I'd been to Spare Time on two separate occasions, once to meet up with friends who were already bowling and another time for axe throwing. Lets start with the bowling adventure:
Now I didn't personally bowl, I met up with my friends later, they already had a lane rented out for an hour or two (details are foggy, forgive me), I was just spectating. They tried to cut their time short, but after some discussion with the staff the problem was resolved. I had a vodka cran & some wings. Wings were decent, vodka cran was STRONG (bartenders, yall do a great job). Then I got my bill and oh.my.God. I would have rather eaten the gum off the underside of the table had I known how expensive it would be. Everyone I was with raved about the drinks. The server was super on top of it, too. We then ventured to the arcade to find that over half of the games were out of order. Fine, just was kind of like a junkyard at that point. Overall, was it a HORRIBLE experience? no. but it left much to be desired.
second time: axe throwing.
Have a seat and grab a drink, because this is the reason I will never give this place my business. My husband set up a surprise party for me, 8 people total throwing axes. Rented out for 2 hours, $48/person. It was supposed to be 10 people, two of them cancelled a week before the event. When my husbands called to change the number from 10 to 8 he was told he would be refunded for the two people at the event. We get to the event and they tell him he has to call when a manager is available, they wont refund him at the event. round and round and round we go. My friends had party blowers for me when I arrived, the 'axe master' told them they couldn't vape inside..... just amazes me that this was even a real conversation. ANYWAYS, we all have to do an individual tutorial, not once but twice. once with a big axe, once with the smaller axe. Fine. Some of us have thrown before. Others haven't. This tutorial, for 8 people, took 40 minutes of our rented time. I understand safety standards but that was a bit extensive. One member was told by an elderly lady who we assumed had some sort of connection to the facility but was not actively involved in our event, that he was throwing the axe wrong (on his second throw mind you) and that he can't throw it like that or he's going to break the axe. For someone who had never thrown before, what a welcoming lesson. It's one thing to want everyone to be safe and to have respect of the equipment, but she was rude and truthfully an unwanted and unneeded presence. That member did not throw the remainder of the time because of her comments and attitude. We were only allowed to use two lanes, one person per lane at a time. When asked if we could use other lanes since we had all gone through the tutorial we were told no as one axe master could only monitor two lanes. Then the 'axe master' brought out a double edged axe. For what reason? More or less to show off as it didn't benefit anybody. Anyways, he threw it and it HIT A LIGHT IN THE CEILING. Now, you want to criticize someone's throwing technique for their second axe throw EVER, and scold them, meanwhile the person running the place is taking out ceiling lights? THEN for our 'game' we were forced into a round robin tournament. No options for games, just 'this is what we are doing now'. Some people got to throw twice at minimum, while others threw 4-5 times. During the round robin tournament the axe master continued to try to coach us through each throw. In the beginning that's fine, but this is supposed to a fun event and it felt like I was training to be a professional. Just let the people have fun in a safe way. In addition to that the boards were ATE UP. Never were they changed. They were in such poor shape. Now I don't like to compare places but the other axe throwing facilities I've been in would have had that lane shut down for 5 minutes and had all the boards replaced. Or had started us out with fresh boards, which was not the case for Spartan Axe. At the end of the 2 hours when we were done there was no "did everyone have fun?" or "thanks for coming out" or anything. just silence. and then another group walked in and the axe master just moved on.
So all in all: it sucked. It was a bad time. Everyone agreed. My mother-in-law felt so bad that it went bad she said "let me handle this" and called the owner about how crappy of a time it was. The owner is a disgusting human. He kept asking 'where are you from' as if that matters? does it matter if I'm from East Lansing, India, or Florida? He tried to bully my mother-in-law based on her area code. Like excuse me??? He was argumentative, made no effort to reconcile anything, never apologized, and still made a stink about refunding the two people who didn't show up that were supposed to be refunded at the event. I just can not fathom someone running a business with this attitude. Do not support business like this. Find someone who appreciates customers. read more