Asu Su／Serena Zheng／Eve Chan
The chain development of family entertainment center has quite prevailed. Companies, among them a large proportion of international brand, are conducting cross-region operations to increase market share in the amusement industry. This time, let’s go to Orlando, a travel destination to meet Main Even Orlando. Orlando is a well-known small city at the heart of Florida. It receives as high as 25 million tourists annually with only an urban population of 180,000. There are many famous entertainment centers here, including Disneyland, Universal Studios, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Kennedy Space Center and Sea World.

Main Even Orlando
Address: 9101 International DR., Suite 1032 Orlando, FL 32819, USA
Opening hours:
Monday, Friday and Saturday: 9:00 - 2:00 (a.m.)
Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday: 9:00 - 24:00
Business Scope: bowling (20 bowling lanes), arcade games, VR games, rope course, billiards and dining services.
Area: about 1000 sq.m
Number of operating machines: about 100 sets (20% for sports machines, 8% for gift machines, 10% for shooting machines, 20% for rides, 25% for redemption machines, 5% for fishing machines, 12% for VR machines)

Founded in 1998, Dallas-based Main Event Entertainment is a subsidiary of Ardent Leisure Group, an Australian company of leisure and entertainment. Main Event Entertainment is one of the largest indoor FEC operators in the southwestern United States. As a fast-growing FEC chain brand, the company currently operates more than 40 FECs across 17 states in the USA, providing dining services and facilities like bars and focusing on arcade games, VR, bowling, laser tag, rope course and mini golf. Located at Pointe Orlando on International, the Main Even Orlando covers an area of about 1,000 sq.m. The bar area is separated from that of entertainment which are further divided into 6 parts, namely, arcade games, interactive VR games, rope course, bowling, birthday party area and dining area for light foods. For this market research, we mainly checked out the game & entertainment area to get a better look at the popular equipment and product layouts in America. By doing this, we will be able to expand our horizon and come up with new ideas about how to increase traffic at international attractions.

The game area is on the left side of the center while the dining bar is on the right. We visited the center at 11:00 a.m. on Friday morning. There were few people in the game area, in contrary to the dining area being surrounded with quite some tourists. They ordered mostly beverages and light meals which were the main sources of revenue for the attraction in the morning. Setting foot in the game zone, I felt like there was a mysterious film scene with dazzling lights in front of me. The high-tech VR game Beat Saber is arranged at the center, showing visitors the latest trends in games and venue features. Redemption machines and coin pushers are set at the sides. The models of high-revenue machines are largely the same as those in the domestic market. However, redemption machines at Main Even Orlando all appear to be very enormous with a height of 2 to 2.5 meters. They are put side by side in the shape of a giant fish, giving a strong visual impact. The most common redemption machines in the attraction are reels and turn plates featuring easy operation and getting a quick prize. Simple operations like moving the joystick around and pressing the button can improve the players’ experience while quick way to get a prize can help fuel consumption for meeting customers’ expectation of getting prizes as soon as possible and increasing game immersion. The coin pusher at the attraction is a 6-player Wizard of Oz from Elaut, the most popular machine of its kind in America sold at a price of more than 300,000 RMB (about 43 thousand USD) per set. Players can redeem cards and poker chips for prizes. You can exchange cards for big awards if all of them are collected.

Traditionally, there are many figures of American superheroes and IPs from comic books and films involved in the main category of simulators whether for racing or shooting games, such as Batman, Super Mario, Jurassic, Alien, The Terminator, The Walking Dead, Ghost Busters, Despicable Me, Sonic The Hedgehog and Raving Rabbids. There is no doubt that IPs are the best drive to improving players’ immersive experience for their attractiveness and ability to easily take us back to the scene of comic books or films.

In terms of sports equipment, a luxurious basketball machine with flashing lights and the 350 sq.m bowling alley are telling visitors that basketball and bowling are the shiny protagonists. You can play basketball with 8 points per round and the bowling alley is 36 USD per hour, limited to 5 people. It is cool entertainment for adventurous Americans to walk on high ropes attached to a zip line. Rope course for children covers an area of about 40 sq.m which is specially designed with a height of about 6 meters and the charge is 9 USD per person.

Most of the machines here are manufactured by famous companies such as Namco, Sega, ICE, RAW Thrills, Motogp, Nintendo & Namco, Ellaut, Adrenaline, Uniana, Bay Tek, LAI Games, Specular and Triotech, but you can also find a 4-player Pirate’s Hook from Guangdong UNIS Technology Co., Ltd. Main Even Orlando introduced the biggest Pac Man in the world and state-of-the-art VR games that cover an area of 200 sq.m are its special machines. There are some separate rooms in the birthday party zone. Tourists can have fun in the arcade games area or the bowling area before or after the party. You can have meals, drinks and fun here at Main Even Orlando, which shows the operational advantages of multiple business forms under one roof.
※The article is published in the GTI Magazine Issue No. 190 in September 2020