Hidden Valley

This place sucks web site said it was open drove 45 mins to play and no one was there my son was in tears

I used to go to Hidden Valley all the time as a kid, so it will always have a special place in my heart ~sobs~.
The course as a whole has changed a little over the years, and is your typical mini golf course. The highlight of my trips, however, was the Italian Ice afterwards.
Coming in your standard Italian Ice flavors, it was the perfect thing to finish off a round of mini golf. The texture was just right, and 10-​year-​old me loved combining different fruit flavors together in those little paper cups.
I stopped by there recently just to get the Italian Ice and I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, I was actually PAID to eat it! The lady (who I’m assuming is a manager there) seemed either distracted by something or didn’t know how to handle money.
She took my $ 20 bill, and after counting the change several times handed me back the roughly $ 16 that I should have gotten back. After getting back to my house, I checked my wallet to notice that not only did I have that $ 16 in change, but my original $ 20 as well. So in essence, I got paid $ 16 to eat some great Italian Ice!
I would have felt bad and compelled to drive back to give the $ 20 back, but the lady checked the change no less than three times before giving me money back, so at that point I feel like she didn’t deserve for me to have to drive all the way back there for her mistake.
Overall, a great place that I’m sure I’ll return to again someday!

I’ve been here several times, really nice course, very well maintained, and pretty average difficulty. The price is a little strap at $ 7.50, and cash only. Otherwise they have a great $ 5 before 5pm and you can play all you want. I’d recommend this place to anyone.

I just changed my review from 3 stars to one after I read their solution to Gretchen D’s experience. Four free passes for mini golf? You ruin a child’s birthday party and that’s all you offer in return? You should have offered the family a YEAR of free golf
And interestingly enough, I had the same experience. They stay open when they feel like it. We called at 7 to see if they were open, they said they’d be open till 10, so we drove 25 miles to get there at 830 and they were closed. Mind you, it was a clear, beautiful night. I guess since my experience didn’t involve severely disappointing a child on their birthday, we don’t get anything in return for our $ 10 of wasted gas and hour of wasted time?
This cheap, spineless company will go out of business very soon… Hopefully. I’ll sure do my best to spread the word, that’s for sure

Fun — Excellent food — Friendly Atmosphere — Affordable
Awesome course. Waterfall running right down the center. Beautifully landscaped.
$ 5 per player Monday thru Friday until 5:00 pm for as many games as you want. Play a game, have a hot dog and fries (very good, onion rings are great), play a 2^nd game, have some ice cream (Italian ice even better) play a 3^rd game and you’ve spent the day for $ 15. Try that at an amusement park.
Just a great place. Batting cages too.
Dar

I have only played mini-​golf here and the mini-​course was not very imaginative but it is well maintained and fun nonetheless. I have never used the batting cage. This is a review of the food. Hidden Valley is only open during the summer months and is a great place to stop for hot dogs, hamburgers and italian ice. Food is always prepared fresh and served piping hot. They keep it simple and the price point is appropriate. I dislike the fact that you can only use cash here. It is such a barrier to me patronising this business. It is time to accept credit/​debit cards already. In this day and age when every street vendor can whip out a Square or other credit card reader, a cash only establishment just seems absurd.

I actually think this is one of the better mini-​golf course in the mid-​Connecticut area.
It’s $ 7.50 for one round per person — which is kind of steep — but if a movie these days is $ 11 — I guess it’s comparable?
The landscaping is really nice with a ton of water features — including a cave, waterfall, etc.
The actual golf holes aren’t exactly hard — there were only a few holes that were pretty tricky, but I think the atmosphere made up for it.
This place has been around for a long time (at least 15+ years) — so you know it’s good if it’s still in existence. You may be at the point where kid’s parents went to this place when they were young — that type of long history.
The only negative is if it’s really busy, things can really get backed up really bad. Luckily, when I went it was quiet and I had the place to myself.

**Batting cage review only** While the price is right this place has seen better days, the machines are old and well past their prime. There’s no ‘ON’ light we could locate so it was pop the token get in the box and wait for the pitch. Then once you thought the last ball was thrown, you had to wait a few seconds to make sure that was it, there a delayed final pitch on a few tokens. My girl used the fast-​pitch softball machine and it was ALL over the place. The first couple of tokens the pitch was so close she was cut off at the handle, and brushed back. Then about 5 tokens in she actually got beaned, lol standing a good 2 ft off of where they have home plate marked out. I’ve heard of game like situations, but this was out of control. Just about every pitch was either WAY up, WAY inside, or WAY outside. Out of 100 pitches there were probably 5 strikes, she even jumped at one point to try and hit one way over her head (she’s a HS varsity softball player). While we might go back because of the extra skill it takes to track the ball and make good contact, this is defiantly not the place to bring a novice batter. From what I saw the other cages were close to as bad, if I go back I will try a few different cages myself and update my review.

I worked at Hidden Valley a few years ago. The landscaping on the mini-​golf course is actually really nice… there’s a couple of mini-​lakes connected by a river with a waterfall, and a lot of nice landscaping aspects to the place. There’s a pirate ship and picnic area in the back that is kind of hidden and private, great for kids. The batting cages are fun for adults who don’t care much for mini-​golf. And the food is quite good. There’s no arcade anymore. The batting cages could have better machines. Sometimes people get hit by pitches.
I’ll address the review made by Gretchen. I will say that you definitely have to be careful about making sure that they’re open when you decide to bring a group like that. You really can’t call them in the morning and expect to know whether they’ll be open at night. In the early and late parts of the season, you’ll get days that are a bit too cold for people to go out, and you’ll get days in the middle of the summer when it’s too hot for people to come out. When customers don’t show up, the manager will just choose to close because it costs her too much to keep the place open. You have to call maybe an hour or two in advance. It’s tough to fault them for choosing to close when nobody is coming to the business and you have to pay five employees/​utilities to keep everything running.
I know the manager in Gretchen’s review. I wouldn’t describe her as «absolutely vile.» She definitely can come off as abrasive to customers, but she’s also really friendly with others. My buddy delivers Pepsi to her, and he loves her. I think the issue is that there was a communication problem with the staff… they should definitely mention over the phone that «we usually close at 9, but we’re liable to close at any time, and you should give us a call right before you leave.» That particular manager works ridiculous hours… probably fifteen hours a day for seven days a week, minus time off when it rains. To ask her to stay open an extra hour at the end of one of her days is frustrating for her, although I agree that she could be more friendly about it. I don’t know about the rest of the staff now, but in my experience, most of the workers there have been good people.
Note that the place opens sometime in the late spring and closes in the early fall.

Horrible experience. Disappointed children and a disappointed auntie. Will NEVER go back. I’d rather give my money to a company that cares about their clientele.
Called early this AM, at 11am. Spoke to a pleasant girl who told me that the golf course stayed open until 9pm. That’s great. My niece and nephew, from out of state, had their heart set on going mini-​golfing, and we knew that to get all aunts/​uncles/​grandma and grandpa together it had to be tonight, and relatively «late». I left work early to ensure that i could participate… Imagine our «surprise» (i.e. frustration) when we get there and they’ve «just closed»… But that «normally they’re open until 10pm»…
So we ask to speak to the manager… We can see that there are other people on the course still, so we believe that when she sees that we’re a large group ($ 52 large), and she hears that we’ve been told by two of her employees that they should still be open, that she’ll let us play… No dice. This absolutely vile woman, when she heard that the other employee had said that they were open until 10pm, gave the other girl such a glare… Oh, but then my brother mentioned that she’d said «normally open», and this troll manager latched onto that like it was a lifeline… «we’re normally open until 10pm» she kept repeating over and over as if that was justification or excuse for closing at 7:30, in perfectly clear weather with moderate temperatures…
Despite pleading and attempting to reason with this unreasonable woman, we all parted ways, thoroughly disgusted and, for the kids part, deflated. This was the one thing my niece wanted to do for her birthday. The one thing the manager did do was tell us that if we needed to play tonight we could go to Golf Quest, «just down the road», in Southington. Thanks, vile woman, we’ll definitely be going there next time. You won’t ever see us or our money again. And you can be sure that I’ll tell EVERYONE I know about this. Horrible horrible horrible.

A great place to go. $ 6 adult $ 4 kids and seniors per golf game. Kool course. Good cheap food. Nice picnic and play area and they also have batting cages.