Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
The answers to this question are too vast for this faq, but here are some of the reasons.
(1) We strive to remain the very best. As an independent small business, we aim to provide personal service and exceptional results. We answer as many questions as we can right on this site, including pricing – we hide nothing and if more questions arise frequently enough, they’ll land right here.
(2) We carefully select and train our team. When you book with Next Level Gaming, we send two team members who have at least 30 hours of training before they are ever called a ‘Game Coach’. We do hire local, smart, and well-regarded high school and college students as well as adults who love video games and people. Every team member learns the standards of the owner and aim to keep our company and customer interactions second to none.
(3) We are fully mobile entertainment service with a wholistic view of our business and the communities we serve. While private parties are our bread and butter, we actively reinvest in the communities by inventing new ways to engage and make people smile and laugh. Our mission to consistently bring you the best doesn’t enable us to be the cheapest service, but it does enable us to bring you the best team members, the latest equipment and games, and the most reliable service – full stop.
(4) I mean, just look at our tech! The only theater with these awesome gamer chairs, community events including movie theater video game nights, the most advanced mobile laser tag system around, phenomenal virtual reality experiences, and much much more. We are more than just a game truck – check us out.
When you book, you will not be required to pay anything immediately. All you’re doing at this stage is sending us the information to allow us to confirm we can run your party. We’ll check distance from our home base, distance between previous and/or next parties, and our ability to navigate the parking and escape route. If we have questions, we’ll email for answers. Sometimes we may need to move the time a little just to make sure we will be able to meet our promise to be on time to your or someone else’s event.
Only after you receive a confirmation email from us will you be asked to pay the 50% deposit within 24 hours. This is the action which will put your event on our permanent schedule. If no payment is received within 24 hours, the spot goes up for grabs again.
Usually the Thursday evening before any weekend event, we will send out an email with a link to pay the balance. This must be completed anytime before we open the doors to the game theater, preferably online in advance.
After that – we party!
GAme Theater Event
Our game theater allows up to 20 players to play comfortably inside our climate controlled trailer, but, depending on the size/age of the players, that can be a tight fit. Our 3 large outside screens can entertain another 4 players each, weather permitting (no steady rain). This allows up to 32 to play at one time! We can rotate players for large group events so that everybody gets plenty of playing time.
Absolutely! Roblox parties will enable up to 3 players on 3 screens to play Roblox at the same time while leaving two big screens open for other games. Fortnite will enable 10 players on 5 screens to play at the same time. If a theme is chosen, the players are *not* limited to playing only those games. The full Next Level Gaming library is still available.
While people can start gaming at a very young age, we typically only run game theater parties for games 8 years and older.
We strongly prefer not to park in driveways unless absolutely necessary and it’s a very long and very wide driveway on a street where we cannot park on the street in front of the house.
While parents or others are always welcome to observe or participate in the fun, it is normally not necessary, however we do ask that at least one adult/host be present to help supervise younger kids. Every Next Level Gaming event includes one of our highly trained Game Coaches who will run the event for you.
We carry a fairly comprehensive selection of the latest and most popular video games ranging from E to M in ratings. Video games in general are meant to be a social gaming experience so most of our games are multi-player games. Some are able to be linked together for an even more competitive and social gaming experience.
We do! They (especially Fortnite) are among our most popular games. In very large parties, we don’t always allow Roblox to be played (unless the parent insists). The main reason is because Roblox is a game which allows only one player on a screen. This means a whole ‘party’ tv will be monopolized by the single player on the game. This is not really a big deal if there are less than about 8 kids or so.
Short answer. Yes.
Longer answer. Yes, BUT. While we do carry onboard internet, sometimes we often end up partying in a location with poor cellular service (which means we can not play games which require internet in any capacity). In the fairly rare case this happens, we attempt to connect by ethernet to a home router (we bring a 200′ cable) which should then provide internet and improve the gaming experience for online gamers. Between our internet and your home internet, our coaches will work to bring the best experience and internet they can. If internet is determined to be inaccessible or unacceptable, the coaches will shift from attempting internet gaming to bringing the best party experience with only offline games. We do not provide refunds for internet inaccessibility.
Yes! We have PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X onboard.
While we would love to go everywhere for free, we just can’t. The obvious answer to the travel fee is just that the cost of fuel is high, but there’s more. We pay our coaches for their time – we can’t ask them to add time for free. Greater distance means more time to and from the destination. That distance means we are also not running a party during that travel. Since our charge is $199 for every extra hour of a party, when we need to use that time for travel, we need to charge it. Even with our travel fee, we do not break even, so please don’t ask us to waive or reduce it, even if you’re just a few miles into the next cost range. We thank you in advance for this one.
The Outdoor Party Package gives you three more TVs to play on, watch local sports or programming on, watch movies on, or even rock out on karaoke. In order to manage our time, we always set up the inside of the theater first (which gets the gamers going) then we set up the outside, which could begin after the party has started.
We begin taking down the Outdoor Party Package 5 – 10 minutes before the party ends.
Laser Tag Event
The basic package brings out 12 laser taggers with headsets. Up to 12 players can play at once.
We have the basic laser tag team elimination games, but we have much much more. Tactical games means we have game modes with specific objectives teams must attempt to conquer before the other team does. These games require more thinking and strategy.
We start our laser tag games at 8 years and older.
For typical parties, we will show up in a pickup truck loaded with equipment. It is usually much easier if we are allowed to drive onto the field to unload for the game, but this is not usually required.
We set up in front yards, back yards, football fields, indoor soccer fields, school gyms, etc. All we need is about 80′ x 60′ to have a great time. Older/bigger players need more space and allow for much more interesting games.
While parents or others are always welcome to observe or participate in the fun, it is normally not necessary, however we do ask that at least one adult/host be present to help supervise younger kids. Every Next Level Gaming event includes one or two of our highly trained Game Coaches who will run the event for you.
Bad weather is the primary challenge to any outdoor event. Laser tag is no exception. In the case of poor weather, we can take the event indoors (if a space is available) or reschedule for another date and time.
We literally have dozens of game modes with objectives. In most parties, we will use a few popular ones such as team elimination, capture the flag, Fortnite, and domination. In leagues and older player parties, we employ some of the more complex games.
While we would love to go everywhere for free, we just can’t. The obvious answer to the travel fee is just that the cost of fuel is high, but there’s more. We pay our coaches for their time – we can’t ask them to add time for free. Greater distance means more time to and from the destination. That distance means we are also not running a party during that travel. Since our charge is $199 for every extra hour of a party, when we need to use that time for travel, we need to charge it. Even with our travel fee, we do not break even, so please don’t ask us to waive or reduce it, even if you’re just a few miles into the next cost range. We thank you in advance for this one.