Gattitown

Since apparently August is monsoon season this year, we decided to try out some indoor play at Gattitown. It is located in Lexington off of Nicholasville Road. It is a bit different from other indoor kid play areas in that the admission price ($7.99 plus $0.97 for a drink for adults, and the price goes down based on age) includes admission and buffet. You can see the price breakdown here. It is free for kids 2 and under. That price includes an all-you-care-to-eat buffet of pizza, pasta, salad bar and dessert. There is also a large arcade area with games, some small rides, and a bouncy house.

There is a booth to buy your credits to play the games as you walk into the arcade. The credits are loaded on a card and the tickets you win are also on the card, so you don't have to carry around tons of tickets or tokens. It is a kind of wonky system of credits per dollar. It is 400 credits per $1. But, the games are sometimes a strange amount of credits. Like, some of them are 140 credits or 160 credits. It says on the sign that the lowest priced games is 40 credits, but I didn't see that game when we were there. While, the larger rides (the carousel, bumper cars, a ride that goes up and down in the air) were 800 credits each, or $2. So, if you have a kid that likes to do these bigger rides, it could get very expensive very fast. They do have the package that for $15, you can do unlimited rides and play unlimited games for one hour (but do not get tickets for the games). But, again if you have multiple kids, this could get really pricey since you also have to pay the buffet price to get in. There is a small bouncy house that is free to jump in. My son seems to hate bouncy houses, so we didn't play in it, but it could get fairly crowded in there on a weekend.

The arcade area has a pretty good variety of games, so I think you could find things for most ages. My 2 year old son found some ball throwing games and the popcorn catching game to be fun. The prices for most of the games was between between 100 credits ($0.25) and 400 credits ($1.00) with the video games being more expensive. There were also a bunch of toddler aged riding toys (like what you used to see outside a grocery store) that my son loved playing on. He rode the helicopter one about a million times. It was around 140 credits, so that's around $0.35 a ride.

The lighting in the arcade area was turned down a bit, which made the games and rides a bit more intense. There are flashing lights and noises from the games, so it can be pretty overwhelming for younger kiddos or kids with sensory sensitivities. I felt pretty exhausted after being there for an hour or so.

While we were there, the games all worked well and there were a lot of employees cleaning the machines and walking around. It was pretty empty on a weekday during the school season, but it is always nice to see that they have employees around to help or otherwise keep order. It isn't the biggest area, so I bet that when it is busy it can get pretty rowdy.

The bathrooms were clean but there was only one changing station, so you may have to wait a bit when it is crowded. And, there are lockers close to the restrooms that you can use for free, which is super nice.

We found the buffet to be pretty good, especially for a kids indoor play area. There were a bunch of different pizzas, pizza rolls, dessert pizzas, a few different pasta noodles and sauces, and a pretty large salad bar with puddings. Everything seemed fresh and well stocked. My son is a very picky eater and we were able to find some things for him here, so that rocked. There are a few different rooms that you can eat in, including a diner type room, a room with a bunch of huge televisions and (our favorite) a kids room with a big screen showing a movie. My son loved watching a movie in there while eating.

Overall, we had a pretty good time playing here. There wasn't a ton of stuff for my 2 year old to do, but he kept busy just walking around and riding the helicopter. I would guess that kids over 3 would have a great time though. Or, maybe just kids that like bouncy houses. It did end up being pretty pricey for a morning out. For two adults and a toddler playing games (but not doing any bigger rides) we spent around $35 and were there for about 2 hours. So, it was okay for a special day, but way too pricey for an everyday thing.