Brief visit to Dave & Buster’s Niagara Falls on Friday night

On Friday night I came down with my wife to Niagara Falls (without the kids). We wanted to get some ice cream, and then we walked around for a couple of hours. Our first stop was in Dave & Buster’s on Clifton Hill. We didn’t play anything, but here are a few observations:

• The first thing my wife said was that it looked very similar to what is across the street (Great Canadian Midway)
• There are many games that I’ve seen elsewhere, but lots of them are bigger versions of what I’ve seen elsewhere (like Stacker and similar games).
• The redemption area is very nice. It’s like a small store. You can physically handle the items yourself, and decide what you want, and then take it to the “checkout”.
• The sound system is excellent on the first two floors, but sounds very hollow on the third floor (where the restaurant is).
• The second level is open and you can see down below. This is very nice
• The third floor restaurant area wasn’t impressive. It was mostly a big open area with tables and chairs. It seemed to lack something, but I’m not sure what.

One other comment… I just don’t get the swipe card system. It confused me. All of the existing arcades in the area (Great Canadian Midway, Adventure City, Skylon Tower, Great Wolf Lodge, and Americana) use tokens. You can clearly understand that X amount of dollars gets you Y amount of tokens. You can then clearly see how many tokens each game costs. With the swipe card system you get points, and then the games cost a certain number of points. Unfortunately, you buy a quantity of points that are a whole number, but the games cost a decimal amount (4.9, 8.9, etc). This means that you will virtually never be able to use up all of your points. If you have 1 token let at a different arcade, you’d be able to use it. I also wondered about the spontaneous visitor. Let’s say someone is going home today, and they have $5 or $10 CDN left they want to get rid of. It’s pretty easy to go into an arcade, get some tokens, and use them up. It’s quick and easy. Buying a card, figuring out the points, playing, and leaving points on your card doesn’t seem very appealing.

Generally, the building is very nice. It’s new, and clean. As indicated above, the sound is pretty good. The windows look small from the outside, but actually provide quite a bit of light, and give a decent view.

Here are a few pictures I took (you can click on them to view a larger version):

More painting being done on the side of the building

These are new signs they’ve put outside. I’m guessing people were thinking that the place was just the first floor

Main floor

View from second floor “balcony”

You can only take the elevator up to the third floor restaurant

The elevator makes it seem like there are 5 levels

A swipe card mechanism

A cup to carry your tickets in

View from the second floor window

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Tags: adventure city, americana, Clifton Hill, dave & buster's, great canadian midway, great wolf lodge, redemption, Skylon Tower, tokens, video games