Putts & Pins — Restaurant in West Des Moines

This was my first experience with indoor mini golf and a complete disappointment. I don’t know if the courses here are just bad, or if indoor mini golf is just bad. The vibe is basically “miserable adults drinking at the weird kid’s birthday party”

The place is loud - like casino loud. It’s not possible to talk to the person next to you in a normal tone. It gave me a headache.

Everything about the golf is ten times more complicated than it needs to be. Everything except for the actual holes, which are so simple and similar that they may as well be the same hole over and over. The digital aspect definitely makes the game less fun. Our putters de-registered themselves twice and we had to start over each time. Our ball got stuck in the first machine and we had to start a third time. Several courses are missing the wooden trim in areas so the balls fall off the course.

It’s pricey given how unfun an experience it is. It cost us $32 for 2 people to play 9 holes - no drinks, no food.

We wasted $32 for this outing - but you don’t have to. Nobody is monitoring the courses. If you don’t care about digital points, just bring a couple golf balls from home, walk past the desk, grab a putter, and keep score yourself. The digital aspect isn’t necessary to play the courses, it just wastes time (significantly slows the game down), adds more unnecessary noise, doesn’t reward skill, and doesn’t allow alternating turns like mini golf is supposed to.

Based on the group of 4 very obviously under-21s who were drinking next to us, this place either doesn’t card or allows one person to buy a lot of beers for a group. I suppose that’s a pro for some, but it just made the place feel more...

The boys were on a non-tech fast (project from school). We figured we would mini-golf, eat, bowl, play old school arcades, billiards, and air hockey.

Advertised but did not exist. Instead it was 5-6 pinball machines and a table for board games.

"Old school arcade games, pool tables flanked by darts, shuffleboard and air hockey encourage friendly competition among all your friends."

Although the menu sounded okay to an adult, I don't think people are coming there to eat or at least not for a steak dinner. There was one thing on the appetizer menu that the boys would eat - bone in wings.

The beer I wanted they no longer served and I was told they needed to update their menu.

Another gentlemen next to me ordered a top shelf liquor drink. It was $19 for about a 12 ounce drink. Their was a specialty drink on the menu that included the exact same liquor as what he asked for $13. The bar manager was kind of rude about it, more wanting to impress her staff than the customer. She said, "actually that drink on the menu is $15 but we haven't updated our prices yet."

The food and bar made sense.

The lack of what was offered did not. If you want an upscale restaurant/bar open one, I just don't think it goes with arcades and pinball.

Lastly, if you encourage the space to be kid friendly, perhaps have more kid friendly appetizers.

For over $100 I would have enjoyed somewhere else. When you are updating the beer list and cocktail prices, you might also want to remove the darts/pool tables etc. part.

I've never written a review before but I feel like a Karen....

Overall, we had a great experience here. The service was great. We had a larger party, and our server was on top of it. She would periodically check in but didn't disturb conversation, she gave us time while waiting on members of our group, kept the table cleared after we ordered quite a few apps to share/try. Drinks - Spiked Capri Sun. I taste tested all of them since 3 of us each ordered one of the 3 flavors. My favorite was the Disco Glitter. Appetizers - Ms Pac Man Bai Buns, Mini Bagel Pizzas, Let's Give 'Em Something to "Taco" Bout, and Ring Pop Chicken Lollipops. They were all absolutely delicious. We loved them. Mini Golf - this was a lot of fun and a great concept. There were some glitches with it either not registering the ball was down, registering it was hit, ball getting stuck, or turn timing out. But once we saw what to look for on the screen, we waited and moved our ball around to register. This is the only downside. Also, each course is completed separately, even if you purchase all 18 holes, so you'd need to check your ending score before moving to the next course because the scores auto delete. Otherwise, we had so much...