Games News

Mega-game facility with indoor go-karts cruises into Dallas-Fort Worth

A deluxe new entertainment facility with a whole cadre of games is coming to the Dallas area. Called Andretti Indoor Karting and Games, it's an entertainment concept with a whole range of activities including high-speed electric super karts, bowling, VR gaming, arcade games, and a ropes course, plus a unique dining component.

According to a release, it'll open in The Colony, adjacent to Nebraska Furniture Mart in the growing Grandscape development, in March 2020.

Named after the legendary racing family, Andretti Indoor Karting and Games was founded in 2001 in Orlando, Florida. They currently have four locations: one in Orlando, Florida, two in Georgia in Marietta and Roswell, and one in San Antonio, Texas.

The company is in expansion mode, and will be opening more centers across the United States in the near future, including one in Katy, Texas in spring 2020.

Their locations feature varying entertainment options all under one roof including high-speed super-karts, multi-level tracks, state of the art arcade, cutting edge virtual reality attractions, challenging ropes obstacle courses, unique two-level laser tag arenas, boutique bowling, and custom high-tech mini-golf.

Each location also offers eateries with chef-designed menus, full bar, in-house catering, and 10,000+ square feet of event and meeting space.

The facility is pay as you go; there's no general admission fee.

Attractions

Multi-Level Race Track: Electric go-karts on a half-mile multi-level track with straightaways, downward spirals, and multiple hairpin turns.

Laser Tag: A two-story black light laser tag arena features the latest technology from Delta Strike, the leader in the laser tag equipment industry.

Arcade Games: More than 90 of the latest and greatest video, redemption, and prize games.

RacerXClub Simulators: Drive a racecar on the world's most famous tracks, for casual gamers seeking an immersive VR experience or avid competitors on the iRacing circuit.

Ropes Course with Zip Line: Indoor ropes course towers several feet above the arcade, with a curved rail zip line and multiple obstacles for both beginners and advanced.

Hologate VR: Four-player virtual reality attraction delivers full sensory immersion experience using advanced graphic technology on a 90fps headset hat. Spectators will feel like they are part of the experience as they take in the action on the monitors above the open air playing space.

Hyperdeck VR: Four-person virtual reality experience is a theme park level attraction pushing the limits of motion in VR with zero motion sickness. It employs 360 degrees of wind machines, heat, and full motion platform that lifts and lowers players to correspond with the action of the story. Players are transported to parallel universes where their fate might be unexpectedly altered by participation from other spectators.

Duck Pin Bowling: Eight uniquely designed black-lit lanes, with dedicated service from the bar and dining menu.

Dining

Food program overseen by corporate chef Richard Pacilio features several options including a Food Truck Plaza, sit-down dining, a dessert bar, and multiple bars.

Food Truck Plaza is indoors and features three different "food trucks":

Fusion Bowl featuring Asian cuisine including bowls hot off the wok, cold bowls and spring rolls.
Mama Andretti’s featuring Italian cuisine including salads and brick oven pizzas and calzones.
Let’s Roll Diner featuring American cuisine including wings, burgers, sandwiches and chicken tenders.

The Main Bar, Sky Bar and Sky Bar Patio area features the full restaurant menu including Shareables, Salads, Asian Bowls, Burgers, Sandwiches, Brick Oven Pizzas & Calzones, Chef-Crafted Entrees and Desserts:

Starters include pretzels, nachos, spinach-artichoke dip, quesadillas, and potato skins
Handhelds, the new word for sandwiches, include Philly cheesesteak, pulled pork on a hoagie, chicken club, buffalo chicken wrap, and tacos
Burgers including a veggie Beyond Burger and a Big Tex with BBQ sauce
Entrees that include sirloin steak medallions, smoked pork ribs, salmon, chicken-fried steak, fajitas, Cajun pasta, pizzas, and calzones

Located at 5752 Grandscape Blvd., #100, in The Colony, the facility will also have two full bars, lounge areas, and a semi-covered patio on the second floor where guests can relax and witness the sights and action of the outside plaza below.

Hiring fairs will take place in January & February at Fairfield by Marriott in The Colony, and at Courtyard by Marriott Plano/The Colony.

The karts are electric.

Photo courtesy of Andretti

The karts are electric.

families

Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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