123 Tickets

When we were at Great Wolf Lodge for a long birthday weekend to celebrate with my 7 year old daughter E, there was a $20 arcade card included with our room. We had to spend it and decided to go to the arcade during the first night there. It was eye opening and not in a good way.

When we got there, my 5 year old C was very excited. He wanted to play a bunch of those skill-based claw games. Within a few swipes, we were down to almost half of the $20 we started with. Each swipe was $1 to $2 and I was trying to give them some extra evidence on why we should find rides or a video game to play so we could have some more fun. I didn’t want to sway them too hard and they still chose the skill-based games.

C hit a big ticket win with a ball rolling game where the the goal was not to get it into an impossible hole at the end of the ramp. You had to roll the ball skillfully to the middle of the ramp and some stoppers will pop up to determine what your winnings are. C won 81 ticket in total and the majority was from that game.

E won a few tickets here and there from various games. There was a hammer game where it was skill-based as well, so I tried to help out and I hit the target way too hard. Those skill-based games are tricky, even for adults! A few tickets spit out still. E won a total of 42 tickets.

One of the last games E and C wanted to play was a Pokemon game. It was really complex to explain to them since there was one button press to move up and when you let go, this spear was frozen there. Then there was another button press to move left or right and when you let go. the spear was frozen there. The spear would then move forward and poke a ballon that corresponded to a prize that would fall for you to collect. All of this was a lot to explain to an excited 7 year old mesmerized with the lights and sounds of a Pokemon game and the prizes. E ended up not really understanding and pressing the buttons really quickly in succession and the game was over in 1 second. That was a fast $2 dollar game.

All of the games lasted maybe 15 minutes and it was over. $20 went fast and it felt more gimmicky that every swipe to play a game was expensive. Even the tickets didn’t translate to anything decent in the prize room, so even though my kids wanted to play more, we were done. Despite my own feelings, I wanted to make the most out of the situation. I asked the kids questions about what prizes they qualified for given their ticket count. It wasn’t much and many of the prizes they were excited about - huge stuffies, electronics, and complex toys - required thousands of tickets.

My kids were regulated to a small wall and they were quickly doused with reality. We tried to make the most out of the situation (as I like to try and do), so we did some greater than/less than conversations about the ticket count. C wanted to use the tickets on what he wanted, but E wanted some help to get what she wanted. I had them try to talk it out and suggested that they combine tickets, especially since it was E’s birthday. It would help them maximize their outcomes in picking each prize.

C ended up agreeing to pool the tickets together. I got them to do some math and add up the number of tickets they had after counting them all. Eventually they figured it out with some help and we landed at 123 of all numbers. It’s E’s birthday after all and counting up is what we were doing! C ended up getting a smaller prize, which is what he wanted anyways - a bouncing ball (of course!). E got to get a sparkly blue bracelet with the rest of the tickets. I made them exchange the tickets at the desk by themselves and they successfully did that…after the lady told us we had to load the tickets onto another card. So we did that and then they successfully got their prizes. $20 for a small bouncy ball and a sparkly blue bracelet…and some fun memories jam packed into about 15 minutes.