In the entertainment complex, The Gate, you will find Fayre Play. Fayre Play is an adults-only (during evenings) arcade that’s chocka with arcade games that will give you more nostalgia than when someone brings up the price of a Freddo nowadays. We decided to check it out for ourselves.
You'll never get skee-bawd in this place!
We headed to the second floor of The Gate and were greeted by our lovely host who explained that there were nine games that we could play twice. If you got the high score for a certain game you would get a stamp. Get enough stamps and you could win a massive duck. We were also given out these cute tokens that you needed to get the games to work.
After this we headed into the gaming zone, which had nine brightly colored games for us to try. It’s up to you what order you play the games in, so you can just go off what’s currently free. A bunch of us headed straight to the basketball game. Before we had a go shooting hoops, we did that spinning the basketball on your finger thing (gotta be done). Next thing we knew we were slamming basketballs into hoops faster than Troy Bolton in High School Musical (keeping in with the nostalgia theme).
Just horsin' around
There were two duck-themed games. One was hook-a-duck (a classic!), the other one was where you needed to fire your guns at the ducks (don’t worry, it’s just light you’re shooting…no ducks were harmed in the writing of this article).
Keeping in with the animal theme, there was also the game Plenty of Fish (no not the dating app). This was where you needed to chuck balls into goldfish bowls. This is as hard as it looks. In a similar vein was the game Milk It, where you had to throw balls into milk jugs. Honestly, if you weren’t very good at P.E at school, you’re probably not going to score super high on these, but they’re still really fun.
Gaan on son
One of our favorite games was Tin Can Alley, which was exactly as it sounds and you had to throw balls at the tin cans to get them to fall over. The twist was that once they were all down, they would magically reset so you could continue to score. This was one of the easier games for most of us.
The remaining games included: One where you had to send a ball down a track and get it in a hole to score. A fast reactions game where you needed to hit the buttons as soon as they lit up. And finally, a carnival-style Skee Ball Game.
Con-duckulations!
Drinks drunk, it was back to it for round two. Would we get high scores? Would we win ducks? Would we get flashbacks to school P.E when we weren’t doing so well? All important questions. We’re going to level with you, to win a duck, you have to be really good. Only one of us was really good, and it was Akash so well done to Akash!
After we’d played all the games once, it was time for a well-earned cocktail break. The cocktails here are sweets-themed and really delicious. I had two cocktails and loved both of them. The first one Who Gives a Duck came with a tiny duck you could keep. The second one the Raspberry Tipple didn’t have a duck, but it made up for its lack-of-duck with its lovely flavor. You can also get tasty burgers here, which we unfortunately didn’t get a chance to sample because we had a dinner reservation to get to.
All in all, Fayre Play is really fun whether you’re good at it or not. It would make an ideal icebreaker for your stag or hen do. As well as in Newcastle, you can do Fayre Play in .
Check out the other brilliant Newcastle stag activities and Newcastle Hen activities you can do in the toon. Duck yea!