Crossgate Lanes — Local services in Blue Ash

It’s kind of a throwback location, in that the style, furniture and equipment is likely from the 80s. It’s a dark and dank bowling alley, which some folks may find appealing. I attended a children’s birthday party with my two kids, and an overall party of about 16. These young kids were sitting and crawling on the floor as kids tend to do, and I was mortified because the carpet is very gross and unkept. I have a bad feeling it hasn’t been cleaned in years. The equipment is dated, no animations or anything to hold the kids’ attention on the screens like some of the more modern alleys. There is clutter everywhere, with folding tables, packages, supplies and equipment crammed in wherever open space had been found.

The lanes were pretty full during this Sunday afternoon. We had two lanes with little kids (3-6 yo) and adults playing. I saw the ramps that kids can use to roll the ball, stacked in their lounge/bar area. There were two employees behind the counter, very busy serving drinks, food, assigning lanes, shoes, etc. I waited in line to ask about the ramps, and since they were so busy, simply asked if I could grab a ramp for the kids to use. The gentleman that answered me said, “Yeah, go ahead”. I went in to get a ramp (about 3 feet tall, large plastic dinosaurs) and a couple were pretty beat up, so I was rearranging them to look for one with no cracks or holes in it. During this I noticed and odd stare from an elderly gentleman wearing an overcoat from about 20 feet away. As I carry the ramp out from their bar/lounge/storage area, his glare intensifies toward me, and I just look at him confused. He said something about knocking people over, but it as loud and I couldn’t tell what exactly he said. I looked at him confused and just walked past him to head toward my lane, when he raised his voice and repeated himself (which again, I couldn’t hear with pins being knocked down and the ambient noise). I turned and walked back toward him so I could hear what he was saying, then he very sternly announced “I’m the owner!”. I said, OK, what’s going on? He mumbled something about his staff would take the ramps to us, and I shouldn’t move them myself because they don’t want anyone knocked over. I’m just more confused because, I didn’t knock anyone over, and why’s he being so rude. He didn’t say “Hi, let me help you with that.” Or “Let me get someone to move that for you”. Now I’m getting defensive, so I told him I waited in line and asked if I could get this, and was told, go ahead. He asked who told me that, and then said “I’ll go talk to him” as if he believed I would appreciate this kid being yelled at or something. He went over and started talking down to the employee, so I followed and just said, I appreciated the staffer’s help, and I can move the ramp myself, or if one of them wanted to, great, but I didn’t see any problem. The owner gave me another quick explanation that they didn’t want anyone to get knocked over, then both stared at me for a couple seconds before I just walked off, still carrying this ramp. I take it the owner doesn’t really care about safety, he likely just saw me in the area and wanted to play tough-guy owner.

I was annoyed and uncomfortable the rest of the time there, and of course, now all I can see are all several things around the business that the owner should concern himself with instead of worrying about me doing an employee’s task after asking to do so politely. Tears in the dirty carpet, rusted ball racks, broken mirror, bathroom in disrepair, no trash can to be found, reset pins button not working on one of our two lanes, and clutter in various places including heavily in the arcade area, where the games have faded screens and are in disrepair.

If you want that old, bowling alley atmosphere, try Madison Bowl near Oakley or Stone’s...

It's really more of 2.5 stars... but I'll give the place the benefit of the doubt.

I was here for a birthday party on a Saturday afternoon. If you're planning on bowling then, don't. The place is overrun with little kids having their birthday parties. This place seems like it's seen better years. It just looks and feels old. The screens are the newest thing there it seems. They're also lacking medium size balls, in the 10-11 lb range. They had 6 lb and plenty of small ones for the kids, but then it seemed to jump to a few 12 and 14lb balls.

They no longer have the computers to take care of the names yourself. You have to write the names down with the shoe size, give it to the person behind the counter and wait. we had 3 lanes that day. One screen had the names entered in but we couldn't play yet. We paid by the hour for 2 hours... the time we waited for them to get everything up and going counted against us. There were also quite a few jamming pins problems throughout the game. In our first game alone, and on our lane only the reset button didn't work and an employee had to go back behind the place and reset it at least 4 times. That was only our lane.

They have food and drinks, the pitchers of pop and lemonade are steep at $7 a refil, but they do let you bring in outside food, so I guess thats a plus. We had made a reservation for 3 lanes, but they only gave us 2. They did quickly rectify that situation fortunately. I just feel like this place could use a little sprucing up, and maybe some customer service as well. When your time is up, its up lane shut down. Even if no one is waiting and you only have one frame left, and regardless of any problems that the lane itself presented... The whole thing was just a...

This was the WORST experience I've ever had at a bowling alley. The people were extremely rude, the lanes broke MULTIPLE times, and everything was overpriced.

My friends and I had just left the Kenwood mall and we decided we didn't want to say our goodbyes for the day so we ventured out for something fun we could all do as a larger group, we of course decided on bowling. This place wasn't far from the mall and came up as recommend when we were searching. When we got in we went to tell the people at the counter how many shoes we would need and how many people we were expecting when we did the man at the counter very rudely said we HAD to be out at __ time, because they were having some sort of tournament there later (which we were fine with and understood) so we went and took a seat while waiting on our friends and someone rudely came over and yelled at us and told us we couldn't sit there that we had to sit somewhere else (they worked there they went customers). We moved and eventually everyone shows up and we knew we had x amount of time one to play since they had a tournament coming up so we kept that in mind but we honestly couldn't even bowl a full game because our lane just kept breaking. The lane had to be reset a total of 5 times in one game with 3 people I mean it wasn't like we intentionally broke it and we're trying to be an issue but they kept getting mad that we even asked for someone to fix it and in the end they still charged us full price.

We'll...