Sales slow for new virtual fitness room

Park district patrons will find no trouble getting a shot to play some of the games in the new virtual fitness room at Simkus Recreation Center.

Carol Stream parks officials said Monday they've seen a tepid response so far to their new virtual fitness arcade room, which is housed in a room the park district once used for its preschool programming.

"Sales have been a little slow," said Julie Vogl, the park district's spokeswoman. "We need to do a lot more to try and create the awareness among the middle school crowd."

The fitness room stems, in part, from a successful Friday evening middle school program run by the park district called "Where the Party's At" in which preteens spend the evening playing a series of games that include the video game Dance Dance Revolution.

The park district started planning in February for the fitness room, which it's hoped will attract youths more apt to play computer games than exercise.

Since the fitness room opened in June, the park district has sold more than 600 daily passes and tracked the use of more than 260 free day passes distributed throughout the community to get people to try out the new venture.

The free day passes tracked by the park district are a fraction of the amount distributed to residents during the village's Fourth of July parade alone.

Vogl said the park district hopes to market the new fitness room at area schools this fall.

Parks officials had said they expected to dole out about $95,000 in operational and startup costs for the fitness-oriented games.

Among the equipment is a gaming unit in which a player controls a character on a TV screen through his own movements, which are tracked by a motion-sensor belt. Another game tests a player's reaction time by having the player slap lights on several surrounding posts with a Q-tip shaped stick.