There’s no age limit for fun
Scene75 entertainment venue opens in Edgewood
The next big entertainment venue that wants to help “save you from boredom” — in part by giving you ample opportunities to flex your wallet or purse, but also by allowing you to interact, if interactively, with your family and friends — is Scene75, which opened Friday in a former Kmart at Edgewood Towne Centre, just east of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.
At 90,000 square feet, it’s being billed as the largest entertainment center in Western Pennsylvania, according to the family-run company, which has three other locations and one on the way, in Ohio.
The Pittsburgh Scene75 offers 120 arcade games and a dozen high-quality indoor attractions for kids and adults, including gokarts, bumper cars, two-story laser tag, inflatables (including a “toddler town”), 18 holes of black light-lit mini-golf, six lanes of mini-bowling, a virtual reality experience and a 4-D interactive motion theater. The venue also has a circular “Center Bar,” three food “trucks” and party rooms and a banquet room that can be rented.
There’s no admission fee, but you pay as you play. At sales spots or kiosks around the venue, you can load a dollar value that you swipe at each game — those cost 25 cents to $3 — or attraction -— those cost $2 to $10. Prices for each attraction are specified on the website and on-site.
You can buy a “Super Pass” for $39, said to give you $54 worth of a half-dozen popular attractions: one laser tag “mission,” one gokart ride, 18 holes of black light mini-golf, one bumper car ride and one hour of play on video games (not ticket or prize games) and, in Pittsburgh, one laser maze trip.
You pay separately for food and drinks. This venue’s non-moving food “trucks” — truck-shaped facades on food court-style counters — are the Great Garrettinis Pizzeria, Just Wing It chicken and Momma T’s Tacos, interspersed with slushee dispensers.
A two-session Thursday preview for Pittsburgh media and other “influencers” was fun, but of course, the games and attractions were free. The two random 11year-olds I took with me easily burned through $100 each worth of just arcade games. But they did have a blast. One pronounced the experience “legit” but “really loud.” They didn’t want to leave.
And they enjoyed meeting fulltime YouTuber one knows, Matt3756. Matt Magnone of Crafton-Ingram says he’s been YouTubing about arcades full time for six years now. Because of the games he knows and the games he doesn’t, he pronounced this new venue to be “amazing. It’s overwhelming. It’s overwhelming in a good way.”
It is LOUD, and has lots of shooting and revving motors, and is bright/flashy, as arcades are, even without the crowds that could be as big as 5,000-plus people
on a busy Saturday.
But chief entertainment officer Jonah Sandler says that, besides the wide range of attractions, games and food and drink, what sets Scene75 apart is its target customers: “We thrive on bringing families together.”
The ringed bar is purposefully placed in the center of all the action. The attractions around the periphery have flat screens outside them so you can watch the people inside, and other screens display players’ scores, to provide both bragging rights and social media sharing ops. Scene75 wants you to come back.
Any prize points you rack up on the arcade games are recorded on your card until you decide to redeem them for the prizes that greet you at the entrance and that are displayed throughout the sprawling former Kmart — everything from autographed pro sports swag to electronics to stuffed animals and once-was-penny candy.
“You can win prizes that people actually want,” says Mr. Sandler, who adds that the company invested $10 million in this space and that this Scene75 will employ 200 people.
As noted on the employment section of the company website, “Our mission is to save communities we care about from boredom.” Certainly, it will inject some life into Edgewood Towne Centre, which straddles Edgewood and Swissvale. And there does seem to be some pent-up demand, judging from all the comments on the place’s Facebook page.
Scene75 normally is closed for private events on Mondays and Tuesdays (though it may open for some holidays and during school breaks, and can be completely rented out), and is open to the public 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.Sunday.
The Ohio Scene75s are in Dayton — along Interstate 75 — and near Cincinnati and Cleveland, with one near Columbus on the way.
The Pittsburgh one opens not long after this summer’s opening of a local outlet of the international Topgolf chain, a 65,000-square-foot driving range experience near Bridgeville that also offers food, drink, private events and other fun. Also competing to offer people a good time are places such as the Main Event in North Fayette, which previously was Latitude 360, and Dave & Buster’s in Homestead.
Learn more www.scene75.com. It’s located at 1775 S. Braddock Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15218.