Creative Ingenuity at Cactus Pete’s

One of the things I love most about exploring laser tag arenas is seeing the creative concepts that arena owners incorporate. Many times the most original approaches are homegrown and full of ingenuity. That’s what I loved most about Cactus Pete’s Family Fun Center in Imperial, MO.

When I met Tony, one of the owners of this site, he showed me first to the briefing room to pick up our vestless CyberBlast phasers in preparation for our game.

Then we entered the upstairs arena that he told me he built over the course of 21 days. It’s a smaller space at roughly 1900 square feet, but it functions very well.

There are two raised platforms that give the space some nice levels for play and make it feel a bit larger.

And even though barrels are a common staple accessory in a lot of arenas, this configuration was both visually cool and functional as nice barriers to tag around.

The black lights nicely show off the spray foam neon “toxic sludge” that gives a brighter look to the whole space. I love to ply arenas that are not “cookie cutter” designs and this one had a very good flow as Tony and I circled around tagging each other. I enjoyed this game a lot. You don’t need to have an enormous arena for your space to be fun!

Cactus Pete’s opened about six years ago. With an arcade and three party rooms they are well set up to be a go-to fun spot within their community. And the more I looked around, the more ingenuity I found. Tony told me he made these spaceships suspended from the ceiling. How? Round tables! Brilliant!

He even built this awesome cactus. However, in deliberately leaving off the “arms” (noting it’s the first thing kids would inevitably break), it looks a little like a pickle…so of course I immediately sent a photo to my ‘geddon team!