Maple Lanes Lakeland — Attraction in Lakeland

The bowling alley itself is fine enough, though I wish they had a schedule for weekend tournaments so you know when won't be lanes open. The alleys are in good condition and the kiosks for each lane are easy to use. The monitors showing the scores atop could be larger as they're hard to view scores/totals. Unfortunately, the bowling alley building itself wasn't set up very well when it was designed and its had a bad result on the seating for the lanes. There's not enough room for proper seating (which should be two tables staggered near each other for each set of lanes). The current ownership could have maybe resolved this by not focusing on the arcade (which is usually empty most of the time) and redesigning the front of the building. That would have required shutting down the building for months and months though and the owners wanted to make money sooner rather than spend it. In any case, the current seating takes getting used to, but you'll often find yourself separated by your friends/family/other bowlers on your team because of how the seating is. The prices to bowl games is cheap enough if you're a league bowler, but about normal for most bowling alleys if you're not. There is a special for Sunday mornings right now where you can bowl at a cheaper rate. Oh and the food court and built-in bar are both good with the food/drink fare and prices not being too bad.

Here's a helpful tip to save you money: Stay away from the claw machines in the arcade. They're set up to where you can never win. You can have perfect hand/eye coordination and the claw will pick up the item you want, but the machines are programmed to either drop the item right away or before they get to the drop-down bin. From a business ethics and consumer perspective, its just wrong that either Maple Lanes or the proprietors of the machines set them up this way. They want your money though. Spend your money at the arcade to play the games where you can actually have fun in return for the price you pay or go get a drink or some food instead. The claw machines will make you spend $10+ trying to win something (which again, you can't) that cost the ones who run the machines 25 cents. The shenanigans with the claw machine and similar games is really the reason I give a rating of 4 stars rather than 5. You can avoid the arcade though and still enjoy the lanes.

This bowling alley is the best one in Lakeland, but considering the only other one is a Bowlero that's far worse and deafening with the music they play, its not a very high bar. The staff at Maple Lanes (formerly Orange Bowl) is very good, the air conditioner is usually running well and they don't play music during league play, so that makes a...

We placed a phone order at the Cafe to go for a fried chicken sandwich, Angus burger, fries, mozzarella sticks, and fries. When my wife picked up the order and brought it home, we were missing items and the food looked as if it was just thrown together. The lettuce and tomatoes were just slapped on the bread. Chicken was hard and burnt on ends. Overall, very upsetting and we drove up to the bowling alley to speak tonsomeone about this.

This is when we met Jeanette and she absolutely turned it all around. She was actually on her break eating her dinner when she asked us if there was an issue with our food. We showed it toonher and she offered us not only a heart felt apology for the lapse in service but also to remake our entire order.

We truly do enjoy the food at the Cafe and we even call it our default food whenever we can't decide what to eat and we had not had any negative experiences until this one. However, I have to say, Jeanette at the Cafe made it all better and the food she made surpassed our original expectations. Fresh fries and delicious sandwiches she made us. Jeanette literally made up for our experience and she is literally the reason for the 5 stars.

She acknowledged our issue, took ownership of it, and rectified it immediately...that is true...

Would recommend you DON’T go to this bowling alley. Please see full review below...

Myself and five friends live about a hour south of Lakeland. We wanted to try another bowling alley rather than the one on the south side of Lakeland so we drove about 30 minute extra to try this bowling alley. BIG MISTAKE. First the parking is confusing. We parked on the side of the building and weren’t sure where the entrance was. Second when you walk in there is absolutely no one directing traffic or greeting people to let you know exactly where you’re supposed to go. To elaborate, my fiancé walked through the front door and went up to the counter closest to the entrance. The staff was literally joking about not waiting on him because he was apparently on the wrong side of the counter. After about three or four minutes one of the male employees gave in and asked my fiancé how many people we had. When the male employee went to ask my fiancé his female coworker proceeded to push him, kind of jokingly saying, “Noo don’t wait on him!” All of this was very frustrating. Honestly we were there to have a good time but ended up leaving immediately because of the atmosphere and how the employees were treating us simply because we weren’t standing on the right side of...