I have no idea why there are so many highly rated reviews here. Looking at some of the review profile histories, I can see why...
Maybe we were unlucky on this particular day? Maybe a perfect storm of mishaps?
Regardless what the reason is, it was the worst claw machine experience we have ever had.
I'm going to preface this saying that my family has played at well over 30 different claw arcades, many in SoCal and a handful in other states. We completely understand that claw machines are a combo of luck and skill. We also understand that we can ask workers for help.
Let's start with the cost: Here, the midsized machines are all 2 tokens per play. This is a big departure from other SoCal claw machine arcades, and the plushies are NOT that much different in quality. This is expensive to play when there are many other places at a better rate. Smaller machines are 1 coin each which is on-par with other places.
Trade ups: Like other places, there is a trade up shop which means you can trade in the plushies for better prizes. They label each machine with the value you can trade it in for. I'll give it to them that they allow you to trade up the really small prizes for 0.5 value, which is better than other places that don't let you trade up at all. They have decent trade ups.
Store: They have a store in the back to purchase toys and collectibles, and it's decent without having to go find a dedicated Japanese store, but it doesn't have everything.
Machines: These machines are the worst I have ever experienced. The drop speed of the claw is really sluggish and some drop-claw buttons are unresponsive, and the way they stuff the plushies are purposefully not well stocked. There are not enough plushies to cover the floor of the machine, leaving many of the plushies impossibly grabbable due to its position with the flat surface. Most places either have many plushies so this isn't an issue, or they line the bottom with either a plushie-padded floor or ball pit balls so that the claw wouldn't come into contact with the actual floor and result in a rigged miss (contact results in claw closure). Double tap withstanding, this is purposely set up for failure. On top of that, one of the machines straight up malfunctioned in the middle of play. My daughter grabbed a plushie, it brought it up, the claw dropped it, and then the claw just stood there frozen. It didn't come back to the chute or move anymore, just frozen in place. The worker basically told us the claw wasn't broken and it's fine and put an extra credit in to reset the machine, but it was disappointing to see a machine glitch out in a fairly new business, and also not admit it is their machine's fault.
Guaranteed prizes: For every $10 you spend, if you did not win, they give you a free prize. This is a very tricky one. This may sound great, but if you know you might end up without a good prize, you SHOULD purposely waste the rest of your money on the harder machines. Let's say you spend $20 and you don't win anything... you get to pick 2 prizes to take home. However, if you won 2 prizes, but they were on the lower tiny machines (lower value prizes), they are still "2 prizes" and therefore you don't qualify for the guaranteed prizes anymore which could have been the higher value prizes. So on paper, it sounds like a good idea, but in practice, you have a window of being ripped off.
Customer Service: We were literally the only customers, and there was one worker who was behind the counter. She wasn't monitoring the machines or paying attention, but rather on her phone most of the time. The place in general encourages you to ask for help if you need it, but maybe it was the luck of the draw with our specific worker... but even with asking for help, she did not "help". Usually when asking for help with a machine, workers would help fluff the plushies up and/or reposition them closer to the chute. What did our worker do? She slightly moved the plushies around and left it on the far side of the machine. My kid is really young, but even she understood and told me "it's still too far away". At this point, you aren't even playing with skill anymore but it's fully based on payout. She asked for help twice and both times the plushie was not repositioned in a helpful manner, and the claw landed perfectly on the plushie but it did not grab it it. I told her to go ask again but she refused to ask because "they are not helping".
Overall: 1/5
This is on the bottom of our list of claw machine arcades. Customer service, value, and overall experience was seriously lacking, and the claw machine experience was not fun. I normally don't write this level of review, but I really wanted to share this experience in order for the business to improve or for others to hear a true/real experience from regular claw machine players. read more