Copperfield Bowl — Local services in Jersey Village

My wife and I took our children to Copperfield Bowl last night 9/8/2013. I wish I would have read the reviews on google and yelp before I wasted my hard earned money here. My son turned eight yesterday and he wanted to go bowling for his birthday. Since this was the only place closest to us, we stopped here. Upon our arrival, this place did not look that bad since it is hidden off on a side road off of highway 6. When you walk inside you will notice that this place is in severe need up updates. The coloring was a dingy yellow and it feels like you are stepping back into the 70's. I did not realize until we started bowling why the place looked and smelled so funky. People were lighting up cigarettes and smoking around my kids. Since we were 1/4 of the way finished bowling and did not want to lose our money we decided to stick it our for a couple more frames. Since it was my son's 8 year birthday we typically take pictures. I pulled out my camera and was able to get a few pictures taken before I hear an announcement being made over the intercom. "No flash photography allowed in our bowling alley". I looked over towards the counter where the announcement was being made. I noticed several people staring in the direction of my family. Imagine this, walking into a bowling alley and being the only family bowling on the left side of the building and everyone else "bowling league" is on the right. This is my son's birthday and a special moment with my family. There were no signs posted saying that flash photography wasn't allowed. Why did this person feel it was necessary to single out my family with this ridiculous rule? Anyways, at this point I was really ready to leave. While waiting for my family to finish bowling my wife picked up a slice of pizza, some fries, and a sweet tea from the food counter. It cost $7.00 and the portions were extremely small. The fries tasted good but the pizza was nasty and so was the tea. Anyways, upon leaving Copperfield Bowl I figured I would find out why it was necessary to make an announcement over the intercom instead of coming to tell me in person. There were 2 guys at the counter, a younger one and an older man. I asked them if they knew who made the announcement. The older man says "I did". I told him that it was rude and that he should have come over to me instead of making an annoucement. Afterall, this guy was within 15 feet from where we were bowling. He said that "everyone had to hear that announcement, to ensure them that I was correcting the issue with you taking pictures". As this man is telling me this he no expression on his face. He was not apologetic nor did he seem to care. He mentioned that the bowling leagers dont like it when people take pictures. I said that was fine, but they need to post signs or something instead of announcing it over a loud speaker. This guy did not care what I had to say and kept being rude about it. I asked if he was the manager and he said he was the night manager. I then asked him for his name and he said it was Michael. So, if the manager is reading this you need to fix this issue or you are going to lose a ton of business. There are numerous complaints about this guy who is running your business into the ground. As for me, I will never step foot in this place again and will not refer my friends, business associates, or customers. Thanks for ruining what could have been a great time for a family...

Avoid the leagues. My experience has been that this is fine establishment for recreational bowling, the operations staff has always nice and courteous. But I would avoid the leagues.

Copperfield's biggest problem is managing the leagues both in smoothness of operations and people. I've bowled in leagues infrequently over the years at other bowling alleys so my experience is based on that comparison. Operationally speaking the other bowling alleys were more organized and for recreational bowling leagues it was easy to understand and participate. Copperfield "assumes" everyone is familiar with league rules and even hands out rule sheet that makes references that are not explained... And this is for a recreational league.

Then there's the issue of personalities and people management. Any time you're dealing with a group of people, the manager (which ultimately should be bowling alley employee) is responsible for the group dynamics. In my experience Copperfield basically let a league member harass other members... I draw the line at someone following me into the bathroom while harassing me. Other bowling alleys I've used would have pulled the person aside to address the behavior and eventually kicked them out of the league if they continued such behavior. Copperfield did not.

It's a shame. But we started going to other alleys. The AMF lanes actually had better pricing and even passes that allowed us to bowl more frequently and...

I've been calling the place for weeks to set up 1.5 hours of bowling for a group of 6, making sure I was getting the best deal and that there would be no surprises.

Showed up today with the total price (provided by the manager) divided evenly into 6 shares... the older fellow in glasses at the counter started mocking us about the number and wanted to "see my math." I walked him through it verbally and he agreed and took our money.

About an hour and 10 minutes later (we needed to leave) we turned our shoes in and the old man started again with how we didn't know what the hell we were doing that it would have been cheaper if we'd ask him... raised his voice at us about how ignorant we were. I told him that the manager (Robert) had suggested what we did. The little old man kept going on and on about how I needed to grow up and listen (I'm 30, by the way). I told him I did exactly what the manager told me to do, and his comment was something along the lines of "Well, that's just stupid of you."

We left, and will...