My son had been begging me to take him to Motorworld for years. I had always told him that some day we will. Actually Dad just wanted to keep him away from the expensive Go Karts. Well that someday was last week and I long thought that MW possibly had the best mini golf in Virginia Beach.
Parking is in a gravel lot and extremely convenient to both golf and the karts. I did not see any debris in the parking lot. We proceeded to the mini golf which is on the same side as the lot.
A nice check in hut called Shipwreck Golf is where you pay, get your club, score card and pencil. The attendant will give you tokens once you pay to get your balls out of one of the eight machines that use to be candy/toy machines. The cost was $9.44 for 18 holes, or $11.54 for 36... don't ask me how they came up with this odd number pricing. We grabbed our putters and found them extremely worn, all of them.
We were hitting up the place early, around 10 AM and no one was around, so I elected to buy the 36 hold package. To my knowledge there was no discounts for kids, seniors etc. The young woman that assisted us was nice enough, but spoke NO ENGLISH, completely broken English. I did get out of her that she is from Turkey. I was pretty ticked that she could not answer my questions. I got the tokens for the ball machine and all worked but one that was stripped out, it of course was my favorite color of blue...geez!
The most challenging course is the Captain's Course. Your allowed to choose either one if doing a 36, or 18. The course looked pretty amazing and spacious, we were both excited to get started. As we traveled the course litter was popping up every where which is a huge pet peeve of mine. They had trash buckets around which is even more disturbing. However, what show total lack of upkeep to me is this trash was obviously from the night before, that says it all to me.
There was also an area on a bridge that had a safety issue, a board was missing and this did not just happen. Areas needed to be painted, cleaned and in general maintained. When getting close enough to there huge Tiki man that sets up front in the waterfall I could see serious aging and decay. The real grass needed to be mowed and not in great shape.
Let's talk about the course itself. It was a lot of fun and one of the more challenging that I have ever done. I really enjoyed myself and the fact no one was around made it even better. Our big gripe was the fact the ball kept bouncing out of the hole, seriously the holes were like spring loaded or something. Well when a ball goes in the hole, it's over and scored in my opinion. At the last hole on 18 of Captains it is suppose to flush down into a holding bin, but it would not. My guess is the bucket underneath it needed to be emptied. Again, with staff not taking care of duties at closing. Elderly and those that have issues with steps take notice. There are a lot of hills and steps, it is an enormous course if doing all 36.
There appears to be an event area with picnic tables just off the side. Well if this is really an event area I cannot believe it. To me it is a medal canopy that was used to park Go Karts at one time. That sucker would be so HOT in the Summer and it's dark under there too.
Steps need to be taken to spend money in the off season to bring this up to snuff. Interestingly enough MW website list Shipwreck Golf as a "newly renovated 36 hole course". That my folks is false advertisement in it's purest form. I would definitely come back, but hope some remedies are addressed in the near future. read more