KBOX Karaoke Private Room Melbourne — Restaurant in Melbourne

Words can't really describe how epically KBOX took care of us for Karaoke last night. I booked their largest room, #47, for 22 people, for a massive milestone birthday party.

We rocked up at 5pm for the opening, on a Saturday, and had the room booked til 9pm, making use of their incredibly valued Dinner & Karaoke package. The bouncer was super friendly and for all the courtesy warnings to Make Sure To Bring Physical ID, he accepted the VicRoads Digital ID and waved us in with a smile (we all had physical too just in case).

We opted to forego their KBOX supplied food and instead use it all on happy hour drinks. We smashed through those drinks in 90 minutes lol. So I started a tab.

KBOX staff (Stephanie I think? and Zak) were extremely helpful with excellent communication in the lead-up to the night. Our floor reception/manager/staff took our endless drinks orders like a champ and nothing was missed or late.

They allowed us to Uber Eats in 10x Crust Pizzas which miraculously arrived on time on some poor delivery guy's bike, in spite of the insane roadworks blocking all of LaTrobe Street. I have no idea how he managed to deliver that stack in one go, but cudos. Next time though I'll prob just get Crust to deliver it themselves, maybe.

I can't stress enough how not into Karaoke the majority of my mates claim they are. But with all the endless booze flowing; trays full of cocktails, beers, spirits, you name it, and the security of our own massive yet private room with trusted friends, all inhibitions were gone by the 4th song. We had 2 wireless mics, 2 wired mics and 1 fixed place standing mic, and still about 8-9 of us were group-singing belting out songs at once.

The greatest things that set KBOX apart is the ability to search and queue songs straight from your phone, and the fact the system can search YouTube and loads up pretty much any karaoke version of any song available on it. That opens up millions of song, and we took full advantage of this singing some of the more obscure hits such as Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, Paul Simon - 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, Citizen King - Better Days, Phoenix - Lasso, Deadmau5 - The Veldt, and even Bluejuice - Head of the Hawk. Never in my dreams would I think a legit Karaoke venue would have these songs, but KBOX accessed them all.

One bit of feedback; the system does inexplicably and randomly skip past songs, especially ones queued up from YouTube. The staff claim it's because it hasn't downloaded yet, but some of them had been queued up for hours. So I don't really know why that happened and it was a bit disappointing.

However, time flew and before I knew it, I was asking if we could extend the room 2 more hours. I couldn't believe the crew were smashing out karaoke from 5pm to 11pm, no breaks. That's a 6 hour session. We spent a fortune on drinks... 😂. We downloaded our song history after-the-fact, and it was 95 songs. That deserves medals.

Several days later and my voice is still croaky, but that is to be expected....

This is probably the best private booth karaoke place in Melbourne.

That being said, there’s always going to be room for improvement, so I wanted to provide the below feedback:

At $48pp you have a $20 drink voucher included- but realistically this covers one drink. And majority of people (especially who are new to Karaoke and a bit nervous without alcohol) will be wanting multiple, so this gets very expensive very quickly.

Our booth (first on the left as you pass the male bathroom) had an issue with the stand-up mic on the mini-stage where it would barely pick up your voice and kept cutting in and out no matter the angle/adjustment etc so we just gave up and used the handheld mics which worked perfectly. The audio system was decent but the bass kept vibrating some equipment in one corner of the ceiling which was really distracting and from the looks of it could be adjusted and fixed relatively easily (the other speakers didn’t have this issue in the room and were great).

Lastly more soundproofing would be welcomed as compared to very similarly designed and identically spaced out karaoke booths in Tokyo, for example, you could hear other booth singers almost as though they were in your booth with you at times. You still have this in Tokyo just dialed down about 80% which is perfect and barely noticeable. The layout being so similar to the Japanese experience however was such a good decision.

Beyond that feedback- we had a really good experience and I stand by the statement of this being the best private booth Karaoke experience in Melbourne. If a combination of the above was taken into consideration myself and many friends would be back here frequently instead of just once every couple months as currently...

Absolutely terrible experience at KBOX, and I would never recommend this venue to anyone. Here are the reasons why: • Rude and unprofessional customer service: A Chinese lady over the phone was extremely rude, demanding we arrive on time, despite us making two courtesy calls informing them we were running late due to New Year’s traffic. She assured us it would be fine to come in late since we were the last booking, but we were later denied entry. • Misleading and contradictory communication: The security guard at the door claimed he overheard both phone calls. If he truly heard the conversations, he would have known the staff had approved our late arrival. Instead, we were turned away after being assured otherwise. • Dodgy and unlicensed security practices: The so-called “security guard” refused to provide his name or the company he works for. He claimed to be a security officer for KBOX but could not provide proof of licensing or identification. It seems highly suspect that the venue employs someone who appears to be operating as an unlicensed security guard or crowd controller. • Lack of escalation or accountability: When we asked to speak to a manager on-site, the request was outright denied. This reflects poorly on the management and their willingness to address customer concerns.

Overall, the lack of professionalism, false promises, and dodgy security practices made this experience absolutely unacceptable. I would advise others to avoid KBOX at all costs

“SECURITY” IN THE PHOTO is also not licensed hence why the business rephrases this as a “crowd controller” don’t be fooled

Won’t even handle an issue like a professional business, need...