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Big Al's
Rating Details »
- Hours:
Mon-Wed. 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Thu. 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Fri-Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 a.m.
Sun. 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Attire:
- Casual
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good for:
- Lunch, Dinner
- Music:
- Music Videos
- Best Nights:
- Thu, Fri, Sat
- Happy Hour:
- Yes
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
- Smoking:
- No
- Coat Check:
- No
15 reviews for Big Al's
For bowling: Great! Clean, nice atmosphere, good equipment.
For eating: Meh. Cold, greasy food. Sometimes takes way too long to actually get said crappy food. But, hey, it's a bowling alley.
Service: Sometimes really good, sometimes amazingly bad. It's a mixed bag.
Five Stars by the very definition.
The new standard for today's american bowling centers.
I really enjoyed bowling there. And I think they cater all budget types. Big spendy groups down to your econo-minded bowler (like myself who enjoyed the weekend mornings). Sweet jumbo tron. Nice pro shop. I appreciate the focus around wood. Definite Northwest feel. Next time, I'll try out the sports bar and experience that whole 8' x 36' of video madness. Even the bathrooms were clean, nice and bold. The one tiny complaint is the wood above the pro shop. Not sure if it's wallpaper or thin ply, but it looks warped with air pockets.
Anywho, gotta check this place out and see for yourself. Really cool.
One sentence review: "You'll have more fun here if you just got paid."
If you're a penny-pinching-cheap-as$ you'll hate this place. they want your money and have no reservations about taking it. once you walk in you are bombarded by bright neon lights, large spaces, large screens, and larger families who are more than willing to shell out the larger portion of their paychecks to keep their kids from embarrassing them about wanting more money for arcade games.
that said, i too, am a penny pinching cheap as$. but, i did my due diligence and saved up money to blow. You will know that this place isn't vegas but your money won't know the difference. I knew this place would cost me and so being prepared, i had a great time. The video games do cost $0.50 to play, and the coin operated games run on tokens costing a quarter each. Some may think this is steep, but this is no Wunderland. The prizes are commiserate with the cost. If Wunderland had prizes like Big Al's (Wii / Rockband / PSP / Nintendo DS / GLASS cups / decent sh*t etc.) you wouldn't be playing with nickels. enough said about the arcade.
I only had breakfast there. It was familiar fare to those who frequent Denny's with their standards of sausage, eggs, bacon, waffles & potatoes. it was greasy, but what do you expect? The three of us each paid $6.99 for our breakfast.
The bowling is... bowling. They've got price reductions during slower times so take advantage of these if you're tight like me. Sunday mornings (9AM to Noon) are $1.75 per person/game so it's quite affordable. Shoe rental is $3.00. If you want to have a cosmic bowl experience you can try their other bowling alley. It's in the same place, but it's a little more expensive don't ask me how it is though - im cheap remember.
Honestly, it's been months since I've been inside. The reason is that the three times I've eaten here (correction 2 times and one attempt), the servers took freakin' forever to show up. My buddy and I eventually got our food and it was ok-to-good. I asked if they had Guinness and they did, but the bar lady didn't know how to operate the device that vended the beverage...
The last time I went, I found a seat and the bar guy gave me a menu. 25 minutes later as he was chatting up the bar-flys, I got up and asked how much I owed for the ice tea I had been nursing. He said, "Don't you want to eat something?" I said, "I was hungry half an hour ago when I walked in, now I'm going to go get something to eat."
So a couple of the video games are fun, the bowling is enjoyable, but I won't ever try to eat there again.
Long story short.
When they opened, the original staff completely under-trained, under-managed and under-whealming...
We called and tried to book a birthday party for my son and they didn't have the skills to place our name on the calendar and take money... really! not joking... that inept.
After boycotting Big Als for a while, My kid was invited to a b-day party (apparently they have learned how to work a calendar and register) i was immediately impressed by the fact that they fired all of the 17 year olds and hired 19-30 year olds to actually work.
Great place to watch the blazers if you live near 164th... Everything else is not a great value proposition, unless 78 dollars for bowling is a good value? you decide... and FYI - They charge 50 cents to play video games.
50 cents? puhhh-leeease!
For a bowling alley, this place is not too shabby. They have a nice restaurant there with decent food (although a little pricey) and giant tvs to watch sports on. The bowling alley is pretty sweet, with big-screens playing music videos. Again, a little pricey, but if you need more stimulation than just a ball and some pins, its worth the price.
Horrible service in the sports bar. Good thing I wasn't dying of thirst or hunger, because I would have been SOL. Basically the waiters act like they don't give a shi t and that you should be honored to have the chance to give them your money.
Food was overpriced, typical for most sports bars. $12 burgers, $8-9 appetizers. Skip it, you'd be better off at one of the bars at a chain restaurant, at least they'd care you were there.
I'm reviewing both the bowling alley and the food. I haven't actually been to the restaurant, but I've had the food from the restaurant.
Bowling Alley:
The lanes are excellent. If I were to review the alley by itself, I would give it 5 stars! The automated system rarely flukes like other bowling alleys (however, I've seen it give strikes a couple of times). The place is very clean and classy and the service is nice. The smaller alley has very comfortable chairs and plays music videos all days and the special "Galaxy" nights are epic in the main lanes. It's probably the best bowling alley I've ever been to quite frankly. Despite its appearance, it's actually not that expensive. I would say it costs the same to bowl here than any other bowling alley in the area.
Food:
Eh, not so great, but it's good for an activity center. The onion rings were bland and frankly tasted awful after 5 minutes. The burger wasn't too bad actually, but it was a little overpriced. The pizza is horrible. It's a cool place to have a party, despite the questionable food.
Yeah! Finally: a place that does the kiddie birthday party right. Anyone who has attended a birthday party for a small child knows they can be nightmarish - and I'm guilty of hosting a few of these myself. Anything from the fly-ridden picnic at the park party to the squeezed into the living room with a bunch of relatives I don't know party to the sticky loud trashy Chuck E. Cheese party ... these things are 75% insufferable.
So...good for Big Al's. You'll have to drive out to the burbs, but you'll get:
*A clean, modern space with private bowling alleys and separate party rooms
*A party host that moves presents to the party room, sets up the scorekeeping, keeps the root beer flowing: basically doing all the dirty work
*Beer, beer, beer, and pizza that isn't great but doesn't suck
*Escape options! If you're bored with the party, you can wander off to watch some videos on the big screens, play some Centipede in the arcade, or grab a G&T at the sports bar.
*A reprise from dealing with flies/mystery relatives/giant rat puppets
(I noticed the eyes of the parents who hosted this party bug out a bit when they were handed the bill, I'm docking a star on their behalf.)
Gabe C. was a bit too kind, me thinks. See his review if you're wondering about the Sports Bar portion of this Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups.
My "experience" at Big Al's was of the bowling and arcade variety, so I'll speak to that portion of this suburban nightmare.
I'll admit some responsibility in my own doom, I bought the step-bother a Big Al's card for Christmas. So of course when its time for his birthday, off we all go.
Dad ponied up for the super-de-duper bowling lane in Slider Alley, Al's high end answer to bowling ($35 per hour). Slider Alley has nice comfy couches and some cool retro looks, "lane side" food and beverage service, big screen TV's at the end of the lane (good for the step-bother, as he was multi-tasking between texting his friends, bowling and rooting for Green Bay). BIG speakers over each lane means you can't hear a damn thing your bowling partners are saying. We played with the pins lit in black light, which was sort of cool. Our server was a bit less than attentive, but the place was packed, so hard to blame her. Food was ok, and you get the feeling you're paying for the nice building and not quality food.
The Arcade: first, DON'T BUY TOKENS. Buy the Al's card, that works for most of the actual games, you swipe your card. The tokens only work for those bogus kiddie games that give you tickets with which you can buy some crap that you could've bought at the dollar store. They have air hockey, which I love, so that's cool, but not much else in the way of really good games, and no classic arcade games so, meh. It got pretty crazy and I had to step on some kid just to get to skee ball. If you do succumb to the desire to play the token games, you get tickets that you get to feed to the Ticket Eater, which was cool, but not worth it.
By the time I was there for 4 hours, it felt like an eternity. Not enough beer, too many small children, too much NOISE.
This place will entertain teenagers, small children to some extent, its clean, its good for families (they have a regular bowling alley), the sports bar crowd will love it. Maybe next year the step-bother will have outgrown it, I can only hope.
I like bowling, but I hate feeling like I'm in line waiting for free handouts of Patron just to lob a ball down a lane. If you come here on a Friday, which I did, be prepared to wait. Big Al's is packed with running, shrieking baybays and it may take a couple visits to the bar or a fierce air hockey duel to knock the edge off. Either that or twiddle your thumbs.
Eventually, our party got a lane and it actually became enjoyable. The kiddies started clearing out and the server kept coming around to serve more drinks. Literally, she hovered and came back every 10 minutes to see if we wanted more. Did I have "lush" written on my forehead?
Nonetheless, bowling was fun though kinda pricey.
As the website proclaims, "ilovebigals"
I've now gone twice in the past week. The first time we did it all -- pool, food, arcade, and bowling. Mostly because we had to.. when we first arrived we went up to the bowling counter and the 17 year old working there said it would be 3 hours (!!!!!) until a lane was available. So we went and played pool for an hour and ate dinner and then came back up to find that the "slider alley" lanes were available but the regular lanes would still be 1.5 hours or so..
We chose to do the slider alley for $38 per hour. There were 5 of us so that ended up being less money and those lanes are way cooler anyhows. There is a couch at each lane and its smaller and less filled with teenyboppers.
The greatest thing: I found a Wenatchee Girl martini on the menu. I'm from Wenatchee so clearly the drink was made for me! The drink is apple infused vodka, apple schnapps, apple juice and pomegranate juice! Delish! Less tart than an appletini but not too sweet.
The worst thing: There is a super -deuche -tastic security guard who was all over me for stepping over some red rope to get to the table I had been occupying for over an hour. He said I couldn't' do that, I apologized and then he continued to berate me for another 3 minutes about why I couldn't do that. I don't know how many ways to apologize to a rent a cop before they lay off your junk. !
Overall: Its really fun! If you don't mind it being crowded with teenies and sometimes long lines.
This is one of those reviews I should really put in context. Truth is, I generally hate Sports Bars. But since I've already eaten at most places close to my house, I figured I'd give this massive monstrosity of burgers, brew and big screens a shot.
THE GOOD - The food...it's good. Just good. Staff is nice, if not terribly personable. The bar looks straight out of a Vegas strip casino. Massive big screen playing every sports channel you can shake a fry at. I can't help but wonder if the owners hang out afterwards and hook up an X-BOX to it.
THE BAD - The food...it thinks it's GREAT...but really, it's just good. I had some calamari for an appetizer. It was alright....kinda on the rubbery side but not the worst I've had by a long shot. Hey, not many sports bars ever do calamari right so I'm not dogging it too much. A little pricey too...$10 burger...$5 quality. Very limited beer selection for such a huge place...but let's face it...people who go here want Bud Light (no offense Bud lovers).
THE UGLY - Sports bar crowd...frat boys with twisted to the side ball caps going on about the "hoes" and crap like that. I just hate being in swarms of people like this. But hey, everyone needs a place to hang out...and really, I was on THEIR turf...so again, context is everything.
IN SUMMARY - It's a pretty cool layout really. They outdid themselves and all the facilities are top notch. As far as sports bars go, this one is pretty damn good. I'm just not sure why I punished myself by going to begin with...surely I had to know it would turn out so painfully mediocre. Friggin Yelp....thanks...now I'm going to places just to review them...no other reason...did you slip some form of Yelp crack into my broadband connection that would encourage me to seek after mediocre places to review? So yeah...I had a 2-star experience, but it's a 4-star sports bar...so if that makes any sense...for the sake of (here's that word again) context, I need to give it a nice balanced little review. Not my pint of Mirror Pond (Loaded Tower-Speak for "Not my cup of tea")...but well done for what it is.
Great Customer Service, a good mix of lounge bowling lanes, arcade, and restaurant. They also feature private parties and bowling opportunities.
Very clean, very busy, video screens over the bowling pins can be distracting for the serious bowler (not me!).
I recently visited Big Al's for my uncles bday party. Wow, this place really outdoes any bowling alley I have ever seen before.
The accomadations are luxurious for bowling, and the Sports Bar experience is great too. We were up in the Skybox and enjoyed the private room with our own pool table and party hostess.
Food was great...pints were nice and cold. A great night for our entire party ranging in age from 6 - 55, great job!
