Tampa is about to get an indoor amusement park when Elev8 Fun opens in May.
The entertainment center concept is currently under construction in the former Sears building at Citrus Park Town Center. It’ll be Elev8 Fun’s second Bay area location after debuting at Seminole Towne Center in Sanford back in 2021.
When it opens this summer, getting into Tampa's Elev8 Fun will be free, but games and attractions inside are priced a la carte. There are several different bundles available, and all of them come with a $10 arcade pass. The Tampa location will have much of the same attractions as the Sanford one as well as the same pricing, which you can find via elev8fun.com.
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay recently got a sneak peek tour at the two-story, 125,000-square-foot space that will soon be filled with hundreds of new and classic arcade games, two types of bowling, laser tag, axe throwing, go-karts, a ropes course, mini-golf and more.
Elev8 Fun is essentially an indoor theme park. And there really is something for everyone—from families and kids to date night couples and companies looking for team building activities.
“We’re reimagining and reenergizing these shopping centers, making them into spaces that the entire community can look forward to, from families to couples looking for a date night,” said David Goldfarb, president and founder of PrimeTime Amusements, a partner in the Elev8 Fun project. “The Orlando area has embraced this concept with amazing success, and we’re excited to become part of and serve the Tampa community.”
Back in November at IAAPA Expo in Orlando, Elev8 Fun’s Director of Operations Keith Baldwin said the attractions opening in May in Tampa are part of phase one for the location. The next phase includes plans to turn a former loading dock nearby into a beer garden.
“Our locations are going after the suburban families and bringing entertainment back to the local malls,” Baldwin said at IAAPA. “Our strategy has been to acquire the real estate as well as enhancing the locations with entertainment. And then the malls have been very, very welcoming.”
Here’s what’s inside Elev8 Fun at Citrus Park Town Center:
Bowling: Elev8 has 12 full-size lanes of bowling as well as duckpin bowling in the arcade area. Duckpin bowling is basically a smaller version of regular bowling.
Mini-golf: 18 holes of glow-in-the-dark mini-golf with a Caribbean pirate theme in a clear nod to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Arcade games and esports: The park in Tampa will have hundreds of different arcade games, from classics like skeeball to modern systems with virtual reality headsets. Many of the games are played for tickets, which can be redeemed for various prizes at the shop next to the arcade. There will even be a small E-Sports arena in the middle with more than a dozen gaming stations.
Dark Ride: Triotech’s XD Dark Ride will be unique to the Tampa Elev8 location. Inside the interactive attraction are eight seats set before a curved screen. Each rider will get a gaming gun and be seatbelted in for an immersive shooting game with themes like pirates, zombies, werewolves, robots, and aliens.
Omni Arena: The free-roam virtual reality experience has users strapped in and able to walk around in the virtual world without leaving their station. There are also special shoe covers to keep gamers moving smoothly through shooting games.
Go-karts: Elev8 Fun in Tampa features a full go-kart track taking up more than half of the second floor. There are cars for both adults and kids reaching top speeds of 45 mph and 35 mph, respectively.
Laser tag: Also on the second floor is a laser tag arena with an amalgamation of space western, science fiction, and dystopian themes. It’s also glow-in-the-dark.
Axe throwing: An entertainment center in 2023 wouldn’t be complete without axe throwing. Elev8 in Tampa has a large space on the second floor for that, right next to the bar.
PL8 Bar & Grill: The Tampa location has bars on the first and second floors as well as the PL8 restaurant. The menu is expected to mimic the one in Sanford, which includes a variety of offerings from burgers and fries to chicken wings and flatbreads. Elev8 in Citrus Park will also have 31 beers on tap, mostly local brews.
Photo by Chelsea Zukowski
Elev8 Fun has 18 holes of glow-in-the-dark mini-golf with a Caribbean pirate theme in a clear nod to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
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