DCA question

[ebtbmom]

The Paradise Pier area of DCA looks like it's supposed to be themed like a carnival or fair. Are there any pay to play midway type games there? I need to mentally prepare if there are.
I don't know what it is about them, but those games enrage me. Everytime I see them I get so annoyed I don't want anything to do with them. Of course, my son always wants to play and thinks that he has a perfectly good chance of winning a prize! We usually negotiate with me paying for 2 and he uses his money to pay for others, but I hate him using his hard earned money on those dreadful, impossible to win, and usually terribly prized games.

Maybe that's what makes me so mad, you know they're ripping you off and yet they purposely attempt to lure in naive children.

I feel though that my hatred towards them is probably disporportionate to the threat that they pose. Does anyone else despise midway games this much?

 

[DangerMouse]

Yes, they have them, but no, I have never played them. I refuse to spend money on that type of thing. I'd rather just buy my kid a stuffed animal than have them try to win it at one of those games.

 

[ballarinamom]

There were one or two where it was a winner everytime. The fishing game gives the child a chance for a small medium or large plush depending on which fish you "hook"

 

[Eeee-va]

I don't think the games are quite as impossible at DL, though? (Heck, even at the State Fair this year, I played 5 games and won a prize at 1, AND got to totally break a plate as well! ) There aren't MANY games at DCA, IMO. Maybe a better strategy would be to distract the kid when you walk by them?

The games don't enrage me personally because I'm an adult and I know better than to play (at the fair I got the 5 games in a steep discount package deal so they were free). If I had a small child who wanted to play, then yes, I think I'd find them annoying!

Does DCA have obnoxious "barkers", does anyone know? I don't remember any. It's not the games themselves that tend to get on my nerves, but hearing the same person give the same noisy spiel can get a bit grating. I just try to imagine I'm in historic Coney Island with barkers trying to swindle me.

 

[DangerMouse]

I've never heard the games CM's "bark" on the pier. I don't think my kids even noticed they were there (but I always distract them by having them hurrying to the next ride).

 

[bumbershoot]

No, the barkers aren't annoying.

And if you choose your games well, you'll get a prize, a SMALL prize, each time.

You don't play with cash; you buy a card with however much money on it. Hubby and son got a $20 card.

There's the fishing game, where you're given a fishing pole with a magnet on it. A small flowing bit of water has rubber ducks floating along. The ducks have a magnet on the nose, and you need to snag the duck, then look at it. On the *bottom* of each is a dot. If the dot is one color, you get a small prize. If it's a different color, there's a bigger prize. With this game, you canNOT trade up. DS played 5 times and each time got a small prize, so he has a little bitty plush crab, lobster, duck (with an innertube around his waist), and something else (octopus?).

He and hubby also played a water shooting game. You had to play that with two or more people. I don't remember which one of them one, but one did, and so DS got a small plush of Timothy the mouse from Dumbo. You *can* trade up on that game, but when we were there they didn't have any of the bigger prizes (it was shortly after opening). The prize that you will likely see is a nice sized plush Dumbo. I so so so wanted one of those, but DS is very happy with Timothy and didn't really even notice the Dumbos, so all was OK.

The 3rd game we played was a game where you rolled a ball into holes on an incline, and each ball in a hole moves a horse along the racetrack. This one had Woody/Jessie/Bullseye themed prizes, and two had to play. We waited for quite awhile to play, because I REFUSED to have them play with someone else, even though the more players, the bigger the prize. DS was happy with the little prize he got, a tiny and useless pillow with Woody on it, so again, that's fine.


The final game, that we did NOT play, was a hit things with a ball game, and I'd read that it was very hard. In addition, in my opinion, the prizes were hideous, so it was no skin off our noses to not play.

Each game has a different price, so pay attention to that before you play!!!


I will NOT play midway games at carnivals, but at DCA it was fine. If you have kids who will get annoyed at small silly prizes you might want to pass it by. If someone plays, figure out how much it will cost to, say, trade up to a bigger prize, if a bigger prize is what they want. We must have spent a solid 20 minutes walking back and forth, checking out the games, prizes, and prices for the games, before settling to the first game. None of the barkers minded at all. They are Disney CMs, they haven't provided the prizes and want to give out as few as possible...it's OK, as long as you are ultimately OK with basically plunking down x dollars for some small plushes.

 

[Grim_Grinning_Girl]

I think they're easy to avoid, there's other routes you can go. Plus that area is so busy with lots of stuff, stores, people, colors, they do blend in very well and are sometimes easy to miss - maybe your kids won't even notice them . I sometimes forget they're there. During the Halloween Trick or Treat party all those games were free to play, was the only time I wanted to try them out.

 

[rmom]

Thankfully, I can tell my girls that it is junk and they can but something nicer in the store without having a breakdown. So they don't annoy us. Some times we'll watch other play and the girls will see that they don't win anything or it is not something they want. At disney it is easy because there is always something better around the cornor!

Good luck. I know some kids (& adults) really like these games.

 

[pixiewings71]

yes, it's a Midway so they have Midway Games. no, the CM's do not do any type of barking to get players, they just wait for people to approach and start the games. the fishing game always has a winner, great for people who want/need to win all the time. you buy a card to play, you load it with $$ and off you go, easy peasy. There are 4 games on the Midway, and then there's a basketball game over by the Orange Stinger, all of these are easily avoidable by not walking close to them. The Midway area is full of face painting booths near the games so you should be able to pass right by if you stay on the sidewalk and don't venture onto the boardwalk area. Also, if you play at the right time your almost guaranteed a win, most of the CM's only require 2 players, so you play against your son and one of you wins.

 

[S. S. Columbia]

Last April, Darkbeer wrote about the Games of the Boardwalk:

"First look at the new version of Games at the Boardwalk"
http://micechat.com/forums/blogs/in...rsion-games-boardwalk-some-quick-updates.html

HTH

 

[bumbershoot]

I'm not sure if you saw my post... Just wanted to specifically reply to the following:

my son always wants to play and thinks that he has a perfectly good chance of winning a prize! We usually negotiate with me paying for 2 and he uses his money to pay for others, but I hate him using his hard earned money on those dreadful, impossible to win, and usually terribly prized games.

Maybe that's what makes me so mad, you know they're ripping you off and yet they purposely attempt to lure in naive children.

The DCA games are nowhere near that bad. Don't worry. The fishing game especially is really cute, and at least my 5 year old REALLY enjoyed it, and loves his plush lobster. But that visit was the only time we've ever gone there...they aren't difficult to pass by. And really, there's no reason to pass that way at all, if you have littles. Once you're done with TSMM, unless someone wants to ride Maliboomer or the FunWheel or get a fake tattoo, or maybe go the ATM over there, you can easily enough just turn back around and go the long way to Mulholland Madness.

 

[ebtbmom]

I guess I should just relax about them, you know everyone has their pet peeves! I usually take plenty of spending money on vacation so we can experience everything and buy lots of stuff. We are not big shoppers at all at home, so I don't feel to bad about spending liberally on vacation!

Hey, I work an entire extra job just to pay for my vacations so I should enjoy it right? DH says I worry way to much about spending money!! I tend to agonize over each and every dollar.

 

[aprincess@mail.com]

No they dont "bark" and I havent been by the games in quite awhile and I was a season pass holder last year. lol...
Have a great time and maybe you can let your son know in advance that you are only willing to spend a certain amount of $ on the games?
Have a great time!

 

[Quilter007]

You are guaranteed to "win" a prize at the fishing game. The fishing poles have magnets. Each fish has metal in the nose. Depending on the color on the bottom of the fish, depends on the size of the prize. Obviously, most of the fish are marked for small prizes, less for medium and only a few for large. Younger DS won a medium prize today -- a 18 inch tall stuffed Mickey -- one turn. He's very happy (6). Older DS won 2 small prizes -- a stuffed duck and stuffed turtle (looks kind of like crush but blue) about 5 - 6 inches -- also happy. DH played some other game & lost. Total cost for 4 games was $10. Younger DS was going to get his face painted but chickened out, so we decided to spend the money on the carnival games instead. It's something we've never done before in all our trips here. Then we had a long discussion about why it isn't a good idea to try to win the guitar at the basketball hoop game by the boat play area & we taught the very bored CMs there one of my very favorite expressions as they were helping us teach the kids that it was a bad idea for them to try to win the guitar "The lottery is tax on people who are bad at math." Yes, I HAVE said that to people as they are buying lottery tickets at the 7-11....I just have that special clueless talent!

 

[3TinksAndAnEeyore]

"The lottery is tax on people who are bad at math."

My DH also loves that expression and it cracks me up every time!