Royal Croquet Club

OK place only spoilt by awful awful food and not much choice. Inadequate and poorly maintained toilets. Minuscule plastic wine glasses. Garden of unearthly delights is way better.

A perfect use of Victoria Square. Always raising the bar with cool food options, quirky bars and you can of course play croquet-​perfect for Fringe weather. They always have a full and diverse lineup of Adelaide Fringe shows and then have great free DJs.

This is an updated review of the daytime visit of RCC 2016 and from a family perspective. Disappointing! Good bye water swing, water play area in front of the stage and no petting zoo or other kids activities other than the $ 10 camel or pony ride (outside the venue). No dotMaze.
No gelato station either but if you fork out $ 10 you can get a Scroll ice-​cream sundae but I wasn’t too impressed with it. Didn’t live up to the hype.
The smoothies (Big Table) were also $ 10 a pop and all very «healthy» and not child-​friendly. Both kids rejected the banana-​rama (chia, banana, dates, coconut) that we ordered. And they usually like stuff like that. I didn’t think it was good either — I observed that the person who made it seemed unfamiliar with the recipe.
Wines in plastic glasses as before (boo!). And they were not yet fully set up till about 2 hours after it was advertised. No updates on Facebook etc. I should’ve stuck to the Garden.
Disgusting toilets. At 3pm it looked like the aftermath of a rave party. Yucks. And no hand soap provided in the toilets.
This year it’s free entry before 7pm. After its $ 5 cover charge.
Not coming back unless I’ve booked a show here.

A really nice way to pass a few hours on a sunny afternoon. Playing a condensed version of the game was super fun and the relaxed vibe was nice. Definitely family friendly, at least during the day light hours. I’ve never played croquet before, so I loved that and will definitely be back next year to beat some more people at the flamingos game. #HellsToTheYeah
Downsides? The cost of drinks and food is ridic ($ 4 for a cup of soft drink, etc.) The playing area isn’t very big, so only 4 popel can play at once so there were people waiting quite a while. And there isn’t a huge amount of seating/​tables around the croquet area.

Even though this venue has disappeared now I still find it worthy of a review, in the hope that it will return for festival season next year!
I ventured into this lovely little area early on a Friday night before a Fringe show. I was very happy to avoid the $ 5 cover charge and I didn’t have to line up either. The atmosphere inside was casual, happy and fun with just a touch of hipster ;)
To me there were three distinct areas here — the main/​entrance area (with 2 large bars and one small one, food trucks, the large performance tent and the croquet field), the Japanese garden area (with its own bar and ‘Japanese tapas’ food) and the Jamaican/Hatian/‘pirate’ shanty town (offering Jamaican food, another bar and an eclectic decorating scheme). There was certainly no shortage of choices for bars and food — I had to do two laps of the whole place before I could decide on what I wanted to eat!
Apart from food and bars there were plenty of other things to hold your interest — street performers, a main stage with live music and DJs, croquet games, a fountain for the kids to play in, $ 5 shows in smaller tents and plenty of areas to just sit and chat. I especially liked the croquet area with a quieter bar and high referee chairs so short people like me could feel like the king of the world!
If you had a show to go to the cycle taxis would take you down to the Garden in exchange for a fiver and some good conversation.
I loved the fact that you could spend no money, or all of it, and still have a fabulous time. My only sadness is that I didn’t get to meet the donkeys I have read about in the other reviews! Please come back next year Royal Croquet Club!

I came here at the butt-​end of a week on a Saturday night /​Sunday morning so I probably caught a crowd and vibe here that isn’t happening during normal/​sane hours.
Line-​up at 1am was 40 people deep. Came back 40 minutes later and walked straight in after begrudgingly handing $ 5 over for entry.
Entrance smelt like vomit; hit all five of us straight off. We got past that though…
The food on offer in here; much different from the sideshow type setup in the Garden. Most impressive was the options if you didn’t want to chow down on typical festival fare.
Drinks line-​up was minimal and I loved the deck-​chairs and communal seating available. The DJ on stage at the back of the venue was playing some good tracks; mostly aimed at the teen/​early 20’s crowd.
I liked this place a lot but I suspect the kids overrunning this place after dark and turning it into a mini Future Music Festival would deter visitors to Adelaide or the elderly (like myself) from enjoying this place.
I’m keen to visit during daylight hours if I’ve got the time before it’s done this year. I have a feeling I’ll be adding another star when I do.
Get along here while you can this year, there’s only one day left!

I wish this was a permanent feature in the heart of Adelaide. There’s great music, great food, great people, and croquet! Who has even played croquet?! Not me. Who cares. There’s lots more going on than just this game here. I love the party atmosphere. I bet this place would be even better at night after sundown. It’s also family friendly but I wouldn’t bring your family here at night. I can imagine that it gets pretty crazy. I love the variety of food stalls, and the Jamaican or Japanese themed areas. Good work guys! I hope the fringe clubs are even better next year.

Another fantastic addition to our vibrant city at this crazy time of year!
The Royal Croquet Club adds another hang out area to help spread out all those Adelaideians who seem to just show up at this time of year… it’s like our population triples and they all want to be in the same place at once… well now there are a couple places they should all want to be — this place being one of em!
I can’t wait to get back here throughout the fringe — especially when I am hungry as the food options looked great! I also can’t wait to dance the night away as the vibe seems perfectly suited… the only downfall is that you will certainly have to dodge the traffic of victoria square as you leave — so try not to drink so much that you are stumbling about!

I really liked it here, so many different options for everybody. There were people here to see shows, day drinkers ready for a Sunday sesh and families enjoying the sunshine.
Plenty of food and drinks to choose from, slightly more pricier than your average bar, plenty of seats and even a fountain fir kids to play in.
But wait, that’s not all! There’s a kombi van photo booth, a Pimms bar, a gigantic tent set up for fringe shows and a big area set up for croquet (well it is the croquet club!). There were a couple of other areas set up too but I couldn’t gain access to them on a Sunday afternoon. One looked pretty cool with heaps of bikes riding up a wire fence.
During the few hours I was there, there was free entertainment and performers. The only downside is that there is very, very little shade and the seats that were in the shade did not ever come available.

This place really kicks some ass!
No really… it’s pretty obvious that Royal Croquet Club were designing this city Fringe hub and thought, «how on earth are we going to kick more ass than The Garden?» And some brainiac said «let’s bring donkeys to the party!» And so it was.
Standing out like a sore croquet thumb in the centre of Vic Square, the Royal Croquet Club has turned this cement block into 3 worlds of Fringe madness. From a pirate shanty town to Asian fusion bar and the obligatory pommy croquet club, this place is a mish mash of side shows, food trucks, live bands and DJs, roaming artists and $ 5 – 10 shows in one of their 5 performance spaces.
You can come in here and spend nothing or a pretty penny and I love that. With the fountain going off in the middle of the day for kids, live bands and family friendly acts roaming the venue, you could bring the kids in, have a few drinks of Pimms and not leave with a hole in your pocket.
My one complaint would be the lack of vego and gf options for us special people. I know I sound like a hemp wearing hippy but it would be good to have that under consideration next year. I also couldn’t for the life of me find any croquet, but I guess when you have a hairdressing salon, photo booth, animal farm and fountain in your venue croquet is probably the last thing on your mind at the Royal Croquet Club.

Best time of year to experience life outside with friends and the royal croquet club does not disappoint! So much range of treats and eats, atmospheric music, sunshine, photo booths, and the Fringe season at its best with new locations. So great!