Rinkside Sports & Family Entertainment Center

My daughter skates at Rinkside and I love the staff. They couldn’t be more staff couldn’t be friendly or more helpful. They do not stand there with a stop-​watch and charge you if you go 1 minute over your ice time (unlike other rinks!) The ice is well maintained and the heaters in the stands work! It’s so much better than most of the other ice rinks we go to. My only complaint is the obnoxious little hockey players who refuse to stand away from the door so the figure skaters can get off the ice before they go on.

This review is for the newly relaunched «Tilt Studio» at Rinkside Sports.
When I saw the new signs I was all wound up, excited, and ready to spend some quarters.
Imagine my disappointment when «Tilt Studio» apparently has no Pinball Games! I was looking forward to playing the latest games from Stern and Jersey Jack…
Bummer.
Looks like a good electronic game arcade otherwise.

We had my son’s 8 year old birthday party there today. The experience was great. Tina, our party assistant, was fantastic. She lead The kids through games and activities. She was very helpful and accommodating. The party included laser tag, car racing and glow golf. The after pizza and cupcakes the kids all got game cards to play a few games. The party concluded with a hoodie bag for each kid. All of the kids had a blast and it was a pleasure to be able to sit back and enjoy myself watching the kids so happy.

Being a huge fan of arcades I have to say that this place in particular is, «nothing you’d ever want from an arcade, and even less.» First off, it’s in the huge Gurnee outlet mall, so you know the business model isn’t coming from the heart. The prices are incredible outrageous per play (even with their «membership» or whatever), and I suspect it is because of the game selection itself. This place seems to specialize in having the most modern and visually over-​stimulating games on the planet. It’s like walking into a rave at a high school gym or some abandoned warehouse.
I suppose at the end of the day, these types of things are expected, after all, it only exist to be a cash grab from people who i’d consider less than casual gamers. Mostly just parents of children who like to be over-​stimulated by visual garbage.
My biggest complaint is the DDR machine. The first time I went here I figured I should examine my favorite game. After all, this place is relatively close to my house and I needed a new stomping ground (pun-​intended). As expected, the pad didn’t work. And not just «work poorly», there was zero response.
An employee was observing my attempt, and upon failing after 20 seconds he said, «it’s a hard game.» I replied, «no, your pad doesn’t work.» He laughed.
Regardless of the fact that he doesn’t know my history with this game, his laughter was still pretty damn offensive, doubly so considering his piece of shit game ACTUALLY DIDN’T WORK.
Foolishly assuming I could score a good deal on this cabinet (hopes of $ 500.00) or less, and repair it myself when it went on sale around the holidays, I called them up and informed them that their price tag of $ 1,500 was borderline criminal and explained why. The price was firm, and so was my thumb grip on the «end call» button on my phone.
Does it feel good to only exist as a mechanism of taking people’s money on the assumption that they have never seen these games and can’t actually tell if they are just plain terrible at gaming, or that you are intentionally scamming them by having broken machines?

Bought a groupon deal for 4 people. I’ll never do that again. I hate complaining due to the fact that it was a groupon, but 55 bucks is still 55 bucks and it was definitely not worth it.
The unlimited 2 hours of game play are for the machines that light green only, and there aren’t that many of them. The ones they do have are extremely dated or broken. You end up spending more than expected having to put more money/​points on each card. The claw games are ridiculously expensive, and with the items in them being so heavy, your chances of winning are very slim.
The food area was ridiculously dirty. We asked for something to clean off a table, so we could sit and eat. They handed us a bunch of dry napkins. We told them there was dried soda and food all over the table, napkins wouldn’t do any good. Had to wait for them to come clean it and spray it down. All of the tables were like this. The floors were just as dirty. There is a small section of booths near the ice rink, but it smelled very bad in there, like sewage. The large pizza we got was served on a piece of cardboard that was too small. The thought of setting it down on the table that was filthy made you want to cringe, as they only wiped the table down with a wet rag that was probably filthy. They only gave us 2 plates as well, and acted annoyed when we asked for 2 more. It wasn’t the best pizza either. I would even go as far as saying that Chuck E Cheese’s pizza is better tasting. The 4 cups they give for the pitcher of soda are merely just the larger sized Dixie cups, small and flimsy.
The mini golf was ok. Nothing too exciting. The kids likes it.
We couldn’t do the ice skating that was part of our groupon deal, as they had hockey games going on. They said we could get a voucher to use in the future.
The laser tag is a joke.
Save your money guys. Go elsewhere.

Ice skating lessons are a joke. Nobody to help first timers. Ended up with skates too big for my feet and by the time someone even looked at me the class was beyond me. Waste of money and time. Go somewhere else. The customer service is the worst I’ve ever had. Feels like a bowling alley. Here are your shoes, there’s the ice.

A nice place to take a detour through however most of the games are very out of date, you’d think with the money this place brings in they’d revitalize It a little, the only reason for 2 stars instead of one is because my 3 year old actually likes it (only the broken games though which are quite a bit).
All in all not an ideal gamers hangout!

This place has horrible service. It is run by teenage kids. We showed up at 415 to play laser tag. We reserved a time for 5:30 for our group of 14. We get in line and told that they don’t reserve times for groups. Then we finally get into play and the equipment doesn’t function. I would not recommend this place for anything on the laser tag side. The first manager told me there was nothing she could do and handed me a business card. One employee told us ro stop getting upset with him because he is a teenager an he can’t fix anything. While leaving the establishment there were people smoking pot. Also a male employee was cleaning the girls room wigh young girls going to t he bathroom still. I really think it deserves NO stars!

This place is pretty cool. Games for all ages (even is big kids) the Black light golf just made my daughters day, the laser tag was good family fun that my husband mostly enjoyed, and the ice hockey was my favorite. I enjoy the game very much, and for us to find this place that has something for all of us is just awesome. Looking forward to coming back. :D

This place is the worst excuse for an arcade ever! Do not waste a single $ here! Most of the games don’t work, all of the games have for sale signs on them, and alot of the games take around 7 credits to play. Thoroughly disappointed and I will not step foot in here again.

Decent place to waste an hour and a few bucks. Between the games and the high ceilings and maybe music playing (?) it is pretty loud in there. I had to lean over to hear what my three year old was saying. Some of the games are kind of run down and don’t work well. Lots of selection. The bowling game is really neat. Prizes are as expected. It runs on swipe cards which is nice — no gross tokens or quarters to lug around.

I’m strictly commenting on the rink portion… Ice conditions are about the worst in the area, but they have drop in hockey and ice time is ice time no matter what usually.
Drop in hockey, you better call ahead if you expect to get in, not that it lists anywhere on their website, other than «you better get here early». So we got there an hour ahead of time, only to find out it was full because you can call ahead and always have been able to, not that I was ever told that when I inquired a month earlier about it while I was there or on the site (glad I had the almost hour round trip for that). Then only to let them break the rules to allow 12 year olds to play because they «were on the list» but they couldn’t go over that strict number of 20… I guess it was fine because half the kids were clearly under 14 and lying at that point so they wouldn’t have to make any other exceptions.
I’ve heard from others it’s poorly managed, I found out myself that is indeed correct.

The only good thing about this place was that the golf course was easy enough for the 5 year old I took. Aside from that it took forever to get help from the many employees we saw walking around. We tried to get ice cream from the vending machine and it broke after the first ice cream was dispensed. After finally getting an employee to help us he had no idea how the machine worked! I asked if there was a manager to speak with and he said one was in a meeting and he didn’t know where the other one was. I still don’t understand why he had the machine open but couldn’t hand us the ice cream we wanted and take our money.
In addition there were no directions on how the game cards worked and no explanation on why some games took tokens, which had to be purchased from the card that had to be purchased, & some took the card. The game we played only gave us 1 ticket for one child and none for the other!
On top of all that the whole place was sticky. We will not be going back there.

It’s what you expect… nothing more and nothing less. the prices are decent, and its a safe bet for friends. you know, something for everyone.

Went here for the mini golf, but also played in the arcade. The staff here was great, super-​friendly and helpful. The mini golf was good, but small. Some holes were only a few feet long. The arcade had a lot of machines that weren’t working. So, the place was okay, but could be improved.

My kids really like this place. They have good value deals that include the mini golf and/​or laser tag with a pizza and pithcer of pop. There were some arcade games that didn’t function right, but they had someone to fix the problem and give back your token. The laser tag and mini golf were good, and the kids enjoyed that alot. The pizza was pretty good too. Overall a good place to take the kids.

Went here to get the dust off the hockey skates. Public skating started at 1pm after all of the hockey leagues ended on this fine Sunday morning. Public skating is from 1pm-2:30pm and since I would rather be an hour early than a minute late, I went early only to find a long line already waiting.
We waited almost 30 minutes just to get in! There is one check-​in desk with a high school kid taking his sweet time. We all noticed him keep peaking out at how long the line was…
Here’s a hint to those of you who go to places like this: «Know how many people you have, their ages, and fricken shoe sizes!!» It just helps those of us in line that know these crucial tidbits.
Considering that public skating is only an hour and a half, sitting in line for 30 minutes just isn’t right. And this is considering that I was only 20 people back in the line. I felt sorry for the young kids that were near the back of the line.
As for the skating, it was fun but my feet are killing me. I guess my high school hockey skates just aren’t so ergonomic anymore. My ankles were fine, but the skates just didn’t cut it. I should have rented the $ 5 hockey skates as they were in great condition and truly looked comfortable.
Though it was crowded, the ice was in great shape and everyone was in good spirits. There were no obnoxious fast skaters plowing people down.
The three stars is due only to the slow and unorganized method of allowing people to check in. Otherwise, this is a great place to skate.

Nice arcade. We visited on a Sunday, when they opened about an hour earlier than the rest of the mall. It’s a large facility, and has laser tag, ice skating, and other stuff, but we mostly came just to play some air hockey and skee-​ball until the mall opened. It’s not the cheapest arcade, but also not the most expensive.
Equipment maintenance is a challenge at any arcade, and it was clear that a lot of the games were in need of some attention. Skee-​ball games that don’t register the holes when a ball passes, one where the coin mechanism was clearly fouled and ate a token, a bowling game where the mechanism couldn’t reset the pins, video games with dim, dead, or dying displays, all the usual issues you find at cheap arcades. However, it is a large facility, and there are lots of things that work fine, or work well enough. We found fun stuff to do, we didn’t stay a real long time, and we had fun.

This is a haul for us, but when other rinks don’t have open skate, this place has it nearly all day. I don’t skate so it’s just my daughter-​price isn’t a problem-​and the great thing is I can leave her there and run to Jockey to buy panties!
Remember, on school holidays they will be packed with a line out the door. If you have an Entertainment book, they have a coupon in there.
We don’t do the arcade.

Nice quality ice rink, they have hockey leagues and free skate times, too. Pretty expensive, especially if you’re taking a bunch of kids. A once-​in-​a-​while outing. Also have a fun arcade, but again, not cheap.