoted. We actually started setting up pop-up tents and would set up gaming stations in people's backyards. Um we just we found other ways to make sure kids guests were all like separated, but at the same time had a party together. So, you know, you know, again, you just have to adapt and find, you know, find new ways, be creative. You know, if we weren't creative, we wouldn't be around right now.
Doug Drohan:Right, right, right, exactly. Yeah, and that was the whole thing with um, you know, I I called it back then. I had a section in one of my magazines called the lemonade stand, and it was how people made lemonade out of all the lemons that life had dealt us at that moment. But um, one of the so as a business owner, uh I mean, uh, you know, a lot of your inventory is reusable. It doesn't, it's doesn't have a shelf life on it. But are you like in your warehouse right now where you keep all of your supplies?
Amato Galasso:Yes, yeah, I walk around. Yeah, my office is right next to my warehouse. So yeah, I like to walk around the warehouse and you know, especially when I'm making phone calls and speaking on podcasts because then it reminds me of all the different things we offer. Um, so walking through right now, I see that we have probably well over 25 to 30 different inflatables between obstacle courses, water slides, and bounce houses for kids all different ages. Um then we have a lot of different, like a variety of games. I try to keep on top of games that nobody else has. So we just got a new thing called the stick catcher, which basically it's like uh they use them a lot for sports. Uh, it's to like see how fast people can react when sticks are dropping down off of a off of a mechanism. We'd love to show it to you, but it's a little tough to see.
Intro/Close:You kind of got to envision it.
Doug Drohan:Is that something that people do on YouTube, like the dude perfect or those YouTubers?
Amato Galasso:Yeah, they'll do all kinds of fun stuff. Yeah, so I've seen them on Dude Perfect. I've seen a lot of them, like I said, a lot of like sports facilities now are starting to use them, like uh that they'll use them just to see how quickly people can react because it drops 10 different sticks at random times, and you have to figure out where they are and just you know grab them as they go down. Um, we've rented them out to a bunch of like kids' birthday parties, especially kids that love sports, and they go crazy for it. So, and it's a nice economical uh entertainment option, right?
Doug Drohan:Right. Yeah, all right. Well, I I I'm having trouble uh visualizing that. So I just don't my son might know what it is, but yeah. Um, so in terms of like your your business, I mean you're pretty lean in terms of staff, like you don't need you don't have a staff of like college kids or high school kids that have to be once you set up these um, you know, let's talk about the outdoor stuff, like the inflatable obstacle courses, and you just set it up, leave, and come back and take it down, right?
Amato Galasso:It's not like depending upon the event. I mean, if it's a school event, we'll stay there because obviously they're gonna want someone to keep an eye on the kids and make sure they're not getting rowdy and getting hurt on them. Um, if it's usually like a home event, yeah, we'll just do a setup in the morning, drop it off, and then come back later and pick it all up. Uh and like the casino nights, you know, they're fully staffed. Our photo booth, we always leave an attendant. Our laser tag systems, because they're like high-end electronics, we we always send at least two staff with those. Same thing with the video game trailers. So we do have a full complement of staff. I've got about 20 part-time employees that work for me, and then two full-time that manage the warehouse because there's a lot of prep work that goes behind, you know, before they set up an event. Like we fully clean out the trailers, disinfect them, and all that. You know, I want to make sure nobody gets sick. Right.
Doug Drohan:Okay. And uh, like what are you seeing? Like you mentioned that trend. Are you seeing any other like I guess it changes with the ages, right? So if you if you got 12-year-olds, are they more into things like the obstacle courses and the life speed cones and and things that are more competitive?
Amato Galasso:Yeah, more in more competitive, interactive, running around. Uh, they always love the video games, you know, and we try to keep on top of the you know, latest games and trends that are out there. Uh for a period of time, we were doing you know, we did a lot of uh events with uh VR. So now it's that that's starting to die down a little bit, but uh you know, the kids are it'll it'll it usually cycles through. It's fun it's funny because um in our summer months we do a lot of phone parties. Uh we just ended up picking up a um a mini golf course, like portable one for the school because a lot of the schools have been asking for it. So of course, you know, whenever they ask for, we're gonna get it for them.
Doug Drohan:So you do a lot of events at schools as well?
Amato Galasso:Yes, we do a lot of school events, especially near year-end graduations and all that, like in the month of May and June. We're like crazy busy. That's like our two busiest months of the year.
Doug Drohan:Um town days. I can imagine like some of these town days, like every town has its own town day, and there's a lot of uh you know, interactive. Yeah.
Amato Galasso:They want, yeah, they want to they want to have a lot of events that the kids can push through and go through quickly. So a lot of our inflatable games are offered at. Like we have like Velcro hatchet toss, we've got soccer dartboards, uh, baseball games, basketball, football tosses. So everything you do sport-wise, targets, games, and all that, those are like quick, fast, so you can rotate a lot of people throughout like an hour. So, you know, we do these town events and there's thousands of people that show up. You know, you don't want to keep you don't want to put something up there that you know, one person's gonna take 15 minutes to do because then everybody else is gonna get upset that they didn't get a chance to try it.
Doug Drohan:Right, right. So the obstacle course looks interesting because you know, if kids are into or even adults are into like yeah, mud runs or you know, the parkour stuff, but it's 60 feet long. Like I was I was thinking, oh, this would be cool for my backyard, but my backyard's not 60 feet wide or long, so it wouldn't fit in my backyard.
Amato Galasso:But uh we do offer we offer shorter ones too. We have a 38-footer that's more compressed. Um, and actually the 60-footer is a two-piece unit, so you can have one or the other. You can have just the obstacle part, or you can have the slide that tags on the end. So it's about a 35, 35 and 25 foot. So, yeah, a lot of times we we split them up and we, you know, sometimes we even set them up in different areas where the the the household will make it, they'll do like a series of like like events, so they'll use one piece of it at the beginning, then have one or two games in between, and then run and finish, you know, the slide part at the end.
Doug Drohan:So they separate it up. That's pretty cool. I mean, as you can probably tell, I'm getting all these ideas in my head about you know different uh fun things to do. We we normally do like a theme adult, like if if we go on vacation, like this year we went to Hawaii, so then we had like a luau party in our in our backyard. And two years ago we went to the south of France, so then we had like a themed, you know, south of France. Everybody had to dress up like they're in Saint Tropez, and I grilled Bronzino and we had cool drinks and things like that. Um well, we do have a crepe machine. We could have we could have brought that over too. We're not going to any, we're going to Cooperstown this year for my son's baseball tournament. So I don't think I don't know. Maybe we'll do hot dogs and hamburgers.
Amato Galasso:We can do hot dogs and hamburgers, and we have a lot of baseball type themed events that we can set up for you too. We do like a we do even a t-ball event. We have baseball inflatables where the kids are, you know, just basically just a target practice, but with the you know, small, lightweight, you know, uh not baseballs, they're like the little uh the ball pit type balls so nobody gets hurt when they're whacking them around.
Doug Drohan:So it sounds like if somebody comes to you with an ad like with a request and you may not have it right now, but you it seems like you're resourceful and you're like, Yeah, we could probably do that.
Amato Galasso:Oh, yeah, we'll add on whatever, you know. If I can add something to an event, I definitely do it. Like we just did the same thing with the another guest with a special theme for their movie night, and you know, we ended up finding the the equipment that we needed for it just to make sure it worked out for them.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, yeah. So is this time of year a little bit slower for you, or what is the winter like? Like, what do you typically do in the winter?
Amato Galasso:So, winter we'll do like school events, like you know, indoor type school events. We get a lot of like back to school, like after this, you know, the the after the winter break, they want to try to like get the kids motivated so they'll have like different theme nights in schools. Um, so we'll bring some of our inflatable games. Gaga ball is a really popular and it's an inflatable, so we could just bring it right into their gym, set it up, the kids play. You know, 15, 20 kids can get in the pit at a time, so they're keeping a lot of the kids active. And you know, the rest of them just love to watch each other and cheer each other on. And uh, so we do we'll do like a bunch of different events there. The video game trailers, again, they run all year round. So, you know, you've got those poor kids that are born in the winter months that really can't do outdoor events. This is their way of being able to have still a party, you know. And the moms don't want 20, 25 kids running through their house. Yeah, so that our video game trailer is perfect for them. It keeps them outside the house, they're entertained for an hour and a half to two hours. They bring them in, have their cake, and then send them home.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, I'm a February birthday kid, but you know, when I was growing up, they didn't my parents didn't care about having parties for your kids. It's like we're having a cake. I had there were five kids in my house, so it was like that was enough.
Amato Galasso:Yeah, me it was like uh we played pin the hell on a donkey, and then it was like yeah, pizza and cake, and then you go home. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Parties now are a lot more fun. We grew up in the wrong age, yeah, yeah, I know, right?
Doug Drohan:Uh it was easier for parents, though. They didn't care, you know, it was just like whatever, happy birthday. You know, here's a cake.
Intro/Close:Exactly.
Doug Drohan:So it sounds though like you're pretty busy, and there's got to be a limit to how many of these games you have. So, how how far ahead should somebody book in advance? Like if somebody wants to do a movie night or a you know, indoor like their kids' birthdays in February, like how far in advance should somebody book?
Amato Galasso:Well, we have two video game trailers. We're building our third one right now. We at one point we did have four, then a couple of them we had to retire, so now we're regrouping and rebuilding new ones and bigger and better. Um so we do, you know, we can house three events running at the same time.
Doug Drohan:Um so I think what I might do here is uh give you some information about entertainment on wheels. The phone number is two zero one four four four four four four four four zero zero four five. The email to contact Amato is EOW or entertainment on wheels. So EOW parties at gmail.com and their website is entertainment on wheels.com. So on the website you can see all of these things we were talking about, all the different types of typical uh entertainment uh options they offer. And as we said, there's things if you have an idea that you don't see here, I'm sure they can find a way to get that for you. But it's video game trailers, laser tag, nerf wars, jelly ball, bazooka ball, water activities, inflatable obstacle courses, inflatable slides, bounce houses, inflatable games. You know, we mentioned the um hatchet throw and and Darts and things like that with Velcro, uh, tents, movie nights, photo booths, casino night, arcade games, you you name it. It goes on and on. So visit entertainmentonwheels.com and again call them at 201-444-0045. If you're thinking of the spring um for a birthday party or any other kind of event, you probably want to start calling and checking now. All right. So um thanks, Amato. Sorry. Oh, there you are. I'm back, yeah.
Amato Galasso:Apologize.
Doug Drohan:Yeah, you know what? I just gave a whole rundown of uh how to reach you. I heard I heard it. You did better than I do. Uh okay. Yeah, so I wanted to thank you for uh for joining. This was great. I I uh think you found a new customer.
Amato Galasso:I appreciate it. Thank you.
Doug Drohan:Hopefully we can take good care of you as always. I think I want to do the uh I've always wanted to do the outdoor movie night. My brother-in-law is in Long Island, he does something, he's got a big screen, he keeps it in his, you know, he he's a he's a contractor builder, he can build stuff, and uh it's been pretty cool. But um I love the idea of it. I just got to pick the right movie and the right audience. Sounds good. Yeah, so again, I gave everybody your phone number, website. Uh, I want to thank you for being a guest on our show and and hang on, you and I I'll be right back.
Amato Galasso:Sounds great. Thanks very much, Doug, and uh have a great 2026.
Doug Drohan:All right, thank you.
Intro/Close:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen.com. That's gnpbergen.com or call 201 298 8325.