How many times have you arrived at your vacation destination only to find it rains, rains and rains some more? I know it’s happened to me more than once. What can you do for vacation fun in the rain? Well, if you are vacationing in or near the Wisconsin Dells area, you can do quite a bit, actually.
Knuckleheads is a brand new all-in-one family entertainment center where every activity is completely indoors. I know, I know, I can hear you now. What can they possibly have indoors that we would want to do?” Well, they have a whopping twelve indoor activities featuring a 3D theater, an amusement park, an arcade, bowling, go carts and more.
Hungry? No problem, just a short walk down the hall is Buffalo Pete’s Grille. You don’t even have to leave the building. My mother and sister in law ate here and tell us that the pricing is rather reasonable.
A Little More Details on the Activities offered here
Bowling
We had originally gone here to utilize the bowling alley. While I’m not a great bowler (what an understatement that was!) my husband enjoys it and is rather good. We walked in and were amazed at this place. There’s lanes on either side of the alley complete with lines of big-screen TVs over the lanes. Between each of these TVs is a monitor to show your bowling progress.
The computerized system is a bit hard to figure out how to work, and you might need to ask one of the employees for help, as we did. We quickly got our names and information entered into the system and wondered why the employee didn’t put up the bumpers for us. We soon found out why they hadn’t.
Gideon, my four year old son was up first. The bumpers rose up on their own for his frame. Once my frame came around they had disappeared once again. (I knew I should have checked that I needed bumpers, too!) I proceeded to throw almost exclusively gutter balls for most of the game (my specialty!)
While we waited for our frames to come, we lounged around in the comfy sofa. (Yes, I said sofa) provided for each lane.
The large picture window separating the bowling alley from the go cart tracks was too much of a distraction for my son who lost all interest in bowling about halfway through the game. He still played his frames, but he wanted to explore!
For those who like a drink or munchies while bowling, you’ll be rather disappointed. The ubiquitous vending machines placed at other bowling alleys are absent here. Instead you have the option of splurging a bit on a pizza, if that’s your thing. The sodas are small and at $1.99 each they are exorbitant to say the least. Both myself and another in our party noted the sodas tasted watered down as well. A beer will run you more than $3 as well. For five of us to bowl and have three shoe rentals it ran $30 for one game. Steeper than our usual bowling game, but it was to be expected in a place like this.
Go Carts
The go carts border the bowling alley and are off to the side of the arcade room. There appears to be no minimum age limit or height to ride, so long as the children ride with an adult. The cars with children in them are marked with a sticker on the back, so that people behind you can use caution when driving near a cart with a child.
If you are looking to ride these, be prepared for a long wait. They only allow six cars on the track at a time, presumably for safety and to avoid overcrowding since the track is a bit small. The night that we went was a relatively quiet night and not during tourist season. There was quite a lengthy line even then.
Cost to ride the go carts: $6.00
Amusement Park
The amusement park is smaller than most, but provides a nice little selection of rides for all ages. There’s a family roller coaster, bumper cars and some small rides for the younger kids.
Cost of amusement park rides: $3.00
3D Theater
The 3D theater runs movies for kids of all ages to view daily. These aren’t the blockbuster sort of movies from what I’ve seen, but they do offer the 3D experience. We didn’t take in the movies due to time and money restrictions.
Cost to view a movie: $3.00
Arcade Area
The arcade area is housed in the middle of the building among the amusement park rides. They have classic arcade games that take tokens (comparable to 50 cents cash.) They also have miniature bowling for the children that want to bowl on a kid-sized alley. Beware, though, even kid’s sized, the balls are heavy.
The arcade area has a pretty basic supply of prizes for your won tickets. Gideon walked out with a 4-wheeler car and two plastic dinosaurs for our day of games.
The Children’s Playground
Off to the side near the go carts is a children’s play area. This seems to be available for some rather older kids as well as young children. This, also is the best deal in the building. For $3.00 admission into it you can stay there as long as you want until they close at 11PM. Gideon decided this was his choice and he played and played.
This is a 4-level play area with balls and air guns that shoot foam balls at the kids. A blast for all. No need to worry about your child getting lost in it. When I expressed concerns over this the girl operating it told me she would go find him if needed.
Cost for unlimited use of the playground: $3.00
Discount Rides
At 10PM the rides are discounted to $2.00 for the usual $3.00 for the last hour of business. However, the go carts are not included in this discount.
Payment
No money is exchanged here with the exceptions of the bowling alley and the restaurant. Instead tokens for arcade games are given through machines and the rides and the play area take these cards. The cards are received through a machine. You can either get a new card, or load cash onto one that you have from home. When you get to a ride that you want to go on, you scan the bar code on the card and that amount is deducted from your balance.
The Bottom Line
This is a fun family oriented place, no doubt about it, but be prepared to spend some big bucks to do it!
