Spooky Mini-Golf & Ping Pong at Haunted Manor

Two and a half hours of guided pottery-wheel work, a lopsided keepsake fired by the studio, and sessions that fill fast.

Old Town axe-throwing with Whistler pedigree, local craft beer, and a coach who'll turn your bounce into a stick.

The last five-pin alley in Greater Victoria, a block off Beacon Avenue in Sidney, where lighter balls mean twice the laughing.

Eight hundred-plus simulator courses, drinks you can order mid-swing, and axe throwing in the same building when golf gets boring.

Twenty thousand square feet of trampoline mayhem where overthinking your texts is physically impossible.

Two ice surfaces and Everyone Welcome drop-in skates in the Gorge-Tillicum area, with rentals for a cheap, cheerfully wobbly date.

Drop-in skating in Esquimalt with the cheapest rates in Greater Victoria, plus a built-in excuse to hold hands.

More than 85 hand-built dioramas inside the Empress, featuring one of the world's largest model railways and zero self-consciousness.

Six tournament-sized indoor courts and a learning curve of about ninety seconds, which is when the competitiveness kicks in.

Hold a tarantula at this tiny downtown menagerie of 50 species and discover exactly how brave your date actually is.

Victoria's first board-game café, eight dollars buys you all night, a game guru, paninis, milkshakes, and at least one minor dispute.

Victoria's neon-lit Korean pocha pub, where you pile the table with tteokbokki and pour each other rounds of soju all night.

Victoria's long-running Ethiopian-Eritrean room, where dinner is one shared platter by hand and the closing act is a from-scratch coffee ceremony.

Fort Street's oven-roasted Korean chicken spot where the lighter, juicier alternative to deep-fry has a near-perfect 4.7 to back it up.