Dave & Buster's Pooler — Restaurant in Pooler

Let me spin your tale of corporate insanity and customer service fresh from a "how to lose customers playbook" that literally involved the police. We start with a kids party at Dave and Busters. I call to make reservations, but the main number does not work. I try the group reservations line, nope...that is disconnected as well. We'll OK, it is sort of a new store, maybe something happened to the phones. So I send an message via their website to let them know the number is down. Surprisingly, someone calls me back from corporate and they connect me to the store. Cool. Thanks. Unfortunately, the man who answers the phone has a challenge with language skills, and it takes me a minute to figure out that while Dave and Busters takes reservations, this particular store decided not to do that any more. OK I guess. The guy just tells us to show up, and wait 2 hours. Ok. Well I guess that is what we do now. So we wander around the other shops for a couple of hours with kids in the cold because there is no place to sit. OK, maybe. We ask the hostess if there is a waiting area, and she says we can just play games. Lots of cops here...that is weird, I wonder if something happened...huh. OK, so we end up buying $300 in credits for the kids for them to play while we wait. They are just happy to get out of the cold. We finally get a table next to the spot a kid threw up next to..it is still on the floor. We eventually sit down. No waitress. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes...aaaand the waitress finally shows up. She gets our drink order, and our food order (we had plenty of time to look at the menu). We know it will be awhile, so the kids go to play at the arcade and I follow them (I am the only adult) and keep an eye on the table. The food comes maybe a half hour later. I see it and call the kids over. A cop comes over to my table...with the kids and I sitting down to eat. He then tells me that the manager told him, to tell me, that someone has to be at the table at all times or they give your table away. Wait, what? How am I supposed to keep an eye on a group of young kids in a large crowd if I can't see them? Cop: No idea, I was just passing on what they said". So instead of a manager, waitress telling me, or just posting this at the front, they just tell the off duty cops they hire to go around and threaten the customers. So you know, watch out for that. Few companies are comfortable enough to let cops do their policy enforcement. When the food is delivered, you may ask, was the food good? No idea, they had not made my salad and did not bring out my dinner, so I just asked them to cancel it. What about the kids? Son's Burger was bloody and rare, (asked for medium). The fries were somehow cold, and the lettuce was hot. Neat trick. Fine, I'll just let the manager know when they come by. Go ahead... ask me if they came by for a simple table touch....I'll spoil it for you they did not. Side items that bugged me as well: The ketchup was empty and if you don't want to leave a tip due to terrible service when you checkout, it makes you jump additional sub menus and pages to NOT leave a tip.

2/10.

Will just order pizza and buy a new Playstation for the same price. Credit where credit is due, the arcade side folks were on top of stuff, friendly...

The staff and all is great. They are super friendly people. The food, however, is where my issue lays. For the price we paid, it seems that our food would be top notch but it was cold. Me and my husband got the unlimited wings(yes, they have unlimited wings after 4pm but only for classic buffalo or bbq Mon-Thurs) for $22.99 each which includes a game card with 50 points preloaded. Our wings were cold to the touch when we got them. The wings are not tiny and you get a plate of about 8 of your choice of bone-in or bone out with a few celery and carrots sticks with ranch or whatever other sauce you choose. You can add fries for an extra charge. The wings are big and healthy but they were served cold to my husband and me. We put another order in for more wings and again they were cold. We were full to the brim after the second plate but we were a bit disappointing getting cold food for the price. Until there are improvements I doubt we'll be going back for the food.

They have several large screen TV's that are at the least 150 inches. They had a football game playing which was super fun. I think it would be exciting to watch a GA Bulldogs game on it!

With our game cards that we got for the unlimited wings, we checked out the arcade. It's ok, nothing to write home about. I think it's best suited for kids although we found a few games that we enjoyed including a couple VR games. Each game costs points that come off the game card and tickets won automatically get loaded on the game card that you can redeem in their little store. The ticket prices for items isn't too expensive. The most I saw was 150,000 tickets for a Meta Quest 2. I thought that was pretty cool. If you need to load up more points on the card for gameplay there is a kiosk in the middle of the arcade where you can do so with a credit or debit card. The cheapest amount for points was $20 which gives you 100 points to play.

Going in during the work week wasn't too bad as far as crowds go although it did pick up later in the evening. There is a full service bar that serves beer on tap but we are not drinkers so we didn't explore that area. There was a menu on our table that I glimpsed that had several different beers, non-alcoholic beers and several fruity type drinks like mimosas. I'm assuming they serve liquor as well. There are a few cops that hangout inside the building for obvious security reasons. So, safety shouldn't be an issue. The music playing over the intercom is fun and enjoyable that includes several different genres. It is loud but that's all part of the atmosphere. :)

All-in-all, we had a good time. The only complaint was the cold food. We'll give them another chance in a few months and hopefully will see some...

Well, being a long time fan of Dave n Busters I was excited to see that it was coming to the local area!!! My experience was a complete train wreck… I sat down quickly at a 2 person table…. within maybe 2 minutes of getting there and that was the ONLY positive from the visit.

We sat there for 5-8 minutes, waiting for the server, who finally arrives, and starts off with we are unable to serve anything fried … no chicken strips, no fried pickles etc etc. Ok fine, ordered mine and my sons drinks and 2 small appetizers thinking meh, seems fairly easy enough and shouldn’t be too long of a wait.

Fast forwarding 18+ additional minutes, I am still sitting without a drink, no food, no server checkups, for a total of approximately 30~ minutes. I had finally had enough, I decided to cancel my entire order, walked up to the bar got a drink in a matter of maybe 1.5 minutes, got 2 game cards and total time took me maybe 5 minutes. The manager approached me asking why I was cancelling the order since the food had only been put in for 18 minutes, and that it was “almost done,” to which I responded, “Sir, I still have not received a single drink for myself.” Keep in mind it’s really been almost 30 minutes counting the time I sat waiting for the server to come to the table.

All in all, this was a complete disaster and the overall customer experience was horrible. They seemed abundantly overwhelmed, undertrained and maybe understaffed with maybe some kitchen equipment issues and were even short on specific alcoholic items i.e… zing zang and it was only 12:45. Also, at every corner I turned there was law enforcement standing there, at the entrance, by certain games, by the restrooms, by the seating area, not a very relaxing environment and frankly it felt like i was at a night club with such a heavy presence. This is absolutely not what I’ve come to expect and what i’ve experienced at previous Dave n Busters.

Also, be ready to battle traffic jams in every single direction. All in all if I could give this experience less than a 1 star I would definitely assign it. If I go back, it will not be anytime soon and I hope that these issues are all corrected. To be fair, if you are that busy, you need to adjust your seating capacity or hire more staff, I don’t want to hear hey we haven’t served you one single drink after 25 minutes and refer to the fact that you are busy, I am understanding but 20+ minutes for a drink.. really? You as individuals, managers, paying customers, owners and as a franchise wouldn’t be accepting of such horrible services if the shoe was on the...