How Laser Blaze Is Turning Party Guests Into Regulars With ROLLER Loyalty

Lauren Tuthill

3 minute read

Last updated: July 28, 2026

Michael Thomas, Owner & Operator for Lazer Blaze, has been in the laser tag business since 1999. He knows his customers. He knows how they play, what keeps them coming back, and just as importantly, what stops them. For years, he'd watched birthday party guests walk out the door after a great experience, and not see them again until the next birthday season.

"A lot of our income is birthday parties," Michael explains. "We see a lot of people only once or twice a year when they're having their kids' birthdays with us. We wanted to encourage those people to come back and just play as a family."

Michael Thomas

Owner & Operator, Laser Blaze

He knew the answer was a loyalty program. The challenge was finding one that actually worked.

The problem with loyalty programs

Michael had tried to think through loyalty before. The mechanics weren't complicated: reward people for spending, give them a reason to return.

But the execution always fell apart. Punch cards get lost. Third-party programs create friction. And without trust baked into the system, the whole thing gets messy.

"I've always wanted a loyalty program, but they're so hard to implement if they're not built directly into your software," Michael says. "There's a lot of trust involved, and it gets messy. Having it just be part of the platform makes all the difference."

Michael Thomas

Owner & Operator, Laser Blaze

When ROLLER launched its native Loyalty feature, Michael was an early adopter, and one of the beta customers who helped shape it.

Building a program that works for everyone

Laser Blaze already had a membership program embedded in its laser tag system, built around the players themselves. Members earn achievements, unlock new avatars, level up, and collect RFID membership cards with different graphics at each tier. They wear them on lanyards. They show them off. It keeps them coming back.

But Michael recognized that the player and the payer are two different people. And that meant loyalty needed to speak to both.

"The laser tag membership is really about the kids. They earn achievements, level up, and collect new membership cards. The loyalty program is more of an incentive for the parents, because they're the ones spending the money. They get the savings."

Michael Thomas

Owner & Operator, Laser Blaze

It's a smart dual-layer approach. "The membership encourages the kids to want to come back and keep building up their achievements. The loyalty program gives the parents a reason to bring them back. They both have their place."

With ROLLER's help, Michael structured the program to take advantage of every loyalty feature available; points earning, spending milestones, and session-based rewards.

"Once you're set up, it all works really well. The team helped us think through how to structure the program, and we managed to utilize all of the different loyalty features so we could trial them all."

Michael Thomas

Owner & Operator, Laser Blaze

Parties as the entry point

When a family books a birthday party at Laser Blaze, they earn a significant number of loyalty points just from that single visit. Enough, in most cases, to redeem for a couple of free games on a return visit.

At checkout, staff are trained to mention it: join the loyalty program, and your points from tonight are basically a couple of free games for the kids next time. It's a natural, low-pressure conversation that plants the seed for a follow-up visit.

And it's working. Even in the early weeks of rollout, Michael spotted exactly the behavior he'd designed the program to drive.

"I randomly clicked on a customer in the Loyalty reporting, and he'd done exactly what I'd hoped. Played twice in a weekend, earned his points, and booked again for the school holidays using them."

Michael Thomas

Owner & Operator, Laser Blaze

Early signs and what's ahead

With reporting released just weeks prior to this story, Laser Blaze is still in the early stages of measuring impact. But the leading indicators are strong. Sign-up rates exceeded what the ROLLER team had predicted, driven in large part by a simple but effective staff practice: ensuring the loyalty opt-in box is checked at checkout for every transaction.

Michael is now focused on the next phase: using automated emails to re-engage members who've accumulated points but haven't yet redeemed them, and exploring how Patch, his retention tool, can layer on top of ROLLER Loyalty to drive timely, targeted follow-up.

For other operators considering loyalty, his advice is straightforward: the mechanics work, the platform makes it simple, and the proof is in the behavior change.