Showtime Bowling Center — Local services in Athens-Clarke County Unified Government

If money isn't an issue for you or your family then please disregard this post; however, if you're a college student, young professional, or a family on a budget looking for a quick, cheap place to have a good time and bowl--this is not the place for you. The prices listed are very misleading and vaguely brushed aside when you enter as you must defer payment to the end--as price depends on the number of games played. We were not informed of the prices upon entering, as a worker barely looked up from a book--quickly asked our shoe sizes and instructed us to "just pay at the end" when I specifically asked about game and shoe rental pricing and basically how the whole setup works (its been many years since I've been bowling). After renting shoes and playing two quick games, our total came to a whopping $26 and some change. There was no mistake in the price. Nothing personally against the bowling center, it was a fair environment and we did enjoy our time there. We initially planned and were excited on making it a weekly occurrence until being slammed with the unreasonable price for only an hour of fun. We were looking for a new (reasonable) activity to become regularly engaged in as we wait out these cold days and long winter nights and unfortunately this isn't the place. Neither my friend or I will be returning in the future, nor will we recommend this location to those who ask as we feel purposely misled in regards to pricing--and flat-out taken advantage of. We felt led to share our experience to help others from making the same mistake we made....

I may be a bit spoiled since I normally bowl at Brunswick owned bowling center but I wasn't impressed with the facility. Open play lineage was rediculous at $5.99 a game. The place is dark and the back drops are terribly outdated. I don't think they have been changed since they originally opened back in the 1980's. The bathrooms were not good at all. The game room was the biggest part of the entire place. The parking lot was completely dark. That can't be very safe.

After talking with some of the league bowlers, it seems like Showtime has seen a serious down turn in their league bowlers. Their reasons ranged from the manager not caring about the league bowlers and focusing on open play, to the owner not having beer/alcohol. I was very disappointed that I couldn't buy a beer. I also noticed there was no pro shop. How does a guy get a ball drilled if there is no pro shop?

I checked their league standing sheets that they had posted and found out they do not have one men's league there. I also found out the biggest league they had was a 12 team mixed league.

The place is old, outdated, and management/ownership is running the place...

The cashier incorrectly put in the amount of participants we had in our party. We asked her to add one person in for a total of 14. She said she wasn’t paid. We tabulated how many people we paid for and correctly it was 14 people. She said i printed the receipts and counted in front of us. She incorrectly counted. Then after counting again correctly identified how many people we paid for. Afterwards, we asked for bumper rails to be put up for my niece. They questioned her age like we were lying. That’s not all, they didn’t even do it until her fourth roll. Mind you, we have a time limit. We had three lanes. As we continued, the lanes kept malfunctioning. One time for at minimum 15 minutes. We asked for the time to be adjusted and it was. They siphoned the time and reset all our time for the party. At this point we are frustrated and the attitude was unnecessary. This is my first time experiencing this at this location so I was surprised. Yet, if you don’t want to work don’t come in ruining...