KING OF PRUSSIA, Penn. — The first time you walk into Netflix House, the streaming giant’s amusement park-carnival mash-up northwest of Philadelphia, it’s overwhelming.
Flashing neon signs hang from the ceiling, framing the bar that stands in the middle of Netflix Bites, the restaurant at the center of the space. There’s a deep cut from “I Think You Should Leave”: “55 burgers, 55 fries, 55 tacos, 55 pies.” Another sign shows the alcoholic BoJack Horseman cheerfully holding a martini: “What is this, breakfast?” The image of a pie against a British flag reads “No soggy bottoms,” an unofficial catchphrase from “The Great British Baking Show.”
When you look around the room, the onslaught continues. Near a cluster of chairs, a three-foot mannequin is on display, clothed in what appears to be a couture dress made of croissants. “This dress is serving” is written around the display, a nod to “Emily in Paris.”
A glass case pairs “Wednesday”-themed Jell-O next to an elegant “Bridgerton” honey cake. The list of references goes on and on.
That onslaught of IP is kind of the point. Netflix’s first permanent real-world experience isn’t designed to showcase only a couple of standout properties. It’s a shrine to Netflix itself, an experience that’s designed and expected to change as quickly as titles rise and fall on Netflix’s own Top 10 list.
The easiest way to describe Netflix House is as a 100,000-square-foot, aggressively IP-driven Dave & Buster’s. Located in the part of Philadelphia’s King of Prussia mall that used to house Lord & Taylor, it’s a free-to-enter space that contains a restaurant, bar, store, theater, nine holes of minigolf, two rooms dedicated to VR games, photo opportunities, an escape room and a carnival. The trick is that each of these offerings are pay to play and they’re all aggressively branded to showcase Netflix’s most prized shows and movies.
Netflix House is the latest expansion beyond streaming for one of the world’s biggest entertainment distributors, as the studio’s icy relationship with theater distributors shows signs of thawing, and it expands into live sports and podcasts. And while execs at the streamer refused to confirm whether the company is eyeballing a push into the lucrative theme park space, these in-person experiences undoubtedly serve to more prominently position Netflix in territory traditionally cornered by competitors Disney and NBCUniversal. As linear is cratering and the battle for eyeballs is being played out online, Netflix is looking ahead to a future where its cultural dominance finally expands beyond your living room.
This first location, which opened to the public on Wednesday, is also only the beginning. A second location is planned to open in Dallas on Dec. 11 with a third location in Las Vegas planned for 2027.
“We have a very flexible model, so [Netflix House] is actually perfectly designed to scale, because we have so many people who go on Netflix every day and tell us what they’re watching, what they’re eating, the characters that they love,” Marian Lee, chief marketing officer at Netflix, told TheWrap. “That’s what Netflix can bring. We have the data and the information.”
That flexibility was tested before Netflix House even opened thanks to the surprise success of “KPop Demon Hunters.” Though it’s not a main attraction in the space, the mega successful Sony-produced animated movie appears throughout Netflix House from signs and life-sized figures that depict Rumi, Zoey and Mira to special edition merchandise.
“I thought actually we’d start changing it up after we opened, not before, but we’re happy to have Derpy, Huntr/x and the whole gang represented,” Greg Lombardo, the vice president of live experiences at Netflix, told TheWrap.
Lombardo also teased “it’s safe to say there’ll be a lot more” of “KPop Demon Hunters” in Netflix House as these experiences expand.
Though Netflix House is the company’s first permanent in-person experience, it’s one that’s been several years and experiments in the making. Since releasing “Stranger Things: The Drive-Into Experience” in Los Angeles in 2020, the company has launched over 40 different experiences, totaling 450 openings across 300 cities globally. Netflix estimates these experiences have reached more than 10 million fans thus far.
As prices for the biggest IP-driven theme parks continue to soar, Netflix is carving out an unexpected space for itself when it comes to in-person experiences. It comes as the number of middle-class households dropped from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2023, according to research from Pew Research Center, with destinations like Disneyland targeting more affluent parkgoers. Despite the uncertainty about the economy, Millennial and Gen Z crowds are still increasingly looking for in-person experiences.
By targeting locations outside of major hubs like New York City and Los Angeles while also making Netflix House free-to-enter as competitors’ tickets rise, the company is making a play that could prove to be attractive to middle-class Americans. And by prioritizing the flexibility to change attractions based on popular IP, Netflix has created a space that encourages repeat visits.
“It’s important for us to be accessible to the fans. We don’t want you to have to hop on a plane,” Lombardo said.
Netflix declined to reveal the cost of these locations or revenue projections.
How does Netflix House work? And why Philadelphia and Dallas?
When Netflix started looking for a location for a permanent experience, the team was interested in places that would get a lot of foot traffic and that were close to both cities and suburbs.
“People can pop in — maybe they’re doing a day of shopping, maybe they want a quick bite to eat,” Lee said.
There was one other aspect that Netflix prioritized. The team wanted to open in cities that had built-in Netflix fandoms. It was research from the company’s previous 450 openings paired with internal viewership data, as well as those physical must-haves, that brought Netflix to the King of Prussia mall.
Since Netflix started experimenting with in-person experiences in 2020, the company hasn’t been afraid to activate in cities that are typically ignored for these types of experiences. In 2023, Netflix hosted an “Outer Banks” event in Jacksonville, Fla., specifically because the area had a large concentration of “Outer Banks” fans.
“It’s continuing to think about what our fans are asking for, and being in places that aren’t just the major metropolitan cities,” Lee explained. “I’d love to be in every major city all around the world, but we really are looking for places that have fandom built in. We pay attention.”
“There’s even a chance to, at the regional level, bring to life titles that are wildly popular,” Lombardo said.
Lee emphasized that the company listens to what its local fans are saying, pointing to a line of exclusive Netflix House Philadelphia merchandise. But planning for these locations goes beyond regional viewership habits and cutesy localized slogans (Net-phil-ix. It kind of works).
“We are paying attention to what the demographics are. Are there more kids here? What would be better for children? What’s better for adults? Things like that,” Lee said of programming what goes inside these Netflix House locations. So while the Philadelphia location has a nine-hole minigolf course, the company will be experimenting with adding an arcade to the Dallas location.
How much does it cost?
Netflix House is free to enter, but it doesn’t take long for experiences to empty your pocket.
Out of the three kinds of experiences the attraction offers, Netflix’s themed multimedia interactions are the most expensive starting at $39 each. Designed in collaboration with the creative teams behind Netflix’s biggest shows and movies, the Philadelphia location includes “One Piece: Quest for the Devil Fruit” — an adaptable, pirate-themed escape room — and “Wednesday: Eve of the Outcasts” — an open-world carnival that encourages participants to explore, play dark games and solve a murder with Wednesday and Thing on their iPhones. Each of these experiences takes roughly an hour to complete, has to be reserved by participants ahead of time and are largely child friendly. There are no jump scares, so if a kid can handle “Wednesday” or “One Piece,” they’ll be fine completing these.
It took roughly a year for both of these experiences to be designed, and only Netflix’s biggest properties are given this treatment. The Dallas location will have a “Squid Game” multimedia experience as well as a new “Stranger Things” challenge.
“These are titles that are obviously wildly popular with fans, have a global audience, but also they have these worlds that make you want to walk into them. They have characters that make you want to play alongside them,” Lombardo said. “For us, that’s always the biggest marker of the types of experiences we bring to life in that way.”
That price point is also in line with what Netflix has charged in the past. New York City’s now closed “Squid Game Experience,” which challenged participants to play through a series of brightly colored games straight from the show, started at $39 a person.
Netflix House’s next most expensive offering exists in virtual reality. Two state-of-the-art rooms offer both full-body motion capture and fans to simulate wind as participants play one of three Netflix VR games: “Squid Game Virtuals,” “Stranger Things: Catalyst” and “Rebel Moon: The Descent.” These games start at $25. Considering that comparable VR experiences around the same area ranged from $37 to $65 an hour, Netflix’s price is pretty reasonable.
The last experience is a classic — mini golf. The twist with this $15 attraction is that each hole has been customized around a different Netflix show or movie, and the goal is to get more points than your teammates rather than less. Better shots and winning minigames within the minigolf (like correctly guessing what is and isn’t cake) will land you more points. There’s also a leaderboard to let you know how you rank against other players as the course automatically counts your points using tracking technology embedded in your golf ball. Since nine holes of mini golf in the area range from $10 to $16, Netflix’s $15 per game isn’t exorbitant.
How Netflix House stacks up
If you were to do everything in one visit, that would put you back $118 for about five and a half hours of activities. And that’s without stopping by the Netflix Bites restaurant or the souvenir shop.
Though Netflix emphasized that Netflix House isn’t meant to compete with theme parks and that the goal is for people to visit the location again and again, all of those activities combined is roughly the price of a theme park ticket — the offering is most similar to the single park, single day pass offered by Disney or Universal.
For Disney, that costs consumers $104 a day for the cheapest ticket to Disneyland or $199 a day for Disney World. Though Disney’s California parks were recently hit with a price hike, it did not impact the lowest tier ticket. As for Florida, those increases are expected to happen in November of 2026.
Universal’s parks are a bit more consistent. The lowest ticket for Universal Studios Hollywood will cost you $109. Both Universal Studios Orlando and Islands of Adventure start at $119. And the recently opened Epic Universe is the most expensive of the Universal lot, with tickets starting at $139.
While the Disney and Universal parks each have far more attractions and thus more bang for your buck, they are travel destinations rather than convenient stops near your hometown, which is the intent for Netflix House.
“We don’t really think about the competition. We’re really focused on the fan,” Lombard said when asked about what sort of experiences or parks the company sees as its competitors. “How do we continue to innovate these experiences that are featured within Netflix House and make them as wildly enjoyable and authentic as possible?”
Looking ahead
At the moment, Netflix is primarily focused on making the Philadelphia and Dallas locations successful. That means learning from what resonates with fans once the space opens on Wednesday and figuring out how often to swap out attractions, decorations and menu items to reflect evolving tastes.
But the company is also looking to expand this offering. How many locations that may mean and whether Netflix will eventually enter the theme park business is a question for the future.
“The beauty of these permanent venues is that there is a lot of flexibility. We can move things around, test things and then move them to a different city. We continue to keep that test-and-learn model that we’ve been employing all around the world,” Lee explained. “Further down the line, we’re looking at scaling this type of experience.”
However, this offering and other in-person experiences have already changed Netflix’s strategy. Following the critical praise “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” received on the West End and its fan-favorite status on Broadway, Lombardo said the company is continuing to look at theatrical experiences that make sense. The focus on in-person experiences has also shifted how Lombardo’s team works with the programming side of the company.
“If you look at the sorts of stories we’ve brought to life so far, it’s been series like ‘Squid Game,’ ‘Bridgerton’ with the Queen’s Ball,’ Stranger Things.’ Those are opportunities for us to bring those worlds to life in a way that provides the fan their hero moment and gives them a chance to feel like they’re walking into an episode,” Lombardo said. “That’s been something that we’ve been very keen to do. Now, with Netflix House, we can do that year round, and we can do it across an even greater variety of titles and experiences.”
