Fun Center Play-A-Bility : The Magic Formula
By the Family Entertainment Center
Page 1, 2
Equipment Play-A-Bility
When making decisions on your centers activity list there are many factors
to consider. Cost, space allocation, capacity, through-put, safety,
time-to-return-on-investment, and others. All of these combined really
add up to the Play-A-Bility factor. As a facility expense (cost, space
allocation, capacity, through-put, safety, etc) how does it provide a
return? Is the activity worth the expense? Your task in securing activities
is to make your facility as fun, as interactive and as entertainingly
engaging as possible specific to your target age user... so does this particular activity measure up?
Lets look specifically at soft-contained-playgrounds and how they are
typically priced.
To best determine what kind of a return an indoor playground will provide, we need to draw a comparison between
costs and play-a-bility. First off, pricing for a soft contained indoor playground
is based on a two factor formula. The first factor is capacity. How
big of a playground do you need to handle all of the traffic you
expect on your busiest weekend day? and far more importantly, 2)
The Play-a-bility offered by the playground.
 The Play-a-bility factor is driven by the kinds and amounts
of activities within the playground. For example, the more activities
you have the more, interactive and diverse those activities are, the
more "playable" and
ultimately the more fun your playground is going to be for your guests,
and that has a direct connection with an on-going repeat play desire
(a good thing). Ultimately Play-a-bility, not only in your contained
playground, but in your entire activity mix, drives a high repeat desire
for families to return and play again and again.
So when it comes to pricing for indoor
playgrounds, here's what we have learned... pricing for contained
play is based on a sliding scale : capacity / playability. Typically
this means anywhere from $700 - $1200 per child capacity. For example,
if you need a playground that can handle 100 children at one time, on
the lower, inexpensive end it could run $70 - $80k and on the higher
end $115k - $120k. In the above example, the playground would be exactly
the same size, the same color - the only difference would be the play-a-bility
or the amount of activities contained within the playground. (For other ideas and design concepts visit SmartPlaygrounds.com)
The above figures would most likely not include any major themeing,
as themeing can be very expensive and can quickly eat up 20%
- 30% of your budget. To learn more about themeing, review Themeing Your Indoor Playground. Get
out there and get going! |
