Pirate’s Hide-Out

I understand this is primarily a miniature golf place, that aspect of the business is fine. It’s one of the newer ones in the area so the course is nicer just because it isn’t aged, cracked, and dirty.
As an adult I don’t care much about miniature golf. If I was writing this a year ago it would be a four star review for their ice cream. However, it’s not a year ago, it’s now. The quality of the ice cream has gone way downhill. The smooth consistency and shocking amount of flavor is pushed aside for the same grainy crap most other places that try to capitalize on warm summer days have. It isn’t quite chinese buffet bad, but it is a pale comparison to what it was a year ago. I went a couple different times hoping I just caught it on an ‘off’ day, sadly that was not the case.
The inconsistency in sizing is something as well. Most recently I went with a group of five people. We all ordered small soft serve cones. The first four people got their cones and the size was acceptable, not generous by any stretch of the imagination, but acceptable. Then mine came out. Keep in mind, we all ordered the exact same size. Mine was HALF the size of everyone else’s. I went to complain but the kid behind the counter already moved on to the next customer in line (not their fault it got busy). I decided to just take the hit, take the insult and write yet another local business off.
The rest of the food at this place has always been abysmal. Frozen food from Sysco is the best case scenario, it may be serving up the wal mart specials for all I know. Everything I ever tried here (ice cream aside) was horrible.
Go to Guptils. It’s not much further away and they don’t take credit cards but at least the ice cream is consistently good.

Great for date night!
The ice cream is amazing! My husband said it was the best strawberry ice cream he has ever had. They have a soft serve ice cream that is lactose intolerant friendly! It was so good. It has been years since I have had an ice cream cone.
The mini golf is not amazing but still fun. Not a difficult course. Very family friendly.
The grounds are very well taken care of. It is a nice place.
We will be going back.

Don’t get me wrong but when you ask for a small dish of ice cream I did not expect a baby size. I know you can’t expect to get a med size for the price of a small but I shouldn’t get charged for small and get less than you expected. I really wish I took a picture of it so you could see how small it was.

Amazing place, Love the ice cream !
The flowers are awesome !!

This place is ok. The lay out of the golf course is nice, the holes aren’t on top of each other. I will say this though, the holes are not challenging at all. Not many obstacles or cool things at each hole to make it a little more challenging. The staff are nice and pleasant and the course itself is always cleaned when I have been here. The food. I can’t comment on but they do have some decent ice cream. All and all a OK place to bring the kiddies if they are in the mood for some miniature golfing.

Well-​maintained and playable mini-​golf course that’s a bit of a knockoff on the Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf chain but is cheaper and a bit more scaled down than the original. My expectations were low but this has turned out to be the most playable miniature golf course in the region of the 10 we’ve tried now, and certainly one of the more pleasurable for overall experience.
Another in our ongoing, comprehensive series of reviews of every miniature golf course within an hour’s driving distance of Lock 7. $ 7 for adults, $ 6 for kids, which ties it for most expensive (excepting Pirate’s Cove, which we haven’t gotten to in the area but which we’ve played elsewhere), but you can play all day before 6 PM for $ 10 for adults and $ 8 for kids, which quickly makes it into the best bargain in the area if you play at least two games.
We do prefer courses with «themes», and this one has got Pirates. But the theme is not really executed in the course. It’s a putt-​only, up-​and-​down course with modest obstacles. Each hole has some informative trivia about Pirate history and folkways posted on a sign (which one of my kids just ate up), but sadly they don’t have any of these transformed into theme holes. The closest they came was a cannon obstacle on one hole, but that is literally the only hole with a «schtick» — all the others have simple rocks and small shag-​turf bunkers or slight rises as their obstacles. (And disappointingly, they didn’t incorporate the cannon barrel — you just hit around the wheels in the gun carriage.) The water course does go through a sort of semi-​fake little ship, or at least a mast, but the water course plays no part in any of the holes, which seems like a real waste. (The closest you come is one hole where it’s possible to accidentally hit it off the side into the water). Sandtraps are filled with large gravel, which is the way to do it: no sand mess on the course, and you can play the ball out of the trap if you really want.
The course does get superior marks for playability, though. The maintenance is by far the best of any of the ten courses we’ve been on. Greens were not threadbare, and only had a few odd nicks in them. Cups were in good shape, and in general the greens had very little debris on them. But the basic design of the holes gets the highest marks. True shots are rewarded with close proximity to the holes. Most of the multilevels reward making the upper hole shot with a ball very close to the hole with a chance of going in on one shot. There are at least two different strategies available for almost every hole, which always makes group play much more interesting (and encourages going back again). The brick edging, even though it’s mostly on a curved layout, provides a fair amount of opportunity for banking because it’s not a «hard» layout, and banking around curves is surprisingly enjoyable on this course. And there are only two potential «up and back» holes (which are always particularly frustrating for younger players). Greens are true and medium-​speed. I
There was some «lippiness» on some cups, and seams in the turf are visible on some holes, and there are no «tee mats» at all, resulting in more turf wear in the tee-​off area. So they have room for improvement here, but as noted above, it’s still the best-​maintained course we’ve run across thus far.
Excellent plus: a full practice green before the first hole, with three holes in it. I appreciate this and if there’s a line it’s a way of killing time while you wait for the first hole to clear.
More Pluses: there’s a nice picnic shelter out back in a grassy area; it’s quiet (no amplified noise and the road noise is surprisingly low); and it’s got the best snack shack (a café, really) of any mini golf place we’ve been to thus far. The latter has espresso/​cappucino drinks and pretty reasonable hot grill fare, including hot dogs Michigan style (with meat sauce).
All in all, it’s not our ideal course — our ideal would have more original holes with kinetic themes (you HAVE to have at least three moving objects on a mini golf course, in our humble opinion) — nor our favorite in the area, but it was a lot of fun because of the high playability and good maintenance, and probably the second-​best experience we’ve had, certainly worth going back to.

Best soft serve for the money in the entire area! Good food too! I have mini golfed here a few times and its really nice. All in all its a great family venture, and I heard they have killer birthday parties for the kids.

The mini-​golf here is only average at best. It seems a bit overpriced to me and not terribly exciting. I stop here for ice cream a bunch in the summer, as the location is convenient. The soft serve is priced well and HUGE. Good dips and sprinkles and the availability of blizzard-​like concoctions make it a popular place in my household.

Don’t mistake Pirate’s Hide-​Out for a Pirate’s Cove, the great family resort town mini-​golf staple. Either this is a knock-​off, or the ties between pirates and mini-​golf go back further than I thought. Truth be told, there’s little to no pirate connection at the course. No sinking ship in the man-​made pond. No pirate puppets trapped behind bars inside a cave, complete with a pirate sounds recording playing. The only pirate connection here is the pirate trivia at each hole (half of them are ripped off the posts anyway) and the rules written in pirate language. Very disappointing on the pirate front. The greens themselves seem to be trying for the well-​landscaped sort of mini-​golf, not the flat greens with wacky obstacles version that was popular in the past, but dying out now. But there just isn’t enough room for any really nice looking greens. So you’ll have relatively flat greens, with some gravel pits or water to avoid, and walls to bounce off of. There are a few waterfalls, but the golfing is pretty boring. No free games for a hole-​in-​one or anything. But everything looks brand new, which is kind of neat., but doesn’t do much to save this bland mini-​golf outfit. $ 6.25 a game. They have soft-​serve ice cream too, if you’re up for it. A large cone is $ 1.60 I think, but HUGE. I can’t imagine how it tastes.