LAN King Gaming Lounge — Local services in Provo

2 stars may be generous. I hosted a large event here, reserving the 2 party rooms. The equipment was fine for the most part, and most ran smoothly while we were there, but everything else about my experience was incredibly frustrating.

I tried reserving the rooms over 2 months in advance but didn’t even hear back from them over a month after my initial attempt to contact. It took me physically coming into the building and asking if my email was received before I even knew the day I had requested for was available and another 2 weeks before I knew that the rooms had officially been reserved. Every email response I received came consistently about a week after I had sent mine, which made it impossible to work out logistics and have questions answered in a reasonable time for my group. Even then, I was quoted at full price, no discount for lack of communication, no discount for large group/2 room bundle, and no explanation why 2 rooms was provided with 8 medium sized pizzas whereas if I had ordered 1 room I would have received 4 large sized pizzas.

ONLY when we got there, it was explained to us that some games we had been planning on playing weren’t available or there weren’t that many central accounts for us all to use. We were sent no list of available games prior to our arrival. The building was incredibly loud and crowded because they were hosting a super smash tournament at the same time as our party and one employee had to repeatedly tell them to “shut up” in order to talk with us and explain the rules to us. By the time we were allowed in to the rooms, it was 30mins past the time our reservation was supposed to start.

I’m being generous with my second star ONLY because of Michael Clawson, an employee, who was by far the most caring and professional employee I talked with at LAN King. I’m not lying when I say that man needs a raise. He single-handedly saved my event (for several reasons): gave me his personal phone number when we visited in store so that I had a way to hold the manager I was emailing accountable to responding to my emails, showed me the list of games when I went in to inquire about the lack of communication I had been getting, offered me a discount during the event because he understood my frustrations, went to get ice for us when the ice machine broke, and repeatedly came in to keep me updated on what was happening with our drinks, computers, and pizza. In general, only because he was there were a lot of my anxieties settled. I attribute my events eventual success to him...

Good things: The hardware was excellent. Super fast computers and quality mouse and keyboard. Pricing is decent too; about $4 per person per hour.

Problems: They lost our reservation -- we paid for the party pack and reserved a room, but when we showed up they didn't have us scheduled. Fortunately, the place was pretty empty that night so we were still able to get in.

The staff had NO understanding of networks -- we had all planned to have a Minecraft LAN party, which requires knowing the IP address of the host machine. They have the computers locked up tight for security, so I didn't have a way to obtain my local IP address. The employee had no idea how to help us get it set up, and I kept telling him that all I needed was 10 seconds with a terminal. I eventually convinced him that I knew what I was talking about and he gave me admin access for a minute so I could get the IP address of my computer. After that it was smooth sailing, but it took 20 minutes of the group's 3-hour block of time to get everything settled. If you guys could have the IP address of each machine displayed on the screen somewhere, that would be great. It would also be helpful if employees had at least some technical background/training.

These guys have really missed the memo on masks -- I'm pretty sure this is the last private establishment in Utah where masks are still required. The mask mandate in Utah ended weeks ago, and scientific studies have concluded that the risk of vaccinated individuals transmitting COVID-19 is virtually nonexistent. The CDC has declared that vaccinated people don't need to wear masks, but LAN King thinks that they know better. Everyone in the group was required to wear masks the whole time, even those who who had already received the vaccine. It didn't matter that we were the only group in the main room and that we'd all been hanging out without masks hours before we got there: evERyOne hAS to...

I booked a bachelorette party at LAN King, and it was a bit of a mixed bag. The atmosphere was great, the main employee who worked with us was amazing. This is a business I want to succeed in Provo! I could see visiting LAN King as a solo player, or with a friend could be a great experience. However, there were a lot of issues with our visit.

I told them two games that we'd want to play while we were there: Sea of Thieves and Minecraft (java). They did install Sea of Thieves, but I didn't specify the windows version over the steam version, so we weren't able to play it as most of my friends own windows versions and therefore couldn't log in. No biggie--that's my bad. The more frustrating element was that they could not get minecraft (or main game plan) to work on these rigs. The guy who we mostly interfaced with (again, super great and very apologetic) told us he had been trying to install minecraft for two hours before we arrived, and it apparently kept crashing their systems. A bummer, but it was what it was. We'd make due.

Then we asked what other games they had installed... there wasn't a lot! There were maybe 8-10 games they had installed, but they were having issues with their owned accounts (so you don't have to own the games), so we couldn't even play a lot of the installed games. We were essentially left to two games that we could/were interested in playing: Fall Guys and Fortnite, neither of which were our first choices. Then, there was a shift change and the new employee tried to cut our party short by 20 minutes. It was rough!

With all of those issues, $250 for two hours felt like a steep bill to pay. A lot of the issues seemed to be system and managerial based, so I really hope they figure it out. If you're going to have a party here, I wouldn't discourage it, but I'd recommend you ask A LOT of...