Pins Mechanical Co — Restaurant in Charlotte

I reserved a section and 2 bowling lanes for my husband's birthday party and his 20+ guests. I will say that the experience has left me certain I will never come here again. Did he have a good time? Yes. Did he end up with a little OVER $300 bill for his birthday? $345! Also yes. We signed a contract to reserve the space which came with a $250 fee PER hour and the minimum reservation time is 2 hours. Plus $100/hour for the bowling lane. Plus taxes, fees, AND a mandatory 20% tip. It was communicated to me that all we had to do was give our guests the wristbands provided and they’d buy their drinks on their own tab. It would be calculated at the end of the night and as long as it was over $500 we were good and owed nothing. Except I should have realized that made no sense because what about the $200 bowling lanes part? Anyways. Maybe they were understaffed? Either way, our party was only given 1 waiter and he came around once every 30 minutes which was frustrating because we could see him standing less than 5 feet away behind the bar. Apparently, by ordering from the bar, although wearing the wristbands provided for our party, their drinks weren’t put towards our required minimum. Also, our bowling lane “broke” multiple times. Was the time it took to alert someone to the problem and waiting for them to fix it given back to us? Of course not. I can’t explain the frustration of trying to understand what’s going on and having it explained quickly enough to not have my husband come over and ruin his birthday party. So I paid the bill and left with a fake smile to ensure his celebration wasn’t ruined. Oh, did I mention this location has no kitchen in its facility at all? Barely any trash cans either. I was told we could bring in outside food but no birthday decorations at all. Not even balloons. So that required minimum is solely with the bar and overpriced cocktails with barely any liquor in them. The gag is for how much I paid at the end of the night, I could have gone to a much better venue and had food included. Sigh… they got me once and ultimately, hubby had a good time so the review isn’t a 1 star or 2. If you want to play games, I wouldn’t recommend reserving anything beforehand. I see no benefit in doing it at all. If you want to experience it for yourself, just walk in and be prepared for several small inconveniences. Perhaps the company you bring with you will make it all worth it. Edit: it’s now a 2-star review, not 3. I’ve received an email from them that was wholly unapologetic and an attempt to try to cover their asses… reiterating they told me that we could come in to use the facilities at no extra charge. But that it’s on a first-come, first-serve basis. Ultimately, their email response to me says, “Wow we’re sorry there was a little bit of confusion but we’re ecstatic that Theo had a great time with his party. Thanks for using our property.” They are not interested in giving any refunds or expressing any regret. In their world, they did nothing wrong besides having too few servers. And to that, they responded that they will retrain and address that issue...

This is going to be a long one I apologize! During the day we would rate Pins a 1/5at night a 3/5!

TLDR: Day: it’s worse than Chuck-E-Cheese! Night: Music is way too loud! Machines can be janky!

My rating expectation: overall a 3 to not hurt the overall score too bad as we still love this place just a lot less! Service is a 5/5 everyone who works there does such an amazing job! Atmosphere is a 2/5 right in the middle of how I feel about day and night!

We found this place about 3 years ago or so and LOVED coming like every other weekend! This all really sucks as Pins is really the only pin ball place in Charlotte!

Let’s start with the day 1/5:

We haven’t been to Pins in about a month as the music is a big turn off for us we have to be in the right type of mood to even think about tolerating it. (More on why with the night section) we were so excited to check out the atmosphere and hopefully start coming more like we used too every other week sometime every week! We were very surprised and shocked at what we walked into I felt like I had stepped into a Chuck-E-Cheese. There were so many kids and we knew you guys allowed children past a certain debatable time at night. (More in the night section) but we were expecting day drinking and pin ball not a full blown playground! There was maybe 3 machines open to play and with all the ruckus it makes me wonder why a lot of the machines have seemed janky the last 5 times we’ve been. So unfortunately we won’t be back during the day!

Now for the night 3/5: The service is always a 5/5 however sometime during the spring of last year the music has been ungodly loud we normally can’t hear ourselves think I normally leave with a headache! It’s not even that great of music either. I’ve also seen children still there as late as 11pm which is a major turn off as i didn’t enjoy stepping away from the bar only to see a child late at night! The pinball machines have always been kinda janky the last five times we’ve been some stuck or just won’t work! We will overall still come at nights just once every in a blue moon! As the atmosphere changed and I’d unfortunately no longer for us!

What we would love to see: Child free days (not everyday but like a special once a month) Lower music volumes (literally only a few notches down)

Also if you ever wanna sell a machine I might...

To start off with, i would highly recommend if you are coming to hang out at the bar and play games. The service from all the staff was excellent, always polite and quick! the cocktails were really dialed in as well. Really well-rounded on that front for sure.

My wife’s company had their office Christmas party here. To preface, I try to put constructive feedback in my reviews and leave out things that cant be controlled.

My main issues were that the food was mediocre, drinking water was “over the bar” only, the skee ball machines which occupied a large portion of the event space didn’t work correctly (scoring was almost completely broken), and the event space was not effectively access restricted.

Multiple people not involved with the event wandered through, one of whom appeared to be homeless and disoriented. Some people were even playing the arcade games in our event space. Adding a few more signs that say “reserved for event- do not enter” would probably be helpful, as well as making the tape barriers more obstructive.

Water being over-the-bar only seems petty, but other bars in south end even have self-serve water set out for regular evenings. Unless this is some health code issue, in my opinion a water cooler would have bumped this up a notch.

And finally the food- frankly it left a lot to be desired. There were some cold cut sliders, but apart from that It felt like a lot of the dishes were trying too hard. The bbq meatballs were yummy; other than that there was nothing really simple, no American staples like popcorn chicken or pulled pork, and some dishes like the teriyaki shrimp skewers were flat out bad in my opinion. Instead of normal fruit salad, there were assorted semi-soft cheeses added onto the ends of the fruit skewers, one of which was a classically “smelly” variety. I and other event goers i talked to mainly wanted...