Franklin Family Entertainment Center — Attraction in Franklin

DON'T BOOK EVENTS HERE! Very bad for organized groups, meetups, leagues, parties, and events of all kinds. Completely untrustworthy, they'll leave you in the lurch and harass you on a whim if they don't like the look of you. They'll go out of their way to ruin your group's evening. If there is an issue with your event, they won't call you up beforehand to discuss it like adults, they'll just drop it on you and your guests in the middle of your event and make you deal with it. Don't waste your time building a professional relationship with them as a meetup or party space. Protect yourself and your groups and guests: DO NOT BOOK EVENTS HERE.

I'm part of a large group and we've hosted a 30+ person meetup at Franklin Lanes nearly every month for 9 years. We brought them tons of business. All of a sudden, (Saturday March 16th), they don't like the look of us. See, we're a costuming club, and we've bowled and partied in costume at Franklin Lanes every month for nearly a decade. We've been model patrons, never left a mess or had any behavioral complaints. But the majority of us are LGBTQ+, and apparently someone in management hasn't enjoyed seeing us there, being polite and paying them money to hang out and talk about building costumes as we bowl every month for nearly a decade.

Out of the blue, in the middle of our scheduled evening, they introduced ad hoc rules about costumes (which we've been wearing without safety issues or complaints for nearly a decade), specifically targeted at our group to run us out that very evening. They could have called our organizers beforehand and communicated like professionals if there was really an issue, but instead they did it without warning, in the middle of our event, in front of our group members and all the other patrons bowling.

The disrespect and lack of professionalism was shocking. And as our group members left, someone in management at the desk by the door kept snickering and saying under their breath (but loudly enough for us to hear on the way out) what I will charitably call a "Good riddance," with variations of vileness on that theme.

Don't jeopardize the safety of your event or your attendees by booking any kind of gathering or party at Franklin Lanes. It's not worth the risk of them ruining your night and even if it goes well, it's only a matter of time before they get sick of your business and...

I am a group leader in Eastern Tennessee that has done merger meets in the Franklin area with our sister group. For years we have maintained a positive relationship with the other group and always relied on this venue as our host when doing so. For the other group this was their "home venue" for over 9 years running without consequence. They have always held a good reputation in their local community and with the venue, and always carried themselves with respect of the venue and its rules. That being said I have amended my 5-star review today now that this venue has changed to new management and intentionally moved in ways that blatantly discriminate against what I can only call dedicated and loyal long-standing local customers of their local area. I was extremely disappointed and saddened to learn of the behavior exhuded by the new manager towards the group and its members there-in. As a group leader myself, I make arrangements with venues all the time myself; including venues that have an ID process in family-friendly environments (when it regards alcohol consumption) and I have never in my nearly 11 years leading a similar group of costumers (furries) ever seen A situation such as this develop. The profit their group alone has brought to this venue over the 9+ years the venue has hosted them, not to mention the patronage, was blatantly set aside for what appears to be petty bias. I nor my group will be returning after hearing of this managers behavior towards all who attended what was a planned and regularly scheduled event here last night. It is easy to ensure an identification process regardless of masks; were this not a possibility other masks such as those worn amid the pandemic would have posed this same alledged "problem". Please do better to be kinder to those that support you and your venue, this was no way to conduct yourself let alone a business. To the employees under this new manager; kindest regards...

So I really enjoyed the aesthetics of this place. Very clean and spacious with helpful staff and all the equipment seems to be in working order. I can't speak too much to the arcade or pool room as I didn't have the time to check them out. I dropped in with a couple friends at 11 on a Saturday night. Since they're SUPPOSED TO BE open 'til 1 AM, it made sense to do the 2 hour all you can bowl for 20 bucks apiece. I would say though that you should only do this if you're going to focus on bowling without lengthy smoke breaks and don't do it anytime after 10:30. Per game would have been the way to go for us last night. It took us a good while to get through one game because of the aforementioned smoke breaks and trying to get food and drinks, but when we finished it just before 12:30, we decided that we would focus and bust out one more game so it didn't feel like such an expensive night. However when we hit to do the next game the system was disabled or shut down and would not let us. It's true that we were the only ones still there, but that's not an excuse to shut down a half-hour early when we still had another half-hour that had been paid for. I wanted to argue the point, but my friends just said to let it go. The other star loser is the pizza. I am a big pizza fan. Pizza's pretty hard to mess up. Sadly something about theirs is waaaaaay off from what it should be. It was like a bad school lunch pizza. Did not taste good and the texture was...velvety, almost. Hard to explain but imagine what eating greasy cream cheese on some thick paper would feel like. I could see sauce but couldn't taste or feel any. Just this off-putting creaminess. My girlfriend liked it though, so if that sounds good...