GObowling — Attraction in Dunstable

If I could leave 0 stars I would!!! 🤔 no review section on your fb page GObowling Dunstable SHOCKER - you obviously give lots of people the need to leave bad ones & don't want others to see them.

What an absolute SHAMBLES your venue & your service was yesterday. Absolutely clueless staff who can not even take a food order correctly, meaning some kids had to share food as you didn't make enough & even one child not getting to eat until the end of the party??!! There was ridiculous delays where we just stood around waiting for nothing at the beginning waiting to start, once on the lanes & again in the room. No pre planning, so we had no bowling balls(??!!) & a lane broke down immediately. You stopped them bowling for food (they'd only had 4-6 go's each!) & then we sat around for 20 minutes before anything was brought out - it then came in dribs & drabs for half an hr, they could've finished their game instead of us trying to calm down 20 hangry 7 year olds (if any of your staff were parents you would understand this & avoid it at all cost)!! We had to ask for drinks for the kids more than once & I had to remind staff about party bags, ice cream (which took 2 members of staff to do) & a group photo (which didn't even happen!). The delays got so bad that some kids had to leave when the party should have finished due to other plans which means they were not even all there to sing Happy Birthday!!

My son didn't get his 'gift' from you or his group photo - in fact there are barely any photos from his party because I spent the whole time running around after your staff & complaining. Your manager then even had the nerve to try & blame us for your incompetences & say that the party was delayed because our friends were late - we were early & he even said to me later that he started his shift half way through our party so wasn't even there!!

To say I'm disappointed & angry is an understatement, I booked this month's ago & was paying you for the service offered in your party packages to avoid stress - but in fact that was more stressful for me than planning a party from scratch!!! I'm fuming & to add insult to injury still had to pay for some of the party - discounted admittedly, but saving a bit of money & words of apology does not change the fact that my sons party was handled in such an appalling way & does not bring back missed memories 💔

You need to seriously step up your organisation in some way (it's not as if you didn't know we were coming) & you need to improve your staff training big time - in time keeping, etiquette, food prep planning & customer service. There was pretty much no interaction between staff & children, & we had 3 different hosts, all who walked around a bit in a daze or called the manager whenever they were asked something.

All of our party goers could not believe how bad it was & how difficult everything was made. Here's hoping none of them win the competition for a free game! You have lost a LOT of business in one fail swoop here - but hey, at least you did one thing...

This place is comical. I was one of a party of four guys that a month or so ago arrived at 20:15 after having a meal out on the high street. I believe the closing time was 23:00 at GoBowling. Upon entering, there were around 10/12 other people bowling and we asked if we could have two games. The staff member seemed unsure and turned to a male we can only assume was a manager who told us that they were closing. We questioned the time and were told it was the "managers discretion" to close if they weren't busy. Slightly puzzled we looked around at the people still bowling and then at the other four guys who had come in behind us also wanting to bowl. They were consequently told the same thing. As we left the main doors, a taxi arrived with two females and their two young/teenage children. We warned them the place was apparently closing, but their taxi had already left. They were also turned away. My mates and I decided to go to Luton to bowl and offered the family a lift, which they accepted. We all went off to Luton and ̶l̶i̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶h̶a̶p̶p̶i̶l̶y̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶ had a decent time.

I did not write a review at the time, as I felt my mates review was sufficient. However, his review has now been met with a kind of immature, unprofessional and strange scorn for the situation, and this caused me to write this review. "The owner", as they appear on here, who responded to his review perhaps should take criticism and a highlighting of an issue more constructively, than trying to attack potential customers in their comments, which when scrolling down seems common. It appears that the GoBowling owner believes the place is a shining light of customer service and any fault must be the fault of the customer.

In short, I would advise any potential customers to be prepared not to be able to bowl at GoBowling Dunstable within their advertised hours as it seems that the management operate these hours at their own convenience.

P.S. To "the owner" - my name is visible on my review as far as I am aware, as is my mates name on his review. Just because we have left negative reviews, it doesn't mean the situation didn't occur and you are...

I have zero complaints about the staff, they were very good and really helpful. My issue is with the actual facilities. Went bowling with 2 adults and young 2 kids. Checked in and got our lane quickly which was great but as soon as we got to our lane the problems started. The pins wouldn't come down and the barriers wouldn't go up. A maintenance person had to be called to sort it out. Once sorted we had a few bowls until an issue occurred where it seemed like a pin was stuck. Had to get the front desk to sort it out. Played a few more bowls and the same thing happened again. Luckily one of the staff was walking past, I told them about the issue for which they were very helpful and offered to switch our lanes, which was fine and had no issues after that. We then got into the arcade part where the kids wanted to go on the games. Put a pound into the Jurassic park machine and it instantly swallowed the money, so we moved on to a different machine which was one of the car racing games. The kids wanted to race against each other so we put the money in and again it swallowed one of the pound coins, the other one worked but it meant they couldn't race each other. Went to the front desk again about the lost money who rectified it very quickly. All in all the day was still fine, the children had fun (although we could tell they were getting frustrated with things not working) and the kids go free part is definitely welcomed in the current economic climate. The staff were fantastic and helped get things sorted quickly. My score is only so low so as to push the facilities and machines to get some better maintenance. I would still come back again as I'm sure if everything was working it would have...