Fun Is The New Foot Traffic As Trampoline Parks, Challenge Rooms Plot Huge Expansion

Family entertainment is emerging as one of the most resilient forces in retail real estate, with concepts ranging from trampoline parks to game show simulations continuing to expand even as consumer budgets tighten and national sentiment slumps.

Operators and landlords say the sector’s staying power — and its ability to backfill big‑box vacancies — is creating one of the most reliable demand pipelines in brick‑and‑mortar retail.

“Even in a challenged environment, we don't have to give up fun,” said Greg Silvers, CEO of EPR Properties, a REIT focused on entertainment properties. “What we've seen historically is that families shelter their kids from the recession, meaning they may downgrade. Fun is something we’ve demonstrated we’re not going to give up.”

Despite inflation‑driven spending pressure and plateauing foot traffic, location‑based entertainment is expected to add 16.5M SF nationwide, fueled by families trading costly theme park vacations for affordable local outings and by investors eager to reposition empty mall anchors. 

Entertainment-based retailers operate about 4,700 locations across the country and plan to open another 721, according to JLL. This growth is led by escape and “challenge” rooms, which can include things like obstacle courses or riddles.

These establishments grew by 246% from 2023 to 2026, according to JLL, followed by competitive socializing, which combines food and drink with games like shuffleboard or minigolf, and grew their footprint by 83% in the same period. 

The broader retail market still shows tight vacancy, but demand slowed to start 2026, with negative net absorption of 4.4M SF in the first quarter, according to a Q1 JLL report. The low vacancy rate is a result of slim supply following years of paring back new retail developments and accelerating demolitions and conversions, the report states.

The migration of entertainment offerings into disused retail space began a decade ago with the expansion of concepts like Dave & Buster’s and Punch Bowl Social. But today’s expansion of the entertainment retail concept into new and creative frontiers has refreshed the category as a tenant option for second-generation retail boxes and even mall space.

Having bounced back from the Covid era, riding a wave of demand for in-person socialization and novel experiences, location-based entertainment retail creates significant opportunities to reimagine defunct mall and big-box stores, reanimating retail space and banking on recurring visits from families. 

Families are skipping long theme park visits, which often mean hotel stays and high gas prices — a three-day Disney World trip for a family of four costs nearly $3,000, according to NerdWallet — and swapping them for a few more local trips to entertainment centers or experiential play places. 

Three full-day trips to a local trampoline park for that same family might cost $500 or so, depending on meal options and geography.

“Middle-class families are finding these big theme park vacations more out of reach,” JLL Senior Director of Americas Retail Research James Cook said. “Most of these concepts are opening locations in your city or even in your neighborhood, so you could do a staycation for a week and save all that money.”

Significant investors and REITs in the space, including E8 and EPR, see these venues as new anchors for foot traffic and a core part of real estate strategy.  

Large-scale mall operators, particularly Simon Properties, see these concepts as core drivers and magnets for shoppers. About 80% of new entertainment locations that opened between 2019 and 2026 were suburban, per JLL data, showing a sector following families and growing demographics, especially in the Sun Belt. 

Developers have long seen closed big boxes as opportunistic real estate that can be reimagined, since most family entertainment and trampoline park concepts take up approximately 21K to 36K SF. With more brands and franchises seeking to expand a proven business model, this former niche has gone mainstream, with numerous options for operators or landlords to tailor the entertainment venue to their particular demographic.

David Goldfarb, founder of E8 Properties and Elev8 Fun Centers, has steadily built out a series of 125K SF entertainment centers across Florida, beginning with Extreme Action Park, an indoor amusement center in Fort Lauderdale.

His current business model focuses on purchasing old department stores, renovating with an in-house construction company, and building his own entertainment centers. He uses a co-tenancy strategy, partnering with national food chains like California Pizza Kitchen to add food and beverage options.  

This vertically integrated model has proven profitable, since it cuts down on renovation costs and acts as a magnet for consumer spending, with each location utilizing different ways to bring in families, Goldfarb said. 

A Marriott hotel is planned next door to his Orlando location to tap into the tourist draw. His forthcoming Miami project, set to open in September in a former Kohl's, sits in an area with 2 million people living in a 20-mile radius.  

At another in-development site in Jacksonville, a defunct Lord & Taylor location in a former mall, the Elev8 entertainment center will find itself located between a Costco and 300 new apartments, forming the leisure portion of a new retail ecosystem. 

“We've really turned into a real estate company that operates family entertainment centers,” Goldfarb said. “The reason why we're so real estate-focused today is because of the fact that we realize that the locations that we're going into continue to evolve, and we help them to evolve.” 

Many expansions of family entertainment centers, such as Dave & Buster’s, take over second- and even third-generation retail space, JLL’s Cook said. Recent closures of Party City locations have often been backfilled by trampoline parks, a category expanding rapidly across the country, with a number of different franchises.  

JLL is tracking 355 new locations across 43 concepts, representing 60% of total expansion within the category.

While rising construction costs have made expansion more expensive, the real challenge has been finding space during a period of low retail vacancies, Cook said. Class-A mall space is nearly all leased, so operators tend to pounce on any closed big-box locations or department stores such as Sears. Overall mall vacancy is below 5%, according to CBRE, with a dwindling pipeline of new projects. 

A few years ago, investors bought into esports and virtual reality as potentially the next wave of such locations, but performance has been muted. Cook said esports remains too decentralized, with too many different, popular games competing for attention. 

In the case of virtual reality, the technology may not quite be there, and those experiences tend to lack the physical interaction.

Now, there are dozens of new concepts fighting for space, expansion opportunities and the attention of families.

“​​We have multiple groups every week coming in to pitch a new, greatest thing,” EPR’s Silvers said. “I tell people that we have to kiss a lot of frogs to find princes and princesses.”

The latest boom has been in so-called challenge rooms and game show simulations, which currently have more than 430 locations nationwide and have opened at a striking rate, growing by nearly 250% over the last three years. Game Show Studio and Great Big Game Show have a few dozen locations nationwide. 

Level99, a chain that caters to teens and adults with elevated dining, has started to expand to Class-A malls, fueled by $50M of investment from Panera founder Ron Shaich's Act III Holdings. It plans to have nine total locations by the end of 2027. 

Where family-fun centers tend to run on birthday parties and kids' events, this growing adult-oriented sector focuses on corporate events, where companies rent the space for a few hours so workers can socialize.  

“Level99 and other players like it are trying to steal that adult segment, and they see a lot of profit opportunity there, especially in, like, urban or high-density suburban areas that have a lot of young professionals,” Cook said.

Developers see this sector continuing to boom as retail space gets closed, reconsidered and recycled. Even locations in the urban core, where these kinds of locations weren’t considered the highest and best use of infill and redevelopment sites, are proving themselves out, Silvers said.

“JCPenney could be the next one on the chopping block,” Goldfarb said. “We can convert any box, it doesn’t matter what box it is.”