Fancy a night out with friends? Try Hollywood Bowl... (Hollywood Bowl)

Member Name: stuff10

Product:	Hollywood Bowl
Date:	28/10/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good value for money, nicely lit-up, service at your lane

Disadvantages: Toilets were slippy, can't keep the shoes

In August I had the pleasure(?) of going bowling with the wife and 4 of her work colleagues... all of whom are civil servants. After several visits to the intended venue, dozens of health and safety assessments and a mountain of paperwork, we eventually set out to Hollywood Bowl in the Centertainment complex in Sheffield...

It was over 2 months ago that we last went now (thanks must go to dooyoo for (finally) adding my request) and the drinks were flowing so my memory might be a little hazy in places...

We went bowling on a Friday night and met at the alley at around 8pm, having booked a lane for 9pm. The Hollywood Bowl in Sheffield (like many others, I'd presume?) has its own large bar area that serves your usual array of alcoholic and soft drinks. They had Budweiser and Becks Vier on tap, as well as Strongbow and a couple of others that I can't remember now.

A pint and a coke was somewhere around £4.50, which isn't too much of a rip-off for a place like this. They also had some offers on bottled beers, 4 for £10 I think it was, but I've never really understood why you'd choose a 330ml bottle when you can have a 568ml pint for roughly the same price.

After an hour of chatting (mostly about the civil service - what is it with civil servants only being able to talk about work... we have 5 of them in our family and they never shut up about it! Grr! It's boring!!)... sorry about that... after an hour of chatting we went to the front desk and booked onto our lane and changed into our bowling shoes.

We were on lane 19(ish) and the building probably has room for about 25-30 lanes, so it's a pretty big place. As I was the only person there who wasn't a civil servant, I took the initiative and entered all of our names on the computer (none of the others had had the necessary training, or gained the correct health and safety certificate to use the computer). It was then time to bowl.

I'm sure everyone's been bowling before, so I'll not explain the ins and outs of the game for you, but I will tell you that Hollywood Bowl is quite funkily lit-up after dark - they have fluorescent lighting which makes your clothes shine and really adds to the experience. It's probably not appreciated by proper bowlers, but it's great for people who are just looking for a bit of fun!

Each lane has bumpers that you can raise (good for the women) and a very handy button that you can press to call a waitress over to get you some drinks from the bar! In fact, almost as soon as we'd started bowling, one of the said waitresses approached us and told us about a special offer they had on... a pint and a burger... for 75p! No that wasn't a typo, and no it's not the result of hazy memory... a pint and a burger for 75 English pence! How can you go wrong with that? The burger was lovely and the pint washed it down pretty nicely too.

On the negative side, I nearly went a over t twice in the gents thanks to the combination of a rather large puddle of water and my incredibly funky bowling shoes. I think that's the only negative of the night though.

It cost us £17 per couple for 2 games of bowling. As I've already said, the drinks weren't too expensive and the burger and beer offer was fantastic. We spent a couple of quid in the arcade afterwards, where they have shooting games, dancing games, driving games and air hockey, but I think I'm just a bit too mature to be playing these.

All-in-all a good night was had. And I won the bowling, in case you wanted to know.

Summary: The perfect place for the perfect game