Panther Family Laser Tag

I have a new addition for my NoVA favorites list:

Panther Family Laser Tag 

& Amusement Center

(website here - yelp reviews here)

We had my eldest son's 9th birthday party there last weekend, and it was AWESOME!  This is a very well-run business.  They have running kid's birthday parties down to a science, and we didn't have to handle any real setup or cleanup afterward.

 

We showed up with a cake we picked up at Wegmans (which was also awesome - but that's a statement of the obvious because absolutely anything that comes out of the Wegmans bakery is awesome).  They had a hostess assigned to give us her full and undivided attention.  Our hostess, Asia, greeted us, went over the sequence of events, and got us set up in one of the party rooms.  

They have Papa John's pizza delivered, and Asia took care of setting out the place settings of paper plates and napkins, served the pizza to the boys, served the drinks, put the candles in the cake, and carried the cake over to ES while leading everyone in singing happy birthday.  She cut the cake and handed out the pieces.  After it was all said and done, she cleaned it all up, too.  Totally low-stress / hassle-free for me and my wife.

Sweaty ES from running around the arena.

We liked this place better than the bouncy-place we had our younger son's birthday party because they provided unlimited drinks here.  Instead of charging us per-bottle, here they provided pitchers of lemonade, water, or pepsi products (sierra mist), and just kept bringing as much as you wanted.

We did the 3-game option (there are 1 or 2 game options).  We played two games, then broke for pizza and cake, then played a third game.  Everyone had a BLAST.  They gave us one free parent pass to play, too, so I went in to play with the boys. 

First, they bring you into a briefing room to watch a well-done and humorous safety video (no running, no lying down, no profanity, etc).  They divide the kids up into three teams - Green, Blue, and Red, and you go into the next room to suit-up.

Green Team SUIT UP!

Of course, I had to take a traditional Blunoz self portrait.

The vest you wear has sensors on the shoulders, front, and back that can get "hit" by the other team's lasers.  Each gun has an ID name on it so you can check your stats on the scoreboard after the game.

After each game, your statistics are shown on a big screen, and they also provide you individual printouts for each player that state how many shots you fired, how many hits you scored, what your accuracy percentage was, etc.

There is also a video monitor for parents to watch what's going on inside the arena.

He-shoots-he-SCOOOOOOORES!

There's a decent variety of video games and air hockey tables to play in the lobby area.

Overall, the boys had a great time, and my younger son said he wants to have his next birthday party here, too.  I look forward to that.  :-)