My family is big into Stranger Things. I rewatch the entire series before each new season, and recently, my oldest daughter joined in our grand 6-month rewatch before the final season. When Netflix announced Dallas as one of their two flagship locations for Netflix House, we were intrigued. But what really got us excited, was the interactive experience, Stranger Things: Escape the Dark.

We originally planned to go on December 30, the day before the premiere of the final episode of Stranger Things Season 5. But I thankfully checked tickets for Escape the Dark the day before, and they were completely sold out for the entire day!

We ended up purchasing tickets for December 31 instead, making our New Year’s Eve a bit more hectic (we had already planned a Stranger Things-themed party that evening!).

We arrived at the Dallas Galleria a little before lunch time. We had dropped off our youngest daughter with my folks, and had one of my best friends, Chris, visiting from out of town. We were a group of four: me, my wife, my teenage daughter, and Chris.

Netflix House has its own entrance on the north side, which features a fun little parade of character statues, including a demogorgon walking a cute lil demodog!

The inside is immediately breathtaking, an explosion of Netflix IP all over the multi-story walls. We spotted Stranger Things, Wednesday, One Piece, Squid Game, Bridgerton, K-Pop Demon Hunters, The Queen’s Gambit, and more!

The immersive experiences are found on the first floor. The Dallas location features Squid Game and Stranger Things.

Since we had a few hours until our scheduled start time, we headed up the stairs toward the large restaurant area.

The Netflix Bites area is something between a hotel lobby, a bar, and a casual diner. It’s very open to allow foot traffic between the gift shop (which leads into the mall), the arcade area, and the restaurant. Thankfully, there was also plenty of tables, without any wait (we also went on a Wednesday!).

The staff was friendly, and the menu was incredibly cute, with tons of references to various Netflix shows and characters — especially the drinks and desserts! We’re not big drinkers, but the bar area was impressively huge. And the walls and ceilings featured more fun memorabilia, quotes, and references.

The food at Netflix Bites was honestly fantastic. Against our better judgement, we ordered the gigantic pretzel appetizer, which was listed as serving 4-6! That seems about right, as our table of four put a sizable dent, but didn’t finish. The pretzel was soft and heavenly, but it was also crazy expensive at $35!

My wife and daughter split a pizza, which looked delicious, while I, proudly wearing my Hellfire Club t-shirt, ordered the Hellfire Club sandwich — and was not disappointed, though it oddly took another five to ten minutes to come out after everyone else’s order.

After loading up on food we still had some time, so we checked out the other main attraction at Netflix House, the RePlay Arcade.

When I hear “arcade” I picture, you know, arcade machines. The RePlay does features some arcade machines, but they’re all original creations, and most of what we found were interesting electronic mini-games, and even tiny escape rooms!

Like most modern arcades, every game worked with a game card purchased from an ATM-like device. And there aren’t any tickets or prizes here, just good old fashioned game-playing!

There was a Stranger Things arcade game that was sort of like the old 80s Joust game with teams of players, but we couldn’t really make sense of it.

A super-size balancing-ball maze-game themed after Bridgerton hedge mazes was a bit hit, as four players each took a side and had to balance to quickly get the ball through the right gates.

Another fun hit was a multi-player symbol matching game that felt like something out of a kids game show, though I’m not sure what the reference was.

There was also a K-Pop Demon Hunters reskin of Dance Dance Revolution (which we definitely had to try), a shooting game featuring Cyberpunk Edgerunners, and a randomly hilarious Happy Gilmore 2 arcade machine made to look like a crappy PS1 game.

The biggest crowd-pleaser goes to The Floor is Lava, a fun and entertaining physical game where players have to step on the right blue-colored squares while avoiding the red colors. We didn’t try it, but it was always drawing a crowd.

Our favorite thing there was definitely the Stranger Things escape room. It wasn’t cheap ($10/per person) and we had to queue up for a later time, which was making me nervous as it was getting closer to our start time for the main event (the friendly staff reassured me I had nothing to worry about, and they were right).

When our time arrived, we went into a closed-off room as just the four of us. The room was designed to look like Mike’s basement from Stranger Things, totally 80s style, and “Dustin” came on the radio asking for help in closing rifts around Hawkins.

What followed was an excellent and immersive little escape room as we fiddled with knobs and buttons, deciphered codes, and even played a video game that emulated old Atari games. The whole thing lasted less than 10 minutes but it was a ton of fun, and I totally recommend it for fans.

Afterwards, we hurried downstairs for our scheduled time. There were big lines for both experiences, and queue sections that made sure only a certain number of people entered each time.

Once again the staff was friendly and fun, with the host explaining how things worked (without spoiling anything), how to get help if we need it, and to not pull out our phones.

We ended up waiting at least 15 minutes after our start time before being led into the area, where we put on special headphones and grabbed flashlights.

The headphones were very important, as information, dialogue, and music was pumped through us to create an immersive experience. On the other hand, any issues were a big deal and could impact the event.

Chris had to wait and get a fix for his at the beginning, whereas my wife’s headphones went out during the last scene towards the end, which is a bummer.

I don’t want to spoil Escape the Dark too much, and obviously I couldn’t take any pictures. It’s heavily based on Season 4 of Stranger Things. The first half is a cool little investigation with some interaction through familiar locations, such as Eddie’s Trailer, but it’s not really an escape room.

The second half leans much harder into a straight-up haunted house design with some cool live-actors and scenes, and the finale is suitably epic. We all loved it. Any fans of Season 4 in particular are going to really enjoy Escape the Dark!

After the event, which lasts about an hour, we checked out the gift shop. It’s easy to forget you’re in the mall, as the gift shop is the only part that connects (and from the mall side, the whole thing just looks like a Netflix gift shop!).

The gift shop features shirts, plushies, and accessories for some of Netflix’s biggest IP, with Stranger Things receiving the biggest area (which I imagine will change over time). The Netflix area also featured a cool Vecna statue, and my daughter picked up a large Demogorgon plushie.

We popped into the mall to grab some drinks and cookies before calling it day.

We had effectively spent three to four hours at Netlix House alone, including lunch and Escape the Dark.

It was a fantastic trip, and reasonably priced. We paid about $50 a ticket for Escape the Dark, though it looks like cheaper prices are now available for afternoon showtimes, as low as $39.

I loved the themed atmosphere and design of each area, the restaurant food was delicious, the arcade area was fun, and the immersive experience proved an interesting mix of interactive haunted house, and hugely rewarding for fans.

I could see us returning to do Squid Game: Survive the Trials if the rest of my family ever watches the show, or if we have friends and family who haven’t been yet. The Dallas Galleria is a bit far for us to just pop over whenever. Hopefully they’ll rotate the experiences (or come up with new ones), as there are other Netflix IP I’d love to be immersed in, including Wednesday, K-pop Demon Hunters, Arcane, and more!