Yesterday a billboard for a new restaurant caught my eye. The restaurant is called Pole Position — yes, like the videogame — and the advertisement promised pizza, drinks, and go karts. I decided to surprise the family for an outing to Pole Position today, so the four of us along with dad loaded up in the car and drove to the new restaurant. Unfortunately when we arrived we found a big “COMING SOON” sign hanging on the door of an obviously unfinished building. It was similar to the end of National Lampoon’s Vacation, when the Griswolds find Wallyworld closed for repairs. Instead of taking a security guard hostage, we did the next best thing. We went to Incredible Pizza instead.

Incredible Pizza is one of several “indoor fun centers” around this area. It is as close as this this generation will come to hanging out in arcades, although much has changed since I was hanging out in the dark, black-lit quarter-muching halls. They are like smoke-free arcades with marketing geniuses making sure every nook and cranny of the building is designed to hold your kid’s mind (and your wallet) captive.

The front half of Incredible Pizza is all about the pizza. A lengthy buffet holds pizza, salad, pasta, and desserts. It’s all you can eat, and for $6.99 a person, you’ll have to eat quite a bit. There are several themed dining areas to choose from. We sat in the movie theater which was airing Elvis’ Blue Hawaii, but we also saw a “Family Dining” area, a “Gymnasium” area, and a “50’s Diner” area. The food was not particularly spectacular, but there was plenty to choose from. The buffet’s design keeps people flowing (there were no major bottleneck areas except maybe the drink fountain), and the dining areas were spaced out enough that you didn’t feel like you were on top of one another.

And if you think that your kids are going to let you out of Incredible Pizza without playing some games, then you obviously don’t have kids. Incredible Pizza contains tons of video games, two bowling alleys (one regulation size, one smaller one for the tots), bumper cars, a mini-golf course, and a go-kart track — all indoors. All games and rides are paid for through an Incredible Pizza debit card — you put money on the card, and swipe it instead of using cash. All videogames and rides are configured to accept the card. Most videogames I saw were between 30 cents and $1.10 to play. The bumper cars were $2.50.

Mason had a blast on the bumper cars while the rest of us watched him bump himself silly. After the bumper cars, we walked around, played a few games, and finally stumbled across the racing circuit. There are two types of Incredible Pizza race cars — fast and slow. Fast is for big kids, slow is for little kids and adults who are taking their kids to race. $4.50 for solo racers (1 race, 7 laps), $5.50 for doubles. We swiped our car, and headed out onto the indoor track. In just a few minutes we were entering our car and heading toward the starting line.

The Fast and The Furious, it ain’t. As far as the slow cars are concerned, you pretty much keep the pedal to the floor at all times and follow one another around the track in single-file fashion seven times. Although it wasn’t that exciting for me, Mason really enjoyed it. After the race, we spent another 15-20 minutes walking around and playing a few games (Outrun 2 was particularly fun) before calling it a day.