Maui’s Indoor Theme Park With Go-Karts, Laser Tag Opening at St. Cloud’s Crossroads Center

(KNSI) – Dig out your grass skirts and aloha shirts, because a Hawaiian-themed amusement park is getting ready to open at Crossroads Center mall.

Maui’s Indoor Theme Park is taking over the former Macy’s store, all 100,000 square feet of it, and is targeting a February or March opening. It will be the company’s first park in Minnesota.

Maui’s Indoor Theme Park

The headline attraction will be an electric go-kart track lit with LED lights, taking up about a third of the building. The karts run around 18 miles per hour, no helmets are required, and two-seaters let parents ride along with their kids. Co-owner and Vice President Steve Hatton tells KNSI News that drivers who get a little too rowdy on the track should know staff are watching.

“If you’re bumping and misbehaving, we have a little remote control. We just slow you down to 15 [miles per hour]. If you bump again, we slow you down to 12.”

Beyond the track, Hatton explained the theme is meant to feel like an outdoor getaway, even under a mall roof. “So if it’s cold and snowy outside, you get to come into palm trees and waterfalls and play a little bit of golf.”

The park will also have mini golf, laser tag, a 3D motion “dark ride” where guests compete to shoot monsters on a screen, a giant inflatable play area for kids and about 70 arcade games. There will be space for birthday parties, corporate meetings and community fundraisers.

Maui’s Indoor Theme Park

There’s no cost to get in. Visitors load money onto a Maui’s card and pay only for the attractions they use, or they can just come in and hang out.

Hatton and his two brothers started the business 14 years ago in Lexington, Kentucky, as a way to find fun things to do with their grandkids. For Hatton, the idea goes back to his own childhood, and it’s why go-karts are still his favorite ride. “Me growing up as a kid, we had to drive almost four hours to go ride go-karts. So that was one of the driving reasons of us doing this was just to get go-karts closer to us.”

St. Cloud will be the company’s 11th location. One of Hatton’s brothers lived in Minnesota for five years while working for Northwest Airlines and always pushed for a park up north. When the mall’s owners approached Maui’s about the empty Macy’s space, the brothers fell in love with it.

Find out more about the theme park by clicking here.

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