Dover Bowl

I brought my family of 4 in to play a game of bowling during the slow part of Friday evening. There were only a few other bowlers when we arrived, which in my mind signals opportunity to run a special aimed towards families. I'm pretty sure the staff at Dover Bowl wouldn't grasp an opportunity if it were the only thing to save them from falling off a cliff.
We are, my husband, myself and our 2 children ages 13 and 2.5. Basically, reasonably speaking, my husband, oldest son and myself were going to be playing while my 2.5 year old was there merely to be entertained. No child discount was offered which I found to be absurd, paying full price for a toddler is a bit unreasonable.
So, we paid $30 dollars for one game of bowling.
The counter help was borderline rude, absolutely personality-less and seemed like he just couldn't have possibly cared less if we were there or not. Really doesn't seem like a positive or productive way to run a business.
There were numerous mechanical issues with the lane including missing pins upon completion of reset, failure to reset at all. Balls came out greasy as well.
I grew up bowling, my grandparents were coaches and we traveled all over New England to bowl and out of all the alleys I've been too,  this is by far and away the crappiest, rudest, worst managed bowling alley I've ever been to.
They literally couldn't give a crap that people are spending hearty sums of hard earned cash to fund their shoddy operation. Sad.

$30 for one game of candlepin. Major technological issues. The computer lets you designate if you want bumpers for certain players, however, the bumpers never went down. Not all of the balls would register, so sometimes a player would end up getting six or seven turns. The pins weren't reloading on their own.

The owner was a compete jerk. Everyone smokes right outside of the entrance. Disgusting.

Yeah, Dover Bowl really, really sucks. Broken lanes are the norm. The bar is filled with belligerent drunks who WILL hit on every female in sight and who are NEVER shut off. The staff is sort of incredibly rude. I think Dover Bowl's management is somehow opposed to the concept of the repeat customer.

Despite the fact that I knew all of this, I decided to celebrate my birthday there. I know, duh, but it's the ONLY ten pin bowling alley in the area. I guess I figured that the staff might rise to the occasion if I planned ahead. I was wrong.

This was a HUGE mistake. I called ahead to reserve 2 lanes on Saturday night between 7 and 9. "Rock-n-bowl" starts at 9, and is a nightmare of bad hip hop and Nickelback. AND it costs $15 per bowler. The person I spoke to was very nice, she just said I needed to call back with a deposit. However, when I DID call back, the owner told me they didn't take reservations for Saturday evenings. Then he said he would take it, but didn't take a deposit. I should have insisted.

When I arrived at 7 on Saturday night, only one lane was available. As only 6 of my guests had arrived, they promised that we could have the next lane over if it emptied out when the rest of my party arrived. They charged me $50 for the one lane for 2 hours.

Luckily, the next lane over WAS empty when the rest of the party arrived. But the rest of my party waited in line for shoes for literally fifteen minutes, and when they FINALLY got shoes, they had given the lane to someone else! We sorted that out, but then it was impossible to enter anyone into the lane "computer." We figured it was a glitch, but the issue was that WE HADN'T PAID YET. Note that I am 44 years old. I'm not some teenager who is likely to skip out on a bowling tab. It was pretty offensive.

So I agreed to pay up front (again), and stood at the register NOT BOWLING for ten minutes while they tried to run my card. However, their credit card machine was down. So they graciously offered to let me bowl anyway. THANKS!

After that things settled down. Yes, the keyboard was broken, and the fan on the lane was broken, and there were horrible drunks hassling my friends in the bar, but all in all we had an OK time. However all of this time-wasting nonsense meant that we only bowled 1 1/2 strings on one lane and 1 on the other. Not a great deal for $75.

And then we went to pay on the way out...and the credit card machine was still down. We probably should have stiffed them, but we rounded up $25 in cash and paid. I think this will be my last birthday celebration at Dover Bowl. Which is too bad because I LOVE bowling!