A Rainy Day Indoors Family Activity | Tenpin Bowling York Review

A Morning Bowling at Tenpin Clifton Moor York

At first, we were a bit apprehensive about visiting Tenpin in York after reading many reviews on trip advisor stating the building was very old and rundown and understaffed with slow service. We decided that we would make our own mind up once we got there and if it were not great we would not return! We have not been bowling before as a family, and we wanted something different to do that we’d not done before with our girls.

Having two teenage daughters and a 9-year-old makes planning days out a little tricky…  Finding something that we can all enjoy is particularly difficult when they’re all into different things. First of all, I would like to mention what impressed me the most was the price… fantastic, the regular price is £61 for two games of bowling for two adults and three under 16’s, but we got a school holidays deal, which cost £48 for two games including a meal, this is a bargain family trip!

When booking online, it states to make sure you arrive at least 15 minutes early. If you’re late, you could risk losing your booking, which is non-refundable. This worried me as it takes 30 to 40 minutes, depending on traffic, to get there from Harrogate. Our first visit was during the Easter holidays. We had allowed 1 hour for a 30-minute journey, and we got caught up in traffic due to temporary lights with no alternative way around it.  Panicking that we would lose our booking, I called ahead and spoke to the manager on duty explained we were running late due to traffic caused by roadworks; he was very polite and very understanding informed me it was not a problem as we were only a few minutes away!

Even with arriving 10 minutes late, we were in and set up and ready to start bowling within 5 minutes of arriving! With no queueing at the desk despite the place being busy… all the lanes were full for the duration of our visit, and we didn’t see anyone having issues at any point. There was plenty of frames to assist little kids, plenty of bowling balls and plenty of room for the 5 of us.

On our most recent visit this week, we got the same deal for two games, including a meal for the same price. Only this time we invited the girl’s Gran and Aunt to meet us thereafter we had made our online booking. My husband called the existing booking telephone number from the website to add the additional members to our reservation; this wasn’t a problem! We also changed to one of the adult meals due to dietary needs; no questions asked, he did this for us! The staff on the phones are always very polite and accommodating!

We found ourselves in had the same scenario, only this time we were running about 20 minutes late! I honestly thought that we would lose the booking and the £76 that we’d just paid for 7 of us. So I called the existing booking line got through straight away. The Man I got through to was great, very understanding, and he managed to push our booking to 11 am, he didn’t have to do this, after all, it was our fault that we were late… I was very grateful!

Again, we had no problem with queuing at the kiosk we got straight away; we didn’t have to wait for a lane. You don’t need bowling shoes you can wear your own trainers.. unless you want to wear bowling shoes. We had been allocated two lanes for the 7 of us. The screens are so easy to set up. There was now bowling balls on the lane already; we thought that it was broken. My husband went to seek help from a member of staff at the kiosk. A lady and another staff member could now work out what was wrong with the lanes and quickly moved us to another lane. It turns out that there was no problem with the lanes… We just needed to get the bowling balls of the shelves behind us .. oopsie!

Kids loved it and will definitely be visiting Tenpin at York again.