The arcade ended up being the perfect way to pass the time during the rainy storm. They have air hockey and a great variety of games, so there was plenty to keep us entertained. We even cashed in our tickets and picked out some fun prizes! read more

Casino Arcade - Front - Arcades Near Me - Santa Cruz, California

See all

My kids all had a blast from 15, 13 and 9 years old. $40 lasted us about a solid hour. That was $20 on 2 cards. We even got ice cream inside at a little shop. Location is excellent, tons of games to pick from. I have to mention within that hour we stopped to get ice cream. A nice start to the day at the boardwalk. Pretty busy for a Saturday but not overwhelmingly pack. The atm machines inside didn't work. It kept giving me an error code but luckily I didn't need cash you're able to purchase tickets from the kiosk. Overall a cool experience and must see when coming to the boardwalk. Even if you just browse and check it out it's worth the visit. I enjoyed a round of air hockey was able to purchase a margarita while the kids played. Good times for sure. read more

See all

Not recommended for small children or toddlers! We spent a bunch of money on games for our 2 kids, and only got 54 points! A 4 and a 6 year old being bad at getting points is not the problem. The problem is that the prizes at this place start at 30 points, for which there are only 2 bad options (a finger trap and a spinner). The next prize point being 100 points! My 4 year old son left in tears after not having enough points to earn anything he could actually play with or enjoy! The managements of this place needs to LISTEN and begin offering prize options worth 10, 15, and 25, such as small candies or stickers--especially when some games are worth up to $5 per play, or $10 for 2 children! It is HEARTBREAKING for a small child to play and play and not be able to earn even a tiny prize. Shame on you management! read more

This is a koo spot to hit while ur at the boardwalk. Lots of arcades and games. Theres employees walking around servicing the claw machines. The craziest thing happened to us tho. When we walked In there was two females that saw me going to the machine to purchase a game card. She asked me if I wanted her play card and said it only had like 4 bucks. That card it self cost like 2 or 3 bucks to get one then you have to load it. Her friend said "here you go could have mine too" I was thankful. I checked the balance on one and that card had 87 bucks!!! I was like WTF? I checked the other card and it had 80 bucks. That was a blessing frfr that was crazy!! Maybe they thought I was homeless or something and felt bad for me lol nonetheless bless those two ladies. We used one card for like and hour we legit couldn't figure out how to spend the whole thing. Finally we were done with one card and were tired to use up the other card. We did leave 50 bucks on one card for next time when we stop by. Thank you soooo much to those two ladies they made our whole experience 10 times better and my daughter loved it!!! Check this place out its pretty koo my only negative thing I would say is that it gets very very very crowded and it's hard to get help when something breaks down. read more

Funny how they called it a casino, but there are no actual casino machines haha. Anyways, this is basically an arcade that is inside Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. They have plentiful of good games to play like those arcade and claw machines. Prices of each machines are much reasonable here compared to other arcade areas like Round3. It could be the quality of those machines, but they don't seem bad tbh. My favorite one is usually the one that has basketball hoops. To play the games, you need a Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk card. You can actually select amount of money you want to insert rather than choosing $20 option for example. If you win, you earn electronic tickets. So they don't come out from the machine. They also have a few food vendors inside if you're hungry. They have like prizes, but are very pricey. read more

The arcade is large with lots of screen-based games but also ones where there is more physical interaction which we like for the kids. It's open longer hours than the boardwalk and a good place to burn some time if it starts raining or is too sunny. My kids loved skeeball, the nerf shooting game, and fruit ninjas. Air hockey was also fun but my son was so terrible a timer turned on after some time forcing us to finish. The coin-pusher games seemed to be a huge favorite. There were people always sitting at the games hitting the button repeatedly, for some reason they looked bored even if they hit the "jackpot" and a ton of coins fell down. The ticket reward system seemed a bit arbitrary and they digitally appear on your card, the only way to check how many tickets you have is at the scanner in the gift shop. Maybe I did something wrong but I could not figure out how to load more money onto an existing card, we ended up with 3 cards and it was a mess trying to get all the tickets from these cards traded in for prizes. read more

See all

Big variety of machines, but one of the modified old ones with about 20 old games is overpowered. Machines are well maintained, good layout and ambiance. Definitely one of the most impressive arcades I have been to. read more

Brings back memories - and it's was pleasant to see my kids so happy as it was my younger sons first time inside an actual arcade like when I had them growing up. We spent 2 hours and only spent $70 with mini golf and arcades. On our second day coming here when we had issues with one of their machines, we asked for help after asking multiple people. The young person who came to help us was extremely helpful and kind and made my kids very happy. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find this great person to help as the others said they would help and never returned. read more

Stingy on the tickets. Games are fun, but don't go in expecting to win any fabulous prizes!

The boardwalk is the quintessential way to spend a summer afternoon in California. Apparently, the Santa Cruz boardwalk was known as the Coney Island of the West. It was created as a means to bring increased economic activity to the city. We showed up on a Sunday afternoon looking for something to do. It was far too hot for the beach and we weren't interested in paying for $8 rides. After grabbing some Italian ice, we decided we wanted to get out of the sun and found ourselves at the arcade!! I hadn't stepped foot in an arcade in ages, but it was charming to see the mix of old and new games in one place. There were many classics I recognized like skeeball, and the ones where you drop a coin into a slot to push a pile of other coins over a ledge. Here, you can load a game card for as little as $20 which was just enough for us to keep us entertained for the next hour. Although the prize selection was limited, I was just happy to have been able to have a little fun with my bf. Whether you're with friends, little ones, or your signifiant other, the arcade is a great way to cool off from the CA heat in Santa Cruz!! read more

Good selection of ticket and non-ticket games as well as old and new games. There were quite a few games that were out of order on a busy Saturday. read more

Coming here brought back some awesome memories. There are several games new and old. There were claw games , 1st person shooter games, coin drop games. Just endless fun. They have a few snack bars , and there are restrooms. There are little rooms that seem hidden and it just goes on and on. I love that there is laser tag too. You can redeem your points for prizes. $20 on a card for games and $20 for snacks and it's a fun date night for sure. read more

Very rude staff. Supervisor was one of the most rude and arrogant people I have ever met. I will not be returning. Very disgusted by their service. The supervisor also refused to give me his name. I hope the owners of this place take their customer service more seriously. I spent $50 and didn't use any of it because of how rude this supervisor was. They also refused to give me a refund. If you want your moneys worth, don't come here. read more

I'm honestly here way too often so this review is long overdue. I come here to destress for 30 minutes -1 hour at a time. Street parking during peak time is hard and being a tourist location, there really is a lot of people here. Hence, come on weekdays if you can! The beach and the wharf will be less packed too. The mini-golf course is pretty cool to play at least once. There's a blacklight section which looks dope in photos. The arcade has a huge variety of games, from old-school classics to a super new Halo game. You buy a prepaid card to play in the arcade. There are also lots of mobile games. They just updated and added a few new games: a new 2 player basketball shooting game that's like connect 4 among others. There's also laser tag. I don't really recommend because it's a short 5 minute game for $7 per game. I must say, good prizes are hard to come buy if you want to win something cool in one visit. If you save up however and win a few jackpots, however, it's possible! They have a relatively huge assortment of Pop Figures that changes quite often. Come check it out! read more

Well you can definitely spend hours here with you're friends or family. So busy as it does seem like a covid hot spot but the masks on & semi space apart doesn't seem to effect anybody. Not everything was in working condition but a entertaining location We all had a good time read more

Casino Arcade - Prizes - Arcades Near Me - Santa Cruz, California

Very fun arcade by the beach~ Too hot from the sun? Well come chill and relax here after playing in the lovely Santa Cruz beach. They have all kind of games including ticketed, crane, fighting, racing, dancing, musical, and your classics. Some of my favorite games like DDR (they had the FF7 remix!), Street Fighter V, and my SO's favorite Initial D driving stimulator version 3 and 4 were available! What's even better is that the food stand in the back sells margaritas and daiquiris to make your stay even more enjoyable :) The only downside is that the prizes for the ticketed games are pretty lame. Avoid ticketed games unless you really do want the prizes they offer. read more

Casino Arcade - Wizard of Oz ticketed game results - Arcades Near Me - Santa Cruz, California

My boyfriend and I stopped by this place twice a few months back during our trip to San Francisco. This was one of the stops he wanted to take me to on his list of things to do during our trip. When we first entered the arcade from the main entrance, there was a line of claw machines to the left that contained different types of prizes, but a few machines contained one prize that had a key attached to it that corresponded to a number on a locker that game a player access to another prize locked in there. Those were definitely rigged and took some patience to win and hunt down the keys. And even if you did see them, the claws were either too weak or the prizes too big for the claw to even pick it up. We watched a many people and ourselves struggle, but one couple played it smart, for the most part, and waited till the keys were in reach and then invested their efforts, though it took them awhile too to win. After passing those distractions, you can see a bunch of games ranging from non-ticket games to ticket games to even more claw machines in the back. They did have a small redemption center where you can turn in your tickets for cool prizes, such as figurines, cheap knick knacks and even Funko Pops. We invested a lot of money in just claw machines and definitely got more for our buck from the claw machines in the back than the ones we first saw. The claw machines in the back ranged from smaller prizes to bigger prizes, but in general, all the plushes were licensed and had tags on them. We walked away with a small bag full and three larger plushes from there before leaving that arcade for good. read more

Tony, the manager did reach out and apologized for the way his staff treated us. He actually sent us the piggy bank and other items. He told us to reach out to him next time we were back in the area and he would give us some wristbands to enjoy the boardwalk so that is really nice of him to make sure that even though we had a terrible experience, he is wanting to make sure we enjoy our next trip. I really hope that he can reach Sen and Andrew how to properly treat customers. I will update again after our next trip. read more

I'll give this place a four star. It's a fun place but I think the selection of games are just ok. I also felt that their prices are more expensive than Dave and Buster! But im not surprised considering it's located in a touristy place. I think the best game that they have is the four screens shooting game (I forgot the name). Overall great experience and will be back again! read more

Place is freaking great! Not sure why i just started going here every few weeks... But we'll worth the drive. The games are too fun. The atmosphere is what you would expect. read more

Casino Arcade - Too addicting... Didnt realized i was sitting there for close to an hour. Haha - Arcades Near Me - Santa Cruz, California

The ticket payout and prize selection leaves much to be desired. That said, my kids had a good time.

Cool arcade on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with pinball, air hockey, laser tag and more. Redeem your tickets at the end for a prize in their reward center. Every game takes a card but they are free at the pay machines. read more

Casino Arcade - Games - Arcades Near Me - Santa Cruz, California

See all

If you have kids , this is the place to visit if you're at the boardwalk . We ended up coming here because we didn't realize the boardwalk shut down 630/7pm. The kids loved it . It has a ton of different options to play and is bigger then we thought on the inside . Would definitely come back . read more

This place is cool but they had a classic arcade center with fun 80s style arcade games. They got rid of it and replaced it with boxes as a storage place. They also have a new game card system that is defective and doesn't let you recharge your game card. Instead you have to purchase a new card every time and get a staff member to join your cards into one. read more

Casino Arcade - Arcades Near Me - Santa Cruz, California

See all

They really broke my heart by getting rid of the "OG Corner " in the back of the arcade that was once filled with older games such as Robotron and centipede. My partner and I use to grab a drink and go back and forth for hrs on end after a long day of swimming or volleyball .. sigh. read more

There's a miniature golf course inside! How fun! 3 of the holes are in blacklight! Totally recommend that for some fun times =)

I am a local who frequents the Boardwalk with my 2 year old son. Today we went to the Casino arcade prize center & after a year of it pretty much having nothing, we finally found a toy for my son to trade some of his 20K plus points. We went to try and check out & the 2 young kids working behind the counter did not have access for a 20k point item. They call the manager, who is not on site at the arcade, and are told she will come down. We are told she'll be there in 5 mins. 10 minutes go by and nothing. My son at this point being 2 is getting irritated which makes me irritated. Why would the employees working in the prize center not have all the tools they need to do their job? Why is there not a manager on site? Why would any kid be expected to wait this long for a prize? I tell the kids at 15 minutes to call again that I'd had it. Then a lady named Anilu comes out. I tell her how ridiculous it is to make a customer wait 20 minutes to get an item & that I am incredibly upset. She gives me attitude and is incredibly rude. When I & my husband tell her not to talk to me like that she says I'm not talking to you anymore. She gave no apology nor tried to calm the situation. She said she called her manager & isn't the manager. 5 more minutes go by & I say how much longer for someone to get the toy checked out. She says she would have done it but I was rude so she refused?.......Are you kidding me?!! You have an upset customer due to your company's failure & you keep them there to get them more irritated instead of handling the situation?! This person needs retraining. She calls security while I'm still waiting. I here her say I was rude so she's not giving me the item & waiting for management. Security asks me what's going on, at which I'm beyond upset now & he tells me being upset isn't helping......no nothing is helping because I'm still sitting here with my 2 year old after 25 minutes waiting to cash in a prize with points he earned with hundreds of dollars out of my pocket the last year & then dealing with a rude, undertrained employee, and idiot security guard. UNBELIEVABLE! Finally the manager comes down I express my concerns & tell her I just want to get out of here with the toy I've been waiting for for the last 20 minutes. She is professional, apologizes, and says she will check us out. When my husband approaches & says he wants to file a formal complaint against Anilu for the way she talked to me and handled the situation the security guard again approached and says he needs to leave the property. He says for what? I told him not to argue that I was almost done and just wanted to get out of there. He took pictures of the badges. Finally we got the item & left. We do not appreciate being treated as thugs. We are local home owners who patronize this establishment and spend a lot of money there. 1. The employees need to have all the tools necessary to do their jobs 2. A manager should be onsite & able to reach customers within 5 mins. 3. Customer Service reps need to be trained to deal with customers upset or not. They should never be rude & keep a professional demeanor at all times. They should try to resolve the situation not pour gas on it. 4. Security should not be called on an upset customer without merit. There were no threats made. She was not in danger. She was just making no effort to resolve the situation. 5. Security needs retraining as well. There's a difference between someone running around causing issues & a customer upset with the customer service they are receiving. I can now understand why so many of the locals do not enter the Boardwalk. I go for my son. It's very unfortunate this incident occurred. I hope the Seaside Company takes action to stop it from happening again. Retraining employees & correcting issues is key. read more

Lots of games and many of them just sitting there waiting to take your tokens and owe you the turn. A little frustrating to get an employee every time a machine just took the token. A lot of the games where you are supposed to get tickets were a complete rip off. Worst than Chuck E. Cheese where the kid at least gets more than 1 ticket in most games. My kids felt that although there were many machines to play it was frustrating that many didn't work properly and that too many of them were more than one token for barely a turn. read more

My son and I went to the Casino Arcade today for some much needed time together. He had been given a gift card to use in the arcade and it had a 40.00 value to it. He took me to one machine that had seats where you reclined and as the screen in front of us showed us bouncing around inside an pinball game, the seats moved to make the whole experience feel real. We then went and played air hockey. It was a lot of fun. As we were wrapping up our first game, a group of three people were standing behind my son watching him and me. I thought it was a little odd because air hockey is not really that interesting to watch. Just before we finished our game, they walked off. When my son went to swipe his card again, he realized it was missing. As he played, it must have fallen out of his shorts and onto the floor. The group behind him likely was watching us to figure out the best time to pick it up. They totally scored as they had just pocketed a card with 35.00 remaining on it. We walked around and looked for them, but they had left. We went up to the desk to tell them what happened and to see if there was any way to trace or track the card. There wasn't. They asked for our receipt but we didn't have one since the card had been a gift from my brother. Thinking it was all pointless, I was really shocked when the manager on duty REPLACED the card with 35.00 on it! I couldn't believe it. My son was thrilled (me too!) and we took the card and went back to playing a few more games. I'd have to say that our experience with the staff was as impressive as it gets. Kudos to them for helping my son. And shame on the people who took the card at his feet. Who does that to a kid? read more

Pretty good: no ticket machine overload (good in my book), a fair number of classic and 90s games in OK working order considering the crowd, and a nice mix of newer arcade titles (Walking Dead, etc) that are a good time. The place is big, even during peak season on weekends we could get in and have fun with the games. Hours are long and flexible on weekend and Fridays. Didn't love: prepaid cards, machine wouldn't take my Amex, tickets required for the junk redemption left small children feeling like they didn't win, prices on some machines were odd (Star Trek Voyager was $1 equivalent-as one example). Didn't get to try the Laser Tag. This was packed with a variety of aged kids and times to start a game too long. Overall a good time for an arcade in a top tourist spot. read more

Nice selection of classic arcade games, pinball for the wizards if you've got crazy flipper fingers, New tech games AND the scourge of so many arcades...redemption games. Okay, at east they have "casino" in the name to state what they really are, but I don't like how these ticket spewing games turn the little ones into crazy eyed gamblers. Spend 20 bucks and trade those tickets in for worthless trinkets :-\ Anyway, it is what it is...no one is twisting anyone's arm to get them to spend their quarters here. It's (mostly) all in good fun so if you are looking for some nostalgic game play this place fits the bill. If you or someone you love has a gambling problem, help is available. read more

We were walking around the beach boardwalk, but everything was closed except this place. It was kid-friendly fun. My friends and I played some air hockey, which is one of my favorites at an arcade. Too bad I suck and lost every game I played. We also played some laser tag ($5 per person). It was a 5 minute game. I sucked at that too. I kept getting hit and scored low. I would be no match for Barney Stinson. I redeemed myself at skee ball and earned us some tickets for some "fashionable" rings that we kept as souvenirs. read more

We came here for Laser Tag. When we arrived, there was no one at the desk, but there there was a little clock to ask for us to come back at 1pm. One of us got the ticket, but I heard that she had to wait for someone who cut in the line, and it sounded like they kind of just ignored here while she waited. While we waited, most of us were able to enjoy the arcade. The place is clean and the restrooms have attendants. It was good that they pre-announce before the game starts. We didn't have too much interaction from the staff other than the necessary instruction. The game was a ton of fun =) I, of course, a laser tag rookie got shot so many times, but it is still a lot of fun. There is no better than shooting at my friends, lol. I wish that there was an option of doing teams, like the instruction mentioned. I wish that the score can be displayed on multiple screens, so it doesn't go over so quickly. Also, it would be a lot of fun if we can send our results to ourselves =) I would go back again with friends or recommend it, but there are also a few things I think will make the experience that much more pleasant =) read more

Great time was had here by all! Loved that for 900 points, you could win a pair of bluetooth headphones. Friendly staff, too! Only complaint is that the "tickets" earned on some of the games doesn't seem to measure up with the effort to play the game. read more

Good place to kill a couple dollars and an hour or so at the boardwalk. Some games are shiny and new, others looked like they've been around longer than Laughing Sal. It has most of the classic stuff, although not that many ticket games. The Kong Fu Panda punching one was the funnest, but still impossible to do, even with 2 people. I'm surprised on how many mobile games made it here (eg fruit ninja, candy crash, flappy bird) but I suppose its the newest generation of arcde games. Very elaborate ticket "store" but after $20 and only 100 tickets, we walked away only with matching rings and a few tootsie rolls. read more

I love arcades, and I love vintage games, but this arcade is pretty grimy. I've been here twice, and I don't know if it's because it's on the boardwalk or if it's simply the management, but there were piles of yuck in various places both times I went. I know it's to be expected that the machines would have grime on them as well, and maybe it was just a yucky fingered-kids day, but the games all looked like they really needed to be wiped down. One thing I did really like about this arcade were all of the food options. So many to choose from! read more

They recently switched over to prepaid cards that don't have that old school arcade feel. No more tokens equals not as much fun. Also, half of the machines either don't work or have some kind of malfunction about them, i.e. the buttons don't work correctly, out of prize tickets, or the game doesn't work at all. Even with these flounders, how can an arcade not be fun? You can easily rack up your bill but it's all eased when you have a tall can in your hand. read more

The heydays of booming arcades packed to the brim with teens and young adults looking to finish an unbeatable game with strangers who had become friends is long gone...and it shows in this facility. Its size is utterly impressive, but it's depressing, after getting tokens from a functional token machine (not easy to find, unfortunately), that so many of their museum-worthy machines are broken or otherwise taking up space without even being plugged in. Games that were functional had so many technical problems that it wasn't even fun to play them (and I love me some Time Crisis!!) The games that were working (except Skee-ball) were the ticket machines, and I ended up giving a few bucks of tokens to kids looking to get the biggest ticket prize in the place. This place would be something to behold if they actually took care of their stock. read more

Theres a good variety of games, but kinda pricey. Its located in the middle of the boardwalk, which was nice... good place to relax without being under the sun. I didn't play any if the games, because I refuse to get one of those cards where you have to add money to.. their loss... overall, it's a nice place to stop by if you're at the boardwalk! read more

Had a lot of fun here. My only complaint is that the prizes are AWFUL. If you are spending that much money on tokens and you win a few thousand tickets and get inside and there's coffee mugs and stuffed animals? Kind of a rip off BUT still fun read more