Bowl America Falls Church - Falls Church, Virginia

Solomon M.

I had a great time here yesterday afternoon! Lanes were spotless and always readily available. The food is excellent, as well as some of the beverage options I had discovered! I was seated yesterday by a very sweet server yesterday, Cameron I believe her name was; she was very fast and efficient and had a warm smile on her face the whole time she serviced me. I will most definitely be coming back again! I love this place!

D M.

Had a super blast bowling here a few weekends ago! Was easy to reserve alley online. And I swear it was the best draft beer (Modelo) I have had in a long time. Best as in fresh and crisp. Like they had good lines and kegs. My friend agreed! The place was clean and all was great. We had a super good time. So much I bought the summer pass!

Steven B.

Well, I don't think this location is very good. Prices are to high. They always leave the lights dimmed or even off during open bowling. The equipment is not good. Always breaking down. The Mgr & mainly the District mgr don't care hardly at all. They need to be fired. There is never enough help. They work the good people to death. From what I hear, most of these problems got really worse after the current District
mgr came on bored. I'm only hear to help a friend and former coworker. Otherwise, I wouldn't go near this place.

Sherise F.

I actually love this place. We’ve been here a few times to celebrate birthdays. The service is always amazing. The facility is always clean. Food and Drinks are really good for a bowling alley!

Roger F.

I came to a group event here and ended up with a comped soda drink, and when I ordered a couple of chili cheese dogs they asked me if I wanted fries and I said no, but they gave me the fries anyway. The woman at the cash register was super friendly (white lady who wore a mask, I wish now that I had more to identify her with to give her the credit).

If this is the norm for how they're running their business, they're doing it right. Super glad to return to this bowling alley and will be happy to come back.

Pam W.

We had our child's birthday party here over the weekend and it was fantastic. They emailed ahead of time to coordinate headcount and menu (and we added food/beverage and everything was staged for us making it so easy). They had a manager and server dedicated to our party, and they checked in with us multiple times throughout the night and timed everything perfectly. Even held our cake in the fridge until it was time to cut. It was so much easier than I expected.
Thank you Arien and everyone there!!!

Mike M.

I have been a league bowler for 50 years and will not be returning next year. Mainly it has to do with 2 members of the management team. Last Wednesday the assistant manager didn’t like the way he was being talked to. His solution was to call the police and have the league member removed. At which point the team dropped out of the league. There are many issues in this center, most involving the frequency of lane break downs. I bowl in 3 leagues and every week there is at least 1 lane unusable. The center is filthy, tables not clean, food and trash on the floors. At the end of league my hands are black from the dirt returned on my ball. If you’re a league bowler the managers don’t care about you or your experience, find another center.

Putdepuck I.

I have been bowling here for 30 years, 3 times a week on leagues. It started to go downhill a few years ago when Bowlero bought out Bowl America. But, it has gotten progressively worse this bowling season.

Last fall, it was so cold in there, I had to wear my winter coat while I sat in-between frames. And, the place is filthy. The concourse and settee area floors are not swept, vacuumed or mopped regularly (if at all). There are remnants of spilled food under tables and spilled drinks in the settee area. (This is cancer to league bowlers walking on it with sliding soles on their shoes then trying to slide on the approach.) The men's room goes uncleaned for days. I will bowl on Thursday night, then come back in on Monday night with the bathroom not having been cleaned through the entire weekend. There are black stains on the floor.

But, the topper, that is causing at least 5 long-time leagues there to move to other houses next season, is the severe increase in mechanical and lane issues. After the head mechanic, who had been there some 20 years, retired a couple of months ago, the upkeep of the lanes took a nosedive. Many nights, there are not enough mechanics on duty to cover both sides of the house, even on nights when every lane is occupied. This causes at least 5-minute delays in getting simple ball returns, dead woods or out-of-ranges handled (of which there are a lot more now).

Maintenance of the equipment is reactive, rather than proactive. On some pairs of lanes, your ball comes back dirty with sticky gunk on it, and in severe cases, with chunks taken out of it. Several pairs of lanes have gone down for weeks at a time while they wait for ordered parts, causing reassignment of league teams to other parts of the house.

The "curtains" behind the pin deck have come loose all over the facility, resulting in single pins to bounce out in projectile fashion, halfway up the lane towards the settee area. These deadwoods either are dealt with by a mechanic, or as some teams do, ignored--causing less pins to be in the pinsetter, leading to eventual "180's", where the pinsetter can't set a new rack of 10 pins because there aren't enough to put in the rack. Has the curtain issue been addressed? No.

Then, there are the ball return covers. For some reason, management decided to remove the connectors holding them in place. So, if someone throws a sharp gutter ball, the cover flies off, creating yet another reason why a mechanic needs to show up at your lane.

For a few weeks, something happened that I had never seen in my 3 decades bowling there. I would arrive in time for practice to start at 6:30, and the lanes have not been oiled yet. We had to sit around and wait 30-45 minutes to start practice. In what was probably a cost-cutting move, management was scheduling the mechanics to come in with the bowlers, too late to get the lanes prepared in time for the start of the league.

All of this has made for a toxic environment there, evidenced by the defection of at least 5 leagues. Individual teams have also quit, mid-season. And what is the response by the night managers? To be surly and confrontational when approached by bowlers complaining about the constant issues on the lanes.

I loved bowling here most of the last 30 years, but I will be leaving F.C. in a few weeks and will not look back.