To all reviewers who gave a one star review just because of the size of the arcade. In my opinion,…read moresize should never be a factor in a review. My wife and I go there as often as we can and enjoy it very much. As far as size , we've been to the arcade at The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. It is larger, but with the size comes a great lack of personal attention. I will stay with Oscar's.

Great hidden gem . It's on 3rd floor…read more Nice little arcade to earn points and redeem rewards. Skiball . Basketball . Claw machines . Pinball machines . Sitting and laughing area . Food and snacks . Well maintained and clean . Good customer service . 4/5

We had such a blast doing the Alice's Dream room! Makayla, our gamekeeper, kept a good eye on us…read moreand gave us gentle nudges and helpful reminders about things that weren't in play. It was the perfect difficulty level to do with our puzzle loving 7 1/2 year old and we loved working as a team. I highly recommend the experience and know we will be back to try the other one!

We booked and completed the Alice in Wonderland escape room here and had a really great time. The…read moretheme was so fun and decorations were cool. We have escaped several Red Door escape rooms with just the two of us so I was hoping that this one wasn't too easy or too hard. The staff told me there are 16 puzzles in this room and assured me we will have plenty to solve but it is totally solvable with two people. We escaped with just 3 minutes left and definitely had our hands full in the second half of the hour. Highly recommend this room!

Took our 2 teen granddaughters here, only 1 wanted to go with me…read more We got stuck so many times, not sure we'd get out! Had a lot of laughs with a couple girls in there. Once we got out, the clerk gave us glasses to go do it again. It made it harder. This was a lot of fun and a break from just the same souvenir shops. The price is higher than we expected. I do wish they offered a senior discount. We really enjoyed it though.

No longer has the mini golf option I wish it was mentioned…read moremore online about that. However, my son did enjoy the mirror maze.

Our Submergency escape was a great balance of fun and tension, finishing with less than 2 minutes…read moreleft. Rocco was a wonderful host. Expect to need a flashlight. Listen carefully when solving a step--the revealed clue is not always obvious. It turns out that there's free parking on the premises at the orange spots. We hope to try another room as this location.

Let me start by saying I have done over 12 escape rooms in Sacramento and the Bay area combined, as…read morewell as a few more in different places including out of state. This was my first escape room in Monterey and it is the first place that I have found that allows you to bring your dog. It is rare to find dog friendly locations and I am super appreciative of them when I do find them so I really wanted to be able to give it five stars. To start with, choosing the escape room we wanted to play to was more difficult than I have found at other locations because they do not have room difficulty levels here. Their website states that's because their "adventures are unique" but so are the rooms at other locations. This is a real challenge because it makes it difficult to decide which room might be best suited to you. Of all the rooms I have done in the past, I have never had more than five people in my group and the majority of the rooms were done with only two people. I have also only not finished one room prior to this location and I knew going in that it was going to be a challenge to do the room with only two people because that was explained to me beforehand. Personally, these kinds of things affect my level of enjoyment. We chose "The Gate" and the only thing that seemed to be unique to this room on the website was that it stated it was not recommended for children under 16. I assumed that was because there might be something scary or adult about the room. When we arrived, as many other reviewers have noted, parking was a little bit confusing. We ended up paying for parking because the area gets quite crowded and we were concerned we wouldn't be able to find anything close. However, as we approached on foot we saw that they had a few designated spots right next to the door for for customers of the escape room so if you are going to come here, drive through the parking areas to see if there is free parking available for you nearby. The employee that greeted us and the general vibes were also different from almost all of the other escape rooms I have been to. It was very low energy and matter of fact, which I don't have a problem with but again is quite a departure from the normal excited welcoming tone of escape rooms. We only had to wait a few minutes and were brought to our room and given a short introduction. We had multiple issues once we started playing. The first issue for us was that you are not given any kind of light source and it was an incredibly dark room. Most escape rooms give you a lantern or a flashlight but we had to pull out our phones and try to use the flashlight from our phone while we were playing. This also goes for a notepad or digital notepad to collect information which would have been useful on a number of occasions in this room. (Better AC would have been nice as well as they were both sweating quite a bit during this experience.) Secondly, we were supposed to listen to sounds coming from pipes during the game, which we did figure out and did try to do but no matter how hard we tried the sound just wasn't working well enough and the employee ended up having to tell us the answer. They later stated that it is very difficult to hear and a lot of people have a problem with that particular section. They also weren't clear about what part of the pipe we could remove and when we took it off to try to hear better they came over the intercom and, in my opinion, a little rudely, said to "put them back on". Then saying not to take the whole pipe off just to take the cap of the pipe, which again was difficult to discern in the dark. We would never actively pull something off or make things difficult for the employees, but we had been told we should "remove" those to hear better. It was very confusing and very unpleasant. Another issue for me was that the clues just weren't interesting or cohesive and I didn't really get how they connected to the story. At any rate, we realized after a short time that we just weren't having very much fun. We basically said let's just get through it and finish and get out of here, but this is actually only the second ever room that we haven't been able to finish. It was quite a sour ending to an already not super enjoyable afternoon and the cherry on that was when the employee told us afterwards that this n't is an incredibly difficult room to do with only two people. Now if I'm being honest, I don't know if they say that to try to make people feel better or if that's the truth, but things like that would be really great to know before going in. I am genuinely writing this review in the hope that it is helpful. Under different circumstances with better communication, I would actually consider returning to one of these franchise escape rooms in Monterey, but we really just didn't have a great experience and I think it's important to share the negative as well as the positive so that people can make improvements.

How have I not reviewed Hot Spot Monterey yet?! Our family loves this place! So many pottery…read morepainting options, canvases, slime making, fairy gardens, and candles. On Sundays they have a free story/activity time in the front window area that is great for younger kids. There is something for everyone here. I also like that you can host parties without additional fees, and you can bring your own drinks and food in any time. They have a special where you can bring your receipt to Alvarado Street Brewery to get discounted canned beer same day too. The staff and owner are really nice too. We've been here as a family, on a date, with friends, and for a private event. It hasn't disappointed. Great addition to Alvarado!

Great experience . Many different options Candle making …read more Mozaics . Pottery painting . Traditional painting . It was great . Customer service was top notch . 5/5

Much more fun than I thought it would be, when my 8 year old asked if we could do this I thought…read morealright we can but I can't imagine it'll be great, but I was definitely wrong, it was great fun and I'd do it again. We did the hour tour but could have easily done a 2 hour one, time went by so quickly on that thing. Plus they're really easy to operate, my 78 year old mom did it with one of my kids and they managed to have fun and be safe. It's enjoyable and would recommend as a nice way to see town, and can easily spend 2 hours or more on this, very fun!

i've never done anything like this so it was definitely exhilarating!! skrtttt driving on the…read moreactual street down the pacific grove highway for the scenic view. felt like i was in mario kart. would do again and recommend to everyone visiting monterey bay

Great spot to get a kayak to see some sea lions and seals and maybe a raft of otters. Worth the…read moreprice. Went on a weekday and everything went quickly. We had a great time.

Great spot to rent bikes, e bikes and kayaks. 3 locations to serve you while in Monterey.read more

Great place and great customer service . Really enjoyed myself and had a really good timeread more

Jessica was so sweet!!! Comedic, kind, helpful, and super interactive the whole night through. This…read morewas my first time doing a paint and sip project, and I've wanted to do this for years. I finally got to cross another thing off my bucket list!!! I am so so happy I took this class. The instructions were clear, and she helped the best way she could. She even bought my book on Amazon, because she found out I am a new self published author.