Alley Gatorz Bowling Center — Local services in Gainesville

The first time I came here, I had purchased a Groupon for two hours of bowling. When I arrived, approximately 2 hours before closing time, they informed me that they were closing early due to not enough business. They were not very polite, and refused to give me a rain check, saying they could do nothing about it because it's all managed by "corporate". I ended up returning the Groupon and going to Splitz (which I found was a way more awesome place and friendlier staff!). This time, it was a friend's birthday and had purchased a Groupon. She is rather petite and doesn't bowl much, so we asked for bumper rails, but they refused to give them to us and not-very-nicely told us they "don't give bumpers to adults". She pleaded nicely, informing them that it was her birthday, but the woman behind the counter told her that she "is no more special than anyone else there just because it is her birthday". We started bowling and were discussing how rudely we were being treated, and a while later one of the men who worked there came and told us that he was tired of hearing us complain, and "just so we could stop crying about it", he would give us the bumper rails. We politely accepted, but felt a little insulted. Two children who were with us played some of the arcade games, and three of the machines ate their money. The employees were again rude and reluctant to help. They just said, "yeah those are out of order", as if we should have known that already. They didn't bother putting any out-of-order signs on any of them. The six of us decided that we won't go to Alley Gatorz anymore. Also, the atmosphere at Alley Gatorz is not as nice as Splitz. It is all lit up with florescent lights and no video screens for entertainment or anything. At Splitz, they have big video screens for music videos, the whole place is dark with lights all along the lanes and laser lights projected all over the walls. The arcade is awesome, with lots of carnival style games. The staff is friendly, and they have boutique lanes, which are fancier than the others. They also have laser tag. A much better choice than...

The facility is about what you would expect from an older bowling alley. I have brought my kids there before and had a blast. HOWEVER, they have a no outside foods policy. I get it, food and drinks is where they make a lot of their money and I went in today intending to buy their food and drinks for my children, but I am on a restricted diet and it was lunchtime and I brought food from home for myself. I explained this to the front desk person, Thomas, and was told that he couldn't make an exception for me and the fact that there was nothing for me to eat there was "not (his) problem". He said that if his boss, Cindy was to see me eating my food in there she would probably fire him and he didn't think I would let him come live with me if he lost his job. So rude, snarky and unnecessary. I stayed polite with him while expressing my disagreement with his choice to be so arbitrary in enforcing this rule. It's not like I was trying to walk in there with a party and 10 pizzas or something. I bought popcorn and drinks for my kids as I had planned and we bowled a couple games. Based on how I was treated I personally will never give them my business again. If their real concern was losing money, forcing me to put my food back in the car over lost income on food of theirs I might have bought for myself (which I didn't buy and wasn't going to buy REGARDLESS) seems like a bad business plan. Warning to anyone with dietary restrictions:...

This place is completely run down. Upon entering we had to wait 5 minutes at the front desk before anyone would come greet us to let us get our shoes and pay for our games. When looking the through the ball selection we couldn’t find any in the size we use, a 10lb. We decided to just roll with it and go up to an 11. When getting our game setup on the lane, it wouldn’t allow us to put in both players so we had to go back to the front desk to have them manually add our second player. after finally being ready to start playing, I bowled first and the ball failed to return. I bowled the rest of my frame hoping both balls would return and that it had just gotten stuck. Neither ball returned and instead of continuing to fight with this all the issues we decided to just call it a day and ask for a refund as we had only gotten 1 frame for 1 player. When asking for the refund the manager got attitude telling us it was our fault and that certain lighter balls get stuck in certain lanes and we should have come to let her know instead of asking for a refund. After all the issues it wasn’t worth moving to another lane to us. She also wasn’t willing refund anything other than the 2nd game. Not a welcoming place and...