Fox Bowl

Thus place is a shit hole! The place is dirty, greasy and unkept. They even charge you to use the guide for the smaller kids. Not only did our lane freeze more than 3 times, or just completely become unusable but no one bothered to apologize or compensate us for the inconvenience. I will never come here again and advise you all to stay away… For the $ 50 price tag on two games I’ll go to a more reputable, clean, and up to date facility for the same price. Fox Bowl you’re not worth my time or my money!

I have been bowling here since high school. I love bowling! I even had one of my daughter’s birthdays here about 5 years ago and it was a lot of fun.
However, this place is on a steady decline.
I will not bowl here anymore.
It started with the shoes you are required to rent to bowl getting crappier and crappier. The leather on the shoes would be coming unstitched at the seams. They were disgusting looking. I would bring and extra pair of socks to wear for them and then throw them away afterwards.
The couple (older but not elderly) who run the place seem apathetic to the broken down machines. The arcade games constantly steal your money. One time I asked the gentleman for help and he stood there and watched it malfunction and didn’t offer to compensate for the lost money because the machine was broken. The female just busied herself elsewhere to avoid the situation. When I asked if the machines were maintained by fox bowl or an independent company (because I wanted to know who to address the situation to), he just gave me a runaround. Either he couldn’t understand what I was asking or he just didn’t want to give up a couple bucks to satisfy a customer to remedy the situation.
The computers on the lanes are difficult to work with. The touchscreens are not responsive. Balls seem to get stuck constantly. It’s so frustrating to try to complete a game that it’s not fun at all anymore.
I would NOT recommend this place to my friends.

I appreciate that they serve Smith and Forge. I came with a party of 4 on a Friday so we had to wait for leagues to end. The technology is a bit outdated and the décor could use an update, but bowling is bowling. It was fun.

Our group actually had a great time bowling, but the experience with the bartender ruined the fun. We would’ve stayed longer, but none of us wanted to deal with the guy. First time at bar was fine enough. He’s rude and says «yeah» and I guess that means «What do you need?» to him. He gives us our drinks. My brother gets a Guinness and he gives him a glass and a can and he asks if he wants him to pour it. I just grabbed the can and glass and gave it to my brother… no big deal there. Next time he’s picking his nose, so it became clear that the weird initial behavior is his thing. The last time I only went because I wanted to continue the fun and we weren’t very far along in our 2^nd and last game.
I got up to bar and he’s «helping» the guy in front of me. He gives him a bottle of beer and he asks the guy if he wants him to open the bottle. The guy is obviously miserable and trying to radiate his misery onto everyone he crosses path with. The alley was packed on a friday night and the bar was empty. I imagine that guy costs them a ton of bar money. Finally, he gives me my bill and it isn’t broken out. The bill seemed about right, so I just went with it, because I didn’t want to deal with him anymore. I left him about a 5% tip just because I feel like it’s mandatory these days. I really wanted to leave $.01. Bartender wins and I won’t invade his space anymore. That’s my last visit to Fox Bowl.

Service stunk! We had reservations for 4:45 and didn’t get a lane until 5:35. The employees were not outgoing. The bowling alley is nice inside but bc of the lack of customer service, I would not return.

Had a blast with a group of 6. We used the Unilocal deal to get one game free with a purchase, and with shoe rental on a Saturday night, not bad at all! I would definitely return here. Good fun, clean lanes, and has decent bar selection and pricing. The only complaint I had was the balls were not where they were labeled as, but that’s not on the business, that’s people being lazy.

I’ve bowled at Fox Bowl a few times. They’re on Groupon a lot and they also have good deals. We took part in the summer promotion they had running, which was 3 games and shoes for $ 10.
The first time we came, we had a great time and had no issues. However, we came back last week for my sister’s birthday and the lane kept breaking over and over again. We had to keep entering the score manually and hitting the ‘reset’ button on the lane. In the 3 games we bowled, we hit it at least a dozen times, if not more.
Everyone that works here are really nice. My sister has a disability and loves bowling. They treat her so well, that I’ll continue to come back with her whenever she visits me. They also have lots of iced water out, so you never have to worry about breaking into a sweat and getting dehydrated.
I’ll come back again soon and just hope that the problem with the lane was a fluke.

Fun family outing! We were 7 adults and 2 children (3 & 5 yrs). Judy at the front desk could not have been friendlier! We did have a Groupon for 1 hour of bowling and that was a perfect length of time for the little ones. The scoreboards are easy to set up and allow you to program for when the bumpers should pop up for the kids. They especially loved the dinosaur platforms that help them steer the bowling ball down the alley. Yes, the kids scored higher than some of the adults:)

Honest review: like it cause its not expensive the Unilocal offer is invalid so dont expect to use it when ever there is a Unilocal offer see if the business actually excepts it first before u do it. Its not the nicest bowling alley i been to the ambiance is alright the food isnt that good its a bowling alley when do u ever get gormea amaizing food u always get frozen food. Its cheap like its the cheapest one i been to minus 2 stars because of the food

If I could give less than one star I would. We called to see if they had open bowling one evening and the man on the phone said they did until 1am and told us that nights special. We walk in no more then 10 minutes later to be kicked out as we walked in the door telling us they were closing. This was at 9:30pm. I’ve also heard some pretty bad stories about the employees being extremely rude and unpleasant. So much for supporting the independent businesses.

Decent bowling ally with good restaurant attached. Nothing fancy but the staff are helpful, knowledgable and always on top of things.

Out dated. Cold as hell, i actually got a cold after bowling there. Shoes are falling apart. Balls were dirty and i swear the lane was uneven or warped because every bowl went to the left and i am a proficient bowler. Wouldn’t go back. 2 stars just because it could have been worse.

It’s old school, but alot of fun, the employees are nice, but Google maps gives ridiculous directions, saying make a u turn when a u turn is unnecessary. There’s a promotion through yelled that if you check in you get your second game FREE! Good lane conditions, I’ve yet to try the food though.

Nothing special about this Bowling Alley. Relatively clean, and the staff was helpful. Decent price, too. For 3 players on a Tuesday afternoon, we were able to get shoes an 65 minutes of bowling for under $ 20 bucks. We ended up adding an extra 15 minutes to finish our third game.
Lane we used was consistent and not overly or underly (is the latter a word) oiled.
It was kind of a trek for me from North Wheaton, but it was a central location for my partners. There’s also a pizza place inside which I did not try. It was formerly known as Morano’s, and my last visit there was the year 2001. Not that great because I don’t remember anything specifically good about it.

We bought a groupon and thought we would take our kids bowling for the first time. The man at the desk was so friendly and brought us a light weight ball for our kids and a ramp to push their balls down. We arrived a little before 11 and it wasn’t busy at all. The bowling alley had a nice feel to it and to our surprise it was really clean (sometimes bowling alleys aren’t!). We didn’t order food bc the restaurant didn’t open till 11:30 however the people next to ordered a pizza right before we left and it smelled really good. We will come back again! Everyone had a great time.

I haven’t been bowling in like, forever… and I came across a groupon deal for an hour of bowling for four people, cosmic bowling to be exact, so I bought it.
Cosmic bowling starts at 9:30 so we got there a little after. The whole process of redeeming our groupon was easy peasy. We were offered cosmic or regular bowling and of course opted for cosmic — the place was split, so it was darker on one side than the other. I liked having that option. The shoes were self serve so we grabbed our colored bowling balls and headed over to our lane.
I can’t really imagine a bowling alley would be bad over another one… this one was just fine. We hit up the bar for a few beers and as our hour was nearing we decided to buy another. It worked out perfect at the rate of $ 12.50 per half hour that our hour lasted 11-​midnight when they closed. If you wear glow in the dark socks you get a promo, also I noticed a promo when you check in on Unilocal — it didn’t apply as we had the groupon so it’s good to know for another time.

This review is only on the customer service, as I was never actually able to bowl.
We went on a Saturday afternoon to go bowling and waited in line behind a large birthday party. Setting up the party took the owners over 30 minutes because they had done no planning to accommodate the large party even though they had called in a reservation.
While there were three people working the counter and two machines apparently they could only assist one person at a time so I had to wait for them to figure out their birthday party situation. By this time there was a line of around 20 people behind me all waiting to bowl.
When it finally became my turn I asked for one lane and the owner told me that he couldn’t let me bowl because people had called in reservations and so they would get priority. There were plenty of lanes open in the bowling alley at this time.
So, after waiting 30 minutes I get told there are no lanes open… something that would have been helpful at the begin of my wait.
I will never go here again due to their bad management and customer service.

A group of us came here on a whim to kill some time before dinner. It was a Saturday afternoon and the place was hopping. Cosmic Bowling Time! Cosmic Bowling is totally for you if you like thumping music and darkness only illuminated by black light and swirling light shows. Ahhhh, night club on the bowling lanes.
We were able to snag a lane easily. There was a lot of rent-​a-​shoes, including toddler size and a lot of bowling balls available for use. To me, the lanes seem crowded, it’s like the seating area overlaps the seating area on each side… hard for me to explain I guess, it’s just not fun.
What wasn’t fun either was when the lane kept breaking down. Balls weren’t coming back, pin sweeper got stuck. But I will say, the Fox Bowl folks did try to fix the problems quickly.
Hard to say because everything was dark for the black light, but the place just seemed dated. What I did notice, because it was well-​lit, was that the bathroom was disgusting. There was no toilet paper in any of the stalls and the garbage was overflowing. Thank goodness I still have to carry a diaper bag for my son because it’s always got the hand sanitizer and hand wipes.

We are totally coming back to this place again, it was hilariously awesome.
We’ve driven by numerous times as we drive from Forest Park out to the Studio Movie Grill (because it’s cleaner than anything near us) and I always said «We should totally go bowl there.»
On Thanksgiving Day, we made our inaugural visit.
I noticed there was a Unilocal check in deal for a 3^rd game free when you buy 2 or something. I inquired about it as we were paying and the guy (whom I apparently didn’t understand) was trying to tell me that something else would be a better deal so I said yeah, okay whatever you think. I honestly have no idea how many games we paid for and I don’t think we paid anything for our shoe rental.
Anyway, after paying $ 20 even (for two of us) we headed over to lane 23. The last time I bowled, I got a 66. The first game here, I got a 104. I absolutely loved the ball I was using. It was magical, surely must’ve had some sort of special powers because I bowled 4 of the best games of my life with it.
So the big question was, after we concluded our second game, would we get to bowl a 3^rd game? I was still questioning what had happened when we paid. By God, yes, a 3^rd game began. And then a 4^th… How many games could we play, I wondered? Would it go on all night?
Well we stopped after 4 games (even though the screen was firing up a 5^th game) because apparently the husband wanted to score some cheap Blu Ray movies at Walmart and they were opening in a matter of minutes.
I really enjoyed the lighting/​décor/​ambiance of this place. Very dark and cosmic bowl-​ish. I love blacklights and neon paints. The balls seemed to glow in the dark.
This may just be our go-​to bowling alley, even if it is a bit far from where we live. The other ones around us are pretty shady by comparison and I’m not into Lucky Strike.

This is a pretty legit bowling alley. We stopped in on Saturday evening with a Groupon. $ 13 for an hour of bowling plus shoe rental for four, which seemed like a pretty great deal. They were doing the always awesome cosmic bowling, and there were plenty of kids around. As far as the facilities are concerned, it’s about what you’d expect. Nothing really out of the ordinary.
I –really– liked the pizza they served there. It’s ultra-​thin New York style, and they’ve got all the other associated bowling alley pizza place snacks like mozzarella sticks and other things along those lines. Prices for food seemed reasonable, but the prices for beer seemed a little high. $ 4.50 for a pint? Aren’t bowling alleys typically known for their mega-​cheap pitchers? Not this one, I guess.
Docked a star because this place seemed really under-​staffed. I guess it’s sort of the nature of these sorts of legacy businesses but it was sort of annoying needing to go to the front desk and have them radio someone over to the bar whenever I wanted another beer.
Still, worth checking out if you’re in the area especially while the Groupon is still running.