Cannon Raceway — Local services in Dudley

Fantastic place, the staff were very friendly and accommodating, the waiting area was nice and cool, and they had a good selection of waiting room snacks and drinks. The lockers were annoying, as you have to put £1 in to use them, and it swallows a pound without giving it back each and every time you unlock it, so we were there for a couple hours and had to pay roughly £6 total for locking and unlocking the two lockers in our group of 8. We had a party pack if sorts, including a session of go-karting, laser tag, and a short version of the escape room, with a great value for money!

The go-karting was fantastic! The guy left us in a room with a safety video, and when he came back he made sure to check we knew the rules, and go over the most important parts. The staff were very safety-conscious, from checking we knew the rules to brake checks, the staff had our health and safety in mind at every step of the journey. The go-karting itself was really fun, with people passing each other and racing to get the best time, I got stuck on the hill at one point, since I tried to pass someone and they turned in from of me but the engine couldn't take me up the hill from halfway up with no speed. but the staff were quick to safely and quickly get me back in the race, making sure the track was safe and coming out to push me the rest of the way. We got our scoring papers after, and although I do love all the statistics we are given, I do wish the scoring was done differently. You see, who comes first, second, etc... Is based on fastest lap. So, obviously whoever goes out first has an advantage if they immediately go full speed, since the entire track is empty in front of them. It can feel unfair, and it might be better if the race was scored based on a position and passing system, like the Mario Kart games, so that passing is rewarded, and you don't have an easy advantage, if, say, you stall on the hill and have half the track empty since nobody was able to pass you... Also, the driver name we imputed on the system was never used, which was a bit annoying since we made some funny but appropriate ones. In general, the go-karting was FANTASTIC!

The laser tag was great, with a good amount of cover and lots of sneaky spots that aren't too unbalanced. Some people were annoyed since it was a vest-less system, so you had to shoot people's guns. This does mean that you can be annoying and move your gun around the corners in order to avoid letting people shoot it. It was nice having a score and accuracy score screen, although I had to edit the names to our actual names afterwards, since it assigned random names to each gun. In general, the laser tag was A BLAST!

The escape room was OK, definitely not the best I've played, but the clues and puzzles were creative and outside the box, but not so far out they were impossible. Unfortunately, all but one of the padlocks were three digit codes, so it meant you had to test each padlock, instead I've usually seen a variety of different mechanisms used in escape rooms, such as: key padlocks, four-digit locks, word locks, American safe style locks, and it would have been cool if the phone itself had been a lock, say if you input the name it would unlock a slot inside. The room in general was great, and maybe we would have gotten a better experience had we played the full version, since we only played the half hour version. In general, the escape room was OK.

All in all, we all really enjoyed our time at Cannon Raceway, and we'll definitely be going again. I highly recommend you visit, with...

Absolutely disgusting treatment, avoid this place if you are from London. We booked to go karting here for 4 people, on the day of booking we had called to enquire before hand if the time could be changed to which we were told no, this is fair enough and we agreed to come for the scheduled time still. Upon arrival, we were greeted with quite an off Standish receptionist, possibly the person we had spoken to on the phone beforehand, who cut me off before I got to finish my opening sentence. Once he finished talking I then mentioned that one person was unable to come, we had paid a deposit for 4 people and we were told we would still need to pay the full amount for 4 people regardless which I also accepted . Whilst we were signing in we became aware of the prices being told to local people arriving varied and were less than the prices we were quoted to pay on the phone to which I highlighted to my son and nephew I had with me. Once we approached the desk to be served the receptionist ignored my presence and instead picked up the phone and called for the manager, I waited in silence intrigued as to why the manager was now being called when I had not said a word to him. When he arrived the receptionist told him I had an issue with paying full amount and was now trying to pull “the race card”. This was an absolute lie, at no point had I mentioned race as the reason for me being quoted more, nor had this thought crossed my mind beforehand, I actually was under the assumption it was to do with my accent and them knowing we were from London rather than locals. In other words they pulled the race card on me! Whilst explaining to the manager this exact scenario he just turned his back on me and said I’ll give you your refund” despite I never asked for a refund, in other words “get out of our venue you are not welcomed.” I had two teenage boys with me, we had travelled from London for the weekend to do this activity and left disappointed and highly offended, as at no point did we even do anything wrong. They just looked at us and decided they did not want to serve us, we left calmly. All was not lost as the next day we attended Full Throttle go karting and had a completely different experience whereby we were welcomed, spoken to and treated kindly and had a friendlier atmosphere as well as better prices. Would not attend here again nor recommend to others, the customer service is poor

EDIT: the fact that you would now lie even further I am absolutely shocked, but judging by your responses to all negative feedback left this seems to be a trend (PLEASE BE SURE TO READ ALL THE COCKY AND SARCASTIC RESPONSES TO NEGATIVE REVIEWS THIS MANAGER LIKES TO LEAVE, THIS IS EXACTLY HIS ATTITUDE IN PERSON ALSO). At no point was I aggressive or rude, I had not even spoken to the receptionist when he called you, nor did I mention my race , YOU CHOSE TO MENTION IT! And again have mentioned it here! Shocking! These are the facts , stop trying to lie to cover your back, the issue was not about the payment for fourth person, it was the fact we were quoted higher prices than the local people who walked in!! and to correct you I’m not black I’m...

substandard service myself and my party received on 29th April. Myself my son and my friend paid for the go karting laser tag package for my birthday weekend with 3 other family members doing just the laser tag.

Your website clearly states 1 x 25 lap session when booking the go karting. When we arrived we were told 12.5 minutes was the allocated session time which I accept that not everyone will complete the 25 laps within the 12.5 minutes. However I was extremely disappointed to discover that after adding up my lap times at the end I have only been given 10.3 minutes (22 laps) which is less than what was advertised and what I had paid for. 2 minutes at my average lap time would have been at least another 4 laps or max 3 if you stick to the 25 laps (which we were told in the briefing it was a 12.5 minute session)

Then on waiting for laser tag I was told by your desk staff there was another party in front of us and it would be 30 minutes so to come back at 12:40. We waited outside in the car park until 12:30 and then came inside and waited another 10 minutes. Eventually I was approached by a member of staff and told that the game had started without us as they couldn’t find us. I questioned this as I was told to come back at 1240 to the laser tag area which we did at 1230 and now we were told we would have to wait again! So now 1 full hour of waiting for laser tag we finally went in and had out first 15 minutes session.

We came out and waited for the interim game. We waited until a member of staff told us it was now our turn to go in only to find out that the game had already started and it finished after 11 minutes meaning we had missed out on 4 minutes of the game??!!

I would like to know why we as a group had such appalling customer service?

I would also like to know why, we have paid our money did we get a reduced time on the go karting? A 1 hour wait and claims of “we couldn’t find you “ when clearly nobody looked. And why were we sent in 4 minutes after the game had started and only got given 11 minutes of our 15 minute session.

We went home thoroughly disappointed and cheated. I sent an email almost a week ago...