The Works

We called Mima’s and Ed’s house “home” for a few days this summer while visiting from Canada. Aunt Merced took a day off work and we headed over to The Works in Wyomissing. The drive took about an hour, and it was definitely worth it.

The set up is good. They have the arcade, which is where we spent the majority of our time. It’s huge and has so many options. Our children tried a little bit of everything. Jack (8) mostly liked the video gaming-type options, like hunting, car racing, and fighting. Maria (7) loved the chance options, like working the claw machines, the quarter pushers, and any other try-your-luck type games. Danny (4) loved the button games. He may have pushed every button and pulled every lever in the place.

The other good thing about the Works is that mostly all the tokens (to play) and tickets (you win) are done on a card; there are very few old school tickets to keep track of. We unknowingly went on a day where tokens were 1/2 price, which was awesome. The children felt like they had tons of tokens and won a lot of tickets. When you’re done playing, you hand your card to the person behind the prize station and your tickets are displayed on a screen. As you choose your prizes, your tickets decrease, keeping track of the math for you. This was so helpful — the hardest part of any arcade is choosing the prizes! All three of them agonized over their choices.

The children also checked out “Ballocity” - a pretty standard ball pit/climbing structure section. We did not ride the go karts… this time :)

Another good thing about The Works is that it’s attached to a real restaurant, so if you end up staying too long (like we did), you have an entire menu of options, instead of the limited crappy choices found at most kid places. The hostess gives you a buzzer and when your food is ready you can take it up to the play center eating area so your bouncing-off-the-walls-children don’t even have to enter the restaurant.

We loved spending this time with Mima and Aunt Merced. The Works is a good spot, definitely worth checking out on a cold winter day or scorching summer day. Months later, our children still ask to go back!

PS- all of the prizes have passed on, gone where all cheap toys made in China go, except Danny’s blue bear, which is now one of his prized possessions!