Candlepin bowling entertainment center with 12 wooden candlepin lanes. Score by hand on paper, manually operated lanes. They also have three pool tables, arcade games, and a touch tunes juke box. Snacks, and bottled beer/seltzer and soft drinks are available. Pricing is slightly above average at $5.50/string and $3 for shoes, $4.50/string $2/shoes for kids. read more

Last night's female karaoke entertainer was verbally abused by an inebriated patron because she wouldn't allow him to sing a rap song that had profane language and racial slurs. There was a large group of young teens celebrating a birthday and this was the right call to make. The patron became verbally abusive and the DJ asked the owner to escort him out. The patron threatened to hit the owner and then left. At the end of the night, the female DJ was fired for asking the patron to be removed, and was unable to self advocate. There was no consequence for the violent patron. I will no longer set foot in this establishment. read more

This place is terrible. They are consistently not open when they say they're going to be.

Tried to go bowling before the leagues started, got there at 4:05 pm when they open at 4 and everything was still dark and locked up. Disappointing. read more

Fun old school type place for candlepin bowling and pool tables. Has video games as well. Serves beer and wine at a reasonable price. I don't mind the outdated old school style but price for activities should reflect that. read more

I had a lot more fun than I thought I would! Super reasonable pricing! If you bowl 3 games or more you get your shoe rental free! Hopefully will be back soon! read more

Sparetime Recreation - Bowling Near Me - Whitinsville, Massachusetts

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Friendly service, fun times, very clean establishment! They serve alcohol from local brewers as well! I recommend the bumpers if you throw hard read more

Sparetime Recreation - Pool, arcade games, bowling, alcohol, snacks, music - Bowling Near Me - Whitinsville, Massachusetts

Had an awesome time here. Would absolutely come again the owner was fantastic. Came out and talk to us for a while. So happy to see an old school candlepin Ali around. See you there next time! Oh by the way don't forget to check out the pizza place down at the corner excellent! read more

Sparetime is my perfect ideal of what a candlepin alley should be. It is meticulously clean. Not to go too far into the weeds, but this is probably one of the newest constructed set of candlepin lanes in the state (around 1990 I believe), and it shows. The ball returns are immaculate and have space for multiple sets of balls, which is a plus for league bowling. It has been taken over by new owners who have continued to maintain it, as well as renovating the front portion to become more of an event space. They're doing a great job so far. read more

We stopped in randomly while on a trip and it happened to be the first night they had reopened under new management. The new owner was super friendly and he even gave us a free game--he said he was putting in a lot of new features and updating the interior and adding in other entertainment. Recently he started accepting cards and modernizing things while keeping that local feel. I can't wait to back again when we visit family in MA again. read more

Actually one of the strangest and worst experiences going out ever. Bro that runs the thing kind of hovers, comments, is not nice to kids, has a lot (a whole freakin lot) of inane rules, seems to dislike customers...just a terrible place to go with kids. We just left after one string out of frustration with the dude being rude to us. Pros: it's candle pin Cons: everything else When we decided to leave, despite being polite throughout his rudeness, he actually turned the lights off on us (at 5:45) and hovered over asking for the shoes as we were taking them off. So odd. So bad. read more

Pool tables and video games are back along with cornhole and darts. A great place to spend time with friends and family.

Took my 15 year old son here on Friday night (Feb 19, 2016). The place was clean and not too loud (unlike some other places - where the music is so loud you can't even hear yourself think). There was a men's league going on so it was kind of cool to see these guys whip the balls down the lane. The owner, Ken, took some time to give us some instruction and even allowed us to place an extra string. We learned a lot from him. Will definitely be back on a regular basis. Thanks Ken! read more

Would definitely go back here - very clean and well-maintained. Went with kids and we all had a great time. Owner/operator was very friendly and clearly has a love for the game and running a nice establishment. We had a very positive experience and plan to go back! read more

Andrews review from below is right on. We showed up on a sat around 3pm. It was our three year old sons birthday and he wanted to bowl for the first time. Place was empty (should have been first red flag) and smelled musty. The person behind the counter had no response to my "how are you doing today" question. Upon telling him that we were here to bring our son bowling for his first time, he began flinging rules at us one after another. I haven't heard that many rules in the past 30 years. He seemed extremely paranoid about the facility. Seems he thought our only intention was to destroy the place. We had 4 kids total. Two three year olds, a or year old and a five year old. Three adults had bowling shoes on as well. Our intention was to teach the kids how to bowl and maybe throw a few down the lane to show the kids. NOPE. Four to a lane. If we wanted to throw a couple down the lane to teach our kids we had to get another lane for 25 or 30 bucks. We ended up letting the kids bowl for 30 min while the grandparents watched from afar as they weren't allowed close enough (even on the carpet) if they didn't rent bowling shoes and we got out of there. The kids thankfully did have fun and I contained myself from telling then owner (pretty sure this guy was the owner) how I really felt about him, his rules and the dumpy building. (The lanes are warped by the way) We'll never be back there and I suggest that if you're looking for a family friendly bowling place where someone isn't staring at you the entire time waiting for you to not follow one of his rules, this is most certainly not the place to go to. read more

Been there 3 times since discovering in January 2015. All 3 times have brought two kids: 3 and 6. Very family friendly, no problems at all. Definitely recommend. read more

If anybody else was reading the negative comments about this place and is deciding to chance it anyway in hopes that all of the negative comments were just people being overly sensitive stop right now. That's what my family and I did for my little girls 6th birthday party. Do your family a big favor and find another bowling alley close by. All of the negative comments are spot on. It started right away too. We rented 2 lanes and the play room for an hour each, and also the party room for a half hour where the kids had pizza and cake. When we got there and went to pay for the party we asked if it was possible that I could bowl with the kids as long as I rented my own shoes. My daughter wanted us to be team mates and was very excited about it prior to arriving. The old man behind the counter who owns the place responds to this question with "well, usually the adults don't bowl with the kids, it's a little awkward". He said this verbatim, to which I responded "Awkward?" "It's awkward that my daughter wants to be able to bowl with her father at her birthday party?" He said if I wanted to roll a couple balls it would be ok but at this point I was so mad at his response that I said forget it. Next came the hovering that you will read about on other negative comments. We had plenty of adults that had the supervision covered but this guy was still lurking really close by watching our every move to the point where I turned around and said "buddy do you plan on staying over here the whole time because we didn't pay for the party so we can have the owner lurking directly behind our lanes" . He said he was just there to help with direction to which I responded by saying we had the direction covered and needed no assistance. There kids were all very well behaved and all we wanted was a little bit of privacy with the family so we could enjoy ourselves. After I told him this he could detect my frustration and walked back behind his desk. Then came the time issues, he tried to move us out of every area we rented before our time was up, which I was having no parts of and told him we still had time, that I was keeping track. After this he spent the rest of the party trying to explain himself but I was already so pissed off That I was in no mood to converse with him so he got a bunch of one word replies. When we moved to the play area he walked over and gave me 2 free game tickets but it was too late and he had to have gotten the sense that I was never returning because I made it very apparent. The good thing is that the kids had fun because they weren't aware of any of the behind the scenes issues that were going on. My little girl had a blast with her friends and our family but we will never be returning. Horrendous customer service. Know that when you rent out anything in this establishment that your rental comes with a complimentary unwanted grumpy old man looking for reasons to tell the kids they are doing something that they shouldn't be doing. If you are unable to cancel and absolutely have to go, do not be afraid to speak up and let him know you have everything covered and don't need him hovering over your family for the duration of your reservation, you have to be blunt because he will not get any hints you throw at him. I apologize for this novel but I felt the need to inform people about this so they don't have to go through the frustration that we went through today. Proceed with extreme caution. read more