We had an extremely poor experience with LEVELUP Arena. Our 8 year old son has a passion for gaming and wants to get into eSports. He's been drooling over pro gaming rigs for the past few months, so we decided to sign him up for the eSports camp at LEVELUP. We wanted him to get some experience on a gaming computer, get some mentorship from experienced eSport athletes, and compete in an actual tournament with peers. This place has many positive reviews, we'd seen the positive press from the KC Sport Commission and their involvement with the KC eSports Coalition, and their website promoted a structured 5-day curriculum in a positive environment aimed at developing a healthy approach to gaming. This all sounded perfect. We signed up and paid the dues over a week in advance via the website, but decided to make this a surprise and didn't tell him about the camp until about 2 hours before heading there. He was so excited that his eyes teared up and he gave his mom and I the biggest hugs we've ever had from him.
Fast forward a couple hours to walking into LEVELUP Arena for the camp that was supposed to start at 1:00 pm. The place is a ghost town except for the college aged person working the front desk. He was surprised to hear we were there for a camp and had no knowledge that LEVELUP even did camps. In his defense, he claimed to have only worked there for a couple weeks so he was still learning. He was empathetic and helpful, but didn't know what to do and needed to contact management.
As we waited (for the children's camp) the large video board had a live stream playing with profanity laden audio blasting through the entire place. To be specific, one of the things our child heard while we stood there was "we wine 'em and dine 'em, s*ck 'em and f*ck 'em". The employee turned it off upon request.
Management texted back that the camp was cancelled and an email will be going out. Mind you, we're standing in the place, and it's now 10 minutes after the camp was supposed to start. Our son was devastated, and we were devastated for him. No communication, no explanation. We were just told that a refund would come through in the next few days. I did receive the refund that evening and was expecting an accompanying email or phone call to further explain the situation, but that has not happened. LEVELUP's website is still taking registrations for this and other camps as of the time of writing this review.
I am disappointed that our son didn't get the eSport experience that we were looking for, and I am angered by the way LEVELUP Arena has handled the customer service side of this. read more