Eat and Play

So on Sunday, I went to Dave & Busters for the first time to check the place out. I had always been curious about the place as both a restaurant and an arcade at the same time, and wanted to see what the environment was like. The one I visited was the one at International Drive, Orlando Florida 32819. The area is a tourist hot spot, so business seems to be booming with many customers.

If you plan to eat there, check the restaurant side first and see how long the wait will be. For us, we had to wait an hour and a half for our table. In the meantime, we went to check out the games that they had available in the area.

Most of the games that I saw were mostly the gamble-y kind with roulette-like wheels, such as this Big Bass Wheel, several different coin pusher games, and other games that seemed to spew many tickets. All the non-ticket rewarding games were at the back-end of the arcade with the usual shooter games, racing games, and other arcade staples like an Air Hockey machine, DDR machine, and the likes.

They did however, have an interesting 4-way Air Hockey table where 4 players can play at the same time, for free, up to twice per card swipe. There were three pucks bouncing around for you to try to score on unsuspecting players with, but the rules are kind of awkward. Scores are not kept, since the machine doesn't know who scored, but instead, each player has 5 life points. Each puck that goes in your goal takes away 1 life point, and when you lose all your life, it's "Game Over". Game Over is in quotes however, since that player can technically continue playing with the remaining pucks, since the pucks don't return only if the goal it falls in isn't a player that is in "Game Over". It's kind of a messy set-up, but the game being free, and each player requiring to swipe their Dave & Busters card to activate makes it easy for people to just jump-in when a player leaves.

The game that I ended up playing the most was one or two of these coin pusher games. Putting the coins in the side holes seemed to have a high chance of the coin going through the "spin" slots which activated a 2-panel slot machine, and when matched, you won additional tickets on top of tickets that you earn for every coin you manage to drop off the edge. I decided to snipe some of these machines that had lots of coins hanging off of the edge already, and managed to earn a great deal of tickets doing that. Being that it was my first time even really trying the game, it was fairly entertaining. The high pay-outs of 8 tickets per coin dropped off the edge was also what kept me on the machine instead of skee-ball which barely paid out any tickets. >_>

These high-paying machines seem to frequently run out of tickets though, and I had to go find an employee at least three times to notify them that we got the end of the ticket roll, and needed them to replace the machine with a new roll of tickets to get the rest of my winnings. It makes me wonder how efficient these Dave & Busters are by using physical tickets still instead of awarding digital tickets like some other arcades do. Perhaps they still use physical tickets with the high-payouts to psychologically get customers to play more as they appear to be winning many tickets. I still find it to be a hassle having to find an employee to refill the ticket dispensers however.

As for the restaurant section, the menu had a fair selection of stuff at a fairly "average" price for restaurants. However, we had a very good waiter who provided excellent service, and the double cheeseburger I had was also pretty good as well.

I was very well satisfied with the overall experience there, and I could see birthday parties and such being held at Dave & Busters since they have both food and entertainment. I wouldn't mind going again in the near future... if we had another set of coupons to use there again, since I don't necessarily have money to spend on simply indulging myself for a few hours of entertainment and a bunch of tickets. I do need to find a good prize to redeem with the tickets though... >_> Didn't quite have enough for anything worthwhile, unfortunately.