My house....state of the art 24 lane center and I'm high average right now at 204...just hard to carry anything and string some together

Tivoli and Wheaton are bad, but when I grew up at Rolling Lanes, place was ridiculous. Heads would burn up before practice, backends would tighten up within half a game, and when they took away the gutter and made the shot 4th arrow, it was even worse. Right of 10 was miss right, then you had a reverse block. I miss that place. Haven't bowled much there since they put in synthetic, but I heard people are still only averaging 190-200 there.

There seems to be two types...  One where the lane conditions prevent scoring (i.e. refuse to put down enough volume to allow a ball to get to the arrows without burning up) and type 2 the facilities/hardware are so poorly maintained that it's impossible to score.

In college, we had a house that routinely would have 5 pins slide to the 8 pin area without falling...And depending on the day of the week, the ball would hook as soon as it touched the lane surface.

When I moved to Houston, there was a house with a small roof leak that caused the wood lane surface to rise up - creating a mini ramp just before the arrows.  That was always great fun..  another would force anyone with medium revs to the 4 the arrow to start and deeper from there...Unfortunately, there was an extended ball return to compete with as well!

The best was one season when my local house installed Twister pins (early 2000's).  Some of the worst carry I have ever seen!

Quote from: northface28 on January 02, 2017, 07:05:14 PM

I bowled a ABT at Wheaton many years ago. After 3 games it looked like I had put about 400+ games on the bowl.

Last time I bowled an ABT there was about 10 years ago, and even on the fresh, my ball was checking hard in the kids. My ball never reads the mids!

No kidding, that place hooked a ton.

By no mean is this a dungeon but a harder big house in Chicagoland is Stardust in Addison, 84 lanes a very healthy league base and maybe 10 300s this year. 

Quote from: htotheizzo3561 on January 03, 2017, 12:53:40 PM

By no mean is this a dungeon but a harder big house in Chicagoland is Stardust in Addison, 84 lanes a very healthy league base and maybe 10 300s this year. 

Stardust is hard? I used to work at Star and the place was a cakewalk. Only time I found the place hard was when Woody would put out his shots.

Its not hard, just not a lot of carry and quick transition as to why not so many honor scores.  Woody's tournaments are a different animal.

Centers like that are actually good for bowlers looking to increase their versatility...it requires skills other than stand left and pitch right.  But too few are willing to put ego aside because it might require they have no real expectation of consistently shooting 600. 

Back in the 80's, my two regular houses were what some might consider pits or dungeons.  It was great for tournaments where handicap was a factor since I could go most places in larger metropolitan areas and add a good 20 pins a game (if not more). 

I also bowled a summer league at a very small private club in Austin and got raked over the coals by some here due to the low average that was booked.  It was the first time that I had ever had to deal with above-ground ball returns and poles on an approach.  They also oiled perhaps once every week to two weeks (other than the league, there was no real activities with the lanes), dragging them before the league session.  Ideal?  Not by a long shot...but it forced me to acquire a skill-set I might not otherwise have ever focused on.