Comet Pub & Lanes — Local services in Decatur

So let’s forget for one minute that this place will charge you $9 for a pint of beer (with literally no pricing available anywhere near the bar to see ahead of time) and focus on the fact that we paid $60 for one lane and three pairs of shoes and then we’re presented with a tip screen at the end of the transaction. The fact that we’re expected to tip people for spending our money with them is asinine. No service provided, especially not to any degree that would warrant a tip. These folks aren’t servers only making $2.35 an hour so if their wages are so awful that they need to coerce paying customers into tipping them then Comet Lanes is in the business of not paying people a livable wage. Not to mention our lane had multiple issues with pins resetting and ball return not working so we lost on 10-20% of the hour that we paid for.

So eventually there’s 5 minutes left on our lane so we go to the counter asking if we might be able to add another 30 minutes. It was 10:20 and the place was open for 40 minutes, we were not asking them to stay open late or anything unreasonable. Turns out, they tell us that “the drawer is closed” but they’d be happy to add more time for us….if we tipped them. I’m not even kidding. They literally tried to leverage our ability to pay this business more money for a tip. So unprofessional. If they had just said the drawer was closed and left it at that then okay, we wouldn’t be upset (although it’s weird that they’re not willing to take more of our money and they TOLD us when we first paid that we could add more time later on). I don’t know if the business owners know what’s going on in their place here but your people are costing you money. I work in service. I work for tips. I NEVER leave reviews, but I’m leaving this one because you should take your money someplace else. Tipping people for retail transactions is ridiculous especially considering we’re all already paying more for everything due to inflation and on top of that to be expected to tip? For no...

Went with work group for our holiday party. Ordered food for the group, all on 1 check + generous tip (I was 3rd in line when their kitchen opened for service as well). After an hour, no food. Asked woman I ordered from how much longer & with a bit of attitude she said they had been swamped with orders and it would be out in a bit, so we added another hour of play time to wait. After another 30 mins, still no food, but group at lane next to us who had only been there 20 mins had theirs. Asked same woman again how much longer. This time with more attitude she says "I'm not in the kitchen, I have no idea what's happening back there," and walks away, no offer to check. ?!?!? Time to get a manager. He checks and said the kitchen manager is out and the staff is having a hard time prioritizing. He apologized and offered to refund the bill and the food would be out in 20-25 mins. (Good customer service we thought.) 30 mins later, still no food and we're almost done with our extra hour of play. Check again, this time with different young man who had been working with the manager, as manager was not in sight. He checks and tells us evidently the order had been cancelled when the refund was issued. What?!?! He gets the owner who says there was a miscommunication & they thought we just wanted to cancel the order, but we had 3 witnesses who heard the food would still be out shortly. He did refund the extra hour of play once we explained the only reason we added it was to wait for the food. 13 hangry people in our group, so we went elsewhere to eat 3 hours late. Glad they apologized and refunded (2 stars), but the woman's attitude, lack of kitchen staff knowing how to fulfill orders in the order they were received, and the way they tried to put the cancellation on us are the reasons for the low stars. Would...

First, The service here is hit or miss. There have been some friendly folks behind the bar, but also some rude folks behind the bar. Sometimes service is reliant, or you can stand at the bar for a long time and be (what seems to be purposely?) ignored while your time is running out on the Lane you have paid for. The food is above average for pub food. No complaints there. My main complaint is that every time I have bowled here, the approaches are covered in oil from the lanes and the rest of the floors are sticky with spilled beer and soda, so if you own your own bowling shoes, you might as well use the rentals instead so you don't ruin them. Oil covered approaches are a major fall hazard. I have attempted to bowl here several times and wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt before writing a review, but this has consistently been the case since they re-opened. As many times as I have been here, I have never seen someone cleaning the approaches in between bowlers throughout the day. Perhaps it does happen, but I've never seen it. Pinsetters jam often and it takes a while to get help when that happens. The arcade tokens are expensive for the kids, and the games provided leave a lot to be desired. The air hockey machine jammed and stopped working and we didn't get our money back because the tokens are ran by a different company, supposedly? Seems with how expensive it is to bowl at this place, you could afford to just put a few free arcade games out for the kids so you don't have to fuss with the tokens that you can't provide customer assistance with in the first place. And maybe more employees? Friendlier employees? The low Stars are not because I'm a bitter mom whose kid lost his money to the arcade, it is because I am a person who loves to bowl and loves bowling alleys and this one needs a...