In this episode, we catch you up to speed on what’s happening at Kartland Performance Indoor Raceway in Frisco. Manager Nick Williams explains the differences in carts, namely the ages and speeds for each type of cart, as well as the leagues, specials, and other activities besides cart racing. Did you know they have virtual reality and a STEM station? So many ways to participate with or without your foot on the pedal.
Nick fills us in on the safety measures Kartland takes to keep you distanced and sanitized during your experience. Whether you are racing solo, enjoying a birthday party with friends, competing with your family on game night, or bonding with your teammates or colleagues, there’s plenty of fast fun to be had by all at Kartland.
SHOW NOTES:
[01:09] What to expect at Kartland and what’s different[03:49] COVID-19 Safety Measures
[05:24] Kinds of activities and parties
[07:13] Go-Karts speeds and ages
[11:56] STEM and Leagues
[15:50] All You Can Race
[17:26] Family Owned
[18:36] Where to find Kartland
LINKS & RESOURCES:
- Kartland on Lifestyle Frisco | Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Connect with Lifestyle Frisco on:
Transcript
Machine-generated.
Welcome to the Frisco Podcast. Today we’re talking Kartland Performance Indoor Raceway. We have the guy who runs the place, Nick Williams, on Zoom with us. So, Nick’s going to give us a rundown of what’s going on over there at Kartland. Welcome, Nick; how are you?
I’m good. I’m good. Just holding down the fort. It’s a lot of fun. Um, pretty fast. We’ve been doing this now, guess, Kartland since 2018, February, 2018. So, this upcoming February will be three years, um, of just letting everybody experience the rush.
And I’m sure, I’m sure you guys plan really perfectly well for 2020, right? Nothing’s changed.
Oh, yeah. Perfect. Perfectly. We’ve been going- actually, so, we opened up back again. Um, I think it was May 1st when everything was kind of allowed to start reopening. And since then, um, at each month keeps getting better.
That’s fantastic. Good deal. Okay. Well, I want to talk to people about, um, you know – in general, people haven’t been in there yet? Why Kartland- maybe why it’s different from others? What they can expect when they go in. Let’s start with that.
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, right now everything’s kind of COVID; it’s 2020. So, um, we recommend everybody wear masks when they come in. Um, once they get racing, we do require head socks, which are just- we sell them for $2 or you can bring in your own helmet if you don’t want to use one of our rental helmets right now. Okay. Um, um, we walk in the door and have y’all registered. Get y’all set up, um, on that. If you’ve been here before, great. But if you haven’t, we’ll get you on little waiver. Get you inside. Get you set up for the races. Give you your head sock. Get you on a little safety video. Teach you about the karts cause they are a lot different than your normal pop-up karts. They’re not your normal pop karts. Um, you’re going 45 miles an hour here on our indoor facility. You’re an inch off the ground and you’re racing. So, they are a lot different. We’re going to tell you everything. If you have any questions, my team’s awesome. They’ll take care of your racing line. If they see something that you can do a little bit better, be going faster, we’re definitely gonna help you out with that.
Oh, cool. So, some of the stuff you mentioned, you probably can do online before you get in there too, right? Like registering and doing waivers. Some of that stuff could help, um, reduce the amount of, you know, waiting and or contact you have with folks when you get in there. Right?
Exactly. Exactly. So, we actually now do online booking, so you can entirely book your race online. Um, that- just go to our website, go to “book now;” set you up right there. Select, uh, all your different race packages. Um, there are some that you can do in store that gets you a little bit of a better deal. Um, but our most popular items are all right there online. You can also, if you just want to get yourself registered so you don’t have to use the iPads when you come in, which are cleaned between every use, you can register online at that registration or register online link and sign your waiver. Uh, just come to the cashier when you’re ready and we’ll get you in your races.
Okay. Okay. We keep mentioning the online. So, I just want to take that chance to say that it’s Kartland with a K kartland.com is where you can go to look at that stuff. And then I also want to make sure and call out – in August, we, um, did an article. So, lifestylefrisco.com, You guys can go look for an article entitled Kartland Waves The Green Flag on Indoor Fun. It’s a fun article so you learn even more than you’re going to learn from us probably here today. Um, so some different stuff. So go check that out. All right. So you mentioned about, um, ways online that we can register and maybe prevent some of the contact, but what are some of the other COVID related safety measures that you guys have going on?
Yeah, obviously we’re- with the state mandate, you have to wear a mask whenever you come in. Um, we do now require a $2 head sock which covers your face. You’ll wear it. It’s a full-face or a full-head, head sock. So, it covers your hair, covers your head. Um, and you’ll wear it up over your nose just kind of like a ski mask. Um, you’ll wear that under the helmets to separate you from the helmets and the helmets from you. Um, but when you come in, uh, we’ll give you all that and get you set up. Then between each race that a kart gets used, we’ll wipe down everything. Get all nice and clean for y’all. Um, sanitize it. And then at the end of, or actually the end of the race, if you have more races, we’ll ask you to hold on to your helmet for your entire stay. Then once you’re done racing, we’ll ask you to put it on our empty helmet rack that we have set up. And then we actually just got in a couple months ago, a UV sanitation unit. So, we’ll- it’s this nice big unit. We can, uh, clean or sanitize up to 10 helmets at a time. So, we’ll stick those in there between, uh, anybody using them. It takes about eight minutes to sanitize them. And then they’re nice and clean for y’all, for the next person.
I love that. I don’t know why those UV sanitation lights are so fascinating to me. But, I just think right now it is just amazing that you can put something in there and know that in a matter of minutes, you’re sterilized and good to go. That’s great. Exactly; yes, ma’am. Um, okay. So, Nick, what are some of the kinds of activities that you can do? Obviously it’s it’s racing, but, um, what are some different ideas of activities or types of people and groups that come in there?
Yeah. So, um, just touch on all the activities we have. Uh, we don’t just have go-karting. Um, we do, as soon as you walk into the door, you’ll see our massive VR arena, our virtual reality arena. Uh, we have, uh, five or six different games on there for you to play. We can play with up to four players. Um, it’s a lot of fun. Also, if you look over to your left, as you come in, we have, uh, karting simulators also. So, you can experience what it’s like to actually race in a real racing kart. Um, for birthday parties, we have the rookie package, which is going to get you two races, a round on in our virtual reality arena for all the kids, all of this is our private events. So, your kids aren’t racing with any randoms or anything, it’s only-
You get the racetrack to yourself? That’s awesome.
Exactly, you have the entire racetrack to yourselves. We also offer corporate events or just adult party packages which can get you a real racing experience as far as actually getting raced for position. It’s going to start out with a practice so you get used to kart, get used to track, find your racing line. And then for qualifying now that you know, everything, you can go out there and try and set your single fastest lap time. And as I say that all of our races at kartland are scored based on your single fastest lap time. So, even if you come alone, you don’t have to worry about not having anybody to race with. Um, if you’re the only one- only person here, because all our times are based on that time challenge, trying to get that single fastest lap time. Um, so, and we always display all the top times of the day, the week of the month. So, you kind of have a benchmark of, okay, this is how fast I can go or I want to go or how I want to go faster than this time.
Very cool. Okay. So, speaking of speed, um, tell me more about the karts. I heard you say that they go 45 miles per hour, right? Sure do. And there’s more than just one kind, I think. There’s, um, cause there’s, there’s younger kids. Right. And then like youth karts. So give me the rundown on, like how old are you if you do the little karts and all that good stuff.
Yes. Yeah. So, I’ll sit down with the kids. Um, you have to be 6 years old and 48 inches to race in the kids karts. Um, those go 25 miles an hour. Um, there are a lot of fun, even us adults, um, like to have some fun in them. Um, now, however, I say that with a grain of salt. Um, if- we can’t have adults in the kids karts, um, but every now and then, as I say that as the employees have had, we’ll hop in a car, if we need to have a, uh, like a kid doesn’t want to race by themselves, we’ll hop in one. Um, so they don’t feel like they’re racing alone, because they really want somebody to race with. Yeah. Um, then you have the youth karts, which are actually my adult karts just slowed down to 35 miles an hour. So, adults can race with their kids 12 and up in those races. Um, and they have to be 12 years old, 56 inches to fit in those karts. Then to actually drive the 45 mile an hour, um, adult karts, you have to have a driver’s license, a physical driver’s license and be at 56 inches. Um, unfortunately learner’s permits do not count for that, but they actually have to be at- a real driver’s license.
Sure. Okay. So, six years old, you can start with the junior karts, 12 years old, you can do the youth karts that go 35 miles an hour. And then when you have your legit driver’s license, you can, you can go full speed at 45.
Exactly. Exactly. And while we’re talking about the karts, they’re, uh, Italian-made, um, electric high-performance go-karts. Um, so, they’re made to go quick. Um, they’re a lot of fun. They actually handle like a true go-kart would. Um, personally, I actually race go-karts myself. Um, and I go around to tracks all over, check out all other, uh, rental karts. And so far out of all the karts that I’ve been in, um, electric-wise, the OTL Storms that we have here are my absolute favorite with no bias opinions in there.
Fantastic. So, are these karts- you mentioned that you guys have been open since February, 2018. Are these karts that, um, Kartland purchased at that time or do y’all always kind of roll in new karts? How does that work?
So there are karts that we’ve had. Um, we were a different facility before we were Kartland. However, that does not mean that they are old karts. Um, every now and then a car will need a full-chassis rebuild. So, we will build, rebuild it from the chassis all the way up. So, essentially they’re brand new karts whenever they do that. Got it. Yes. Ma’am.
Wow, awesome. I didn’t realize that about all the types of karts. So then if my, um, if my, you know, 10-year-old, is there racing in one of the junior cars and he’s going only going 25 miles an hour, which by the way, it makes me feel a lot better, um, is he only racing against other junior karts or are there guys going on 45 next to’em?
Exactly. So, it’s only going to be kids karts with kids, for the youth races, with the adults that go 35. They all the karts in that race have to go 35 miles an hour. Okay. And then the adult karts, it’s only adults on the track. Cool.
So, it keeps it fair and kind of different types of races are happening all the time so that they’re not intermingled together.
Exactly, exactly the way we kind of rotate our, um, our schedule is on a, say a busy Saturday we’ll have a kids race, a youth race and an adult race. And it will constantly be that in between. So, hopefully, it would be no longer than a 15-minute wait, unless we just have a crazy busy group. So, how long are the races? Each race is going to be 8 minutes long. Ooh, that’s a good long time. Oh yeah. It’s a lot of fun
Or that seems, um, that seems like a long time compared to some of the outdoor places that we’ve gone to. It feels like it, you get it, you wait in line for a while and then your race is like 2 minutes and you’re done.
Exactly, exactly. It used to be- we used to do it by laps. Um, but we changed the track every quarter. Um, so it’s a different track every time you come in. And this track, I noticed the times were a little bit too, too fast for the 12 lap races. They come out to like 4 minutes for my super-fast, uh, regulars. And so with that, I was like, let’s just go and make it fair. Everybody races 8 minutes. And we’ve people have been loving it so far. It definitely from me, that’s used to those 12 lap races, it’s been kind of tiring. But it’s plenty of fun.
Okay. That’s cool, 8 minutes. That’s a long race. So, tell me about, um, I hear you guys have like things like leagues and even like STEM kind of educational stuff going on there. So, tell me about that.
Yes, ma’am. So, we’ll start with our STEM classes. Um, we, uh, like to have schools bring field trips in. Um, unfortunately, I don’t think that many schools are doing field trips right now. Um, but we’ll, we’ll do as we set up kind of like centers. We’ll have somebody in this room that I’m in right now and they’ll be doing a PowerPoint, teaching them all about, uh, Newton’s laws and showing them how they go correlate with racing. So, they’re all kind of physics, STEM classes. Then, we’ll have a lab out in our, uh, main area, um, our main waiting area with ramps and tires and balls and, um, we’ll then calculate, um, speed, um, with the distance over time. So, the kids will have stopwatches and then we’ll have, uh, the distances marked. So at each, uh, distance, someone will stop the stopwatch. Grab the time. Then, of course the kids can’t come in here and not race. Um, so what better a field trip where you can come and race go-karts.
Yeah, but then there’s also some kids that can’t race, you know, just not able to physically or you’re hurt or for some reason, or they’re super scared. I love that there’s something else, you know, they can, there’s other kinds of activities and um, like the VR and things you mentioned a while ago. That’s really cool that it’s not only the, you know, racing.
Exactly, exactly. Um, we, we have kids that come in that we have their 6-year-old, their 6-year-old brothers in there racing, but they’re not quite tall enough or old enough. And so, they have other things to do here for them.
That’s great. Okay then, what about leagues?
That’s my favorite topic. Right now we’re doing a, uh, we just started or actually we’re about to finish our youth league, which is going to it’s a six, uh, 6-week league. And it went from the last week in September second, uh second to last or the last week in September, and it’ll be ending this Tuesday. Um, it’s been a lot of fun. We’ve been doing both the youth. So the 35 miles-an-hour karts and the juniors to 25 mile-an-hour karts. And we’ve had amazing turnout with it. The kids are enjoying it. We do a practice race so they get used to the karts to get used to the track every day. Um, then we have them do a qualifier. So like I mentioned earlier to try to get that single fastest lap time, then that last race is the coveted position based race. So we actually grid start everybody formula-one style out on the track. And as soon as the green flags drop, we give them the full speed and they’re off to the races trying to be first. Then, um, that’s 6 o’clock on Tuesday nights. Um, again, that’s finishing up this Tuesday, the 27th of October, but, um-
There are other leagues, though, that start like, you know, you’re probably continually starting and stopping.
Exactly. We’ll probably be doing another one here in the winter. So, that’ll- look out for that. We’re definitely doing one in the spring. Um, so look out for that, to the kids.
Well, I love about that is it’s a consistent activity that, you know, it’s, it’s getting your kids, um, out, but not- obviously it’s indoor, so it’s not weather permitting. You can consistently count on it. But, it’s getting them away from, you know, things like devices or iPads or gaming things. If we’re trying to get kids away from those and break certain habits, that’s cool. It’s like an another thing for them to go do this. That’s physical and exciting for them.
Exactly, exactly. And right now in COVID times, I mean, this is something that they can do and not like football or soccer where they’re right up on their opponent. Um, they’re actually in their own individual karts separated from them, so.
Yeah, that’s really cool. So, you mentioned leagues are right now on Tuesday nights. Um, I also know that you have- I would encourage people to go look at your website to see the other deals that you have going. I mean, while we record this, uh, we’re rounding out October, so things will probably change as we hit in November. But, um, like right now, if you go on your site, you see things like All-You-Can-Race Wednesdays and $15 Mondays and even Happy Hour. So what does that even look like, Happy Hour Fridays?
So 4-7 on Fridays, you get $12.99 races. So, essentially you’re getting our friends-and-family’s, uh, price for races. And you do have to have what we call our Annual Race License, but the Annual Risk License is a sweet deal. It’s $8.95. It gets you discounted races as well as a free race during your birth month. Um, so essentially getting an $8 race right there during your birth month. Wow. And then it pays for itself in special deals like that $12.99 special. On Mondays, we do $15 races. And then, like you said, on Wednesday nights, we have the All-You-Can-Race. Um, the awesome thing I’ve been seeing about the All-You-Can-Race is people have been really getting into karting from that All-You-Can-Race. Um, earlier this year when we started it in the summer, I had some people that were up here every, uh, every Wednesday night doing it. And then they actually started showing up for my Thursday night, uh, adult league, which starts at 7:30.
Yes, that’s a good, it’s a good way to expose people to it. Um, and going have more than one race if they’re, you know, tight on what they can spend that night or whatever. So, that’s awesome. So now, as far as Kartland goes, is this a unique like locally owned business or is this a franchise where we can find them everywhere?
This is a local Frisco family-owned business. Um, they’re here almost every day, um, making sure we’re doing things properly, taking care of things. And if you’re up here during the weekday, most likely meet at least one of the owners.
Awesome. Well, who should we look for? What are their names?
So we have Kim and we have Frank. Um, they’re awesome people. Um, Kim, um, she comes from a, uh, amazing background, so she knows how to run the place. Um, Frank, her husband, uh, quite the handyman. Um, he helps us out with anything we need fixed around the building. And, uh, they’re both just some of the sweetest people.
I love that. I love that there, you know, it’s Frisco family-owned. I love that they’re in there on a regular basis. They probably know their customers and, and really like sounds hands-on like you said about Frank. So that’s, that’s good to hear. I love that. Like, it makes me want to go to places that are, that are part of the community like that even more. Right. For sure. Okay. Then let’s see. What else, how can people find you? Like were- describe to people in Frisco where they can find you physically and as far as the best place to find you online or on social.
Right, right. So online, um, for our website, kartland.com, um, we’re right there. Um, for social media, it’s all going to be, uh, Kartland or Kartland Raceway. Um, it’s kart with a K. Yep. Um, so not with a C. And then as far as our physical location, we’re, uh, just a little bit hidden behind FC Dallas Stadium. I kind of call us Frisco’s Hidden Gem. Um, we’re off Frisco st. And All-Stars ave. Um, and that little business park right back there. Um, if you know, we’re right between El Dorado and Maine, so.
So you’re back there. A lot of volleyball people would know things back there, right? The LoneStar Volleyball- I think the warehouse, the warehouse section back there. Are you neighbors with Dude Perfect?
We are neighbors with Dude Perfect. We’re in a couple of their videos. If you, if you pay close attention while they’re in the back, you can see us. I was going to ask, have they ever been in there? Oh, they have. They have quite a few times.
Yeah. That seems right up their alley, getting in there and getting some racing going. Yes, ma’am. Fantastic. Well, Nick, thank you for your time and filling us in. I’m excited for people to hear this so they can go check it out and get in on it. Whether you’re a family wanting to go have family night or corporate, you know, or business locally wanting to just let off some steam and have your employees get out for a minute and do something fun. Or whether you have like a youth team that you want to go and get some team-building in and something different for a change, um, go check out Kartland Performance Indoor Raceway.
Thank you. We look forward to seeing everybody on the track here soon.
The QB Position – Trends and Troubles of the Season