Fantacity

Yes, it’s expensive. But it totally beats out some of the other karaōke joints I’ve been to out here in Vancouver. And let’s face it. They’re downtown, they serve drinks (not all karaōke joints do and some people need the liquid courage) and the girls are cute (which helps convince some of my guy friends to come out to begin with)! Snacking on popcorn chicken while I’m faded is love.
So yes. The service is just okay and it isn’t as cheap or as convenient as the places in Korea or LA, but I like it & I always have a good time when I’m out here.

We just did our friend’s birthday here. It was a ton of fun and who doesn’t love karaōke?
However, the staff were awful, really rude ! It was super overpriced room rental with nothing on their website listing how much they charge. All in all it was $ 192 an hour! ouch! And they yell at you and turn on the lights ten minutes before your time is up! The bartender was nice but absolutely no service of any kind. You have to order yourself food and drinks. All in all we had such a fun birthday, and the karaōke was great. I guess they are in business due to location and need to sing! Certainly not for their service.

Several of my friends booked a large room here for a group birthday on a Friday night. Upon arrival, I was asked to pay upfront and the debit machine requested I input a tip. Not having been here before, I tipped on the already high bill. I regret this as the staff provided us with no service in the 3 hours we were there. We were expected to go to the bar to purchase the overpriced drinks ($ 22.00 for a pitcher of beer). The only time we saw a staff member was when they ran into the room the second our time ended and grabbed the book and remote from us, mid-​song. We were told we needed to leave the room immediately for an incoming group but 20 minutes later the room remained empty. When I spoke with the manager about this he offered to buy drinks for some of the men in my party to ‘call it even’. They did not take him up on this and we simply left feeling disappointed.
For the very high cost of the room and drinks, and lack of proper service I would not recommend Fantacity to anyone.

TERRIBLE SERVICE. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY.
The many times that i went to this place i always paid 10% or more of tip so i expected good service or at least added bonus time. Good service was never provided and whenever i asked for some bonus they always told me that they will try and later kicked us out right on clock exactly.
One time they asked us to change rooms with another group of guests and took away ten minutes during the process (We had to re-​reserve all the songs we had on the machine in the other room we were moved to) so we asked them to add the time lost but they kicked us out exactly on time without even restoring the time that they took away from moving us to another room. They told us that when we come back next time they will give us a lot of bonus but the next time we came they used the same tactic of saying sorry and making excuses that weren’t even valid.
Today we arrived 15 minutes before happy hour ended but was told that we weren’t early enough to get the happy hour price. Charged $ 30 (ten dollars extra). This is the last time we’re going here. They lost a customer.
Do yourselves a favour and go somewhere else.

This is my first EVER review. I don’t write reviews normally, but I’ve gradually become more and more appalled at the service we received at this establishment as my brain pieces together the events of that night.
Upon arrival, the hostess was very uninterested in getting our business and rude. There were 6 of us and you only have a 20 person room? We’ll take it! WHY was it such an issue if it was just over an hour before closing, and we were willing to pay the overpriced room rate? Did you think another group of 20 was going to show up right then and need the room at 2AM?
10 minutes into our hour (2 songs in), the lights were flipped on from the outside by the staff. One person from our group had to go out and ask them to shut the light back off. Throughout the hour, the songs kept disappearing from our reserved songs list, and having to research the song # and typing it in took up precious minutes that we paid for and could have been singing.
When the hour was up, the girl ran in, snatched up the books, remote, and mic mid-​song and high-​tailed it right out the room without a word.
DO NOT GO HERE if you care about being treated with respect, or at least as a PAYING customer. Do you value your hard earned money? Then don’t spend it here. Buy yourself a magic mic to enjoy in the comfort of your home. After a few nights’ use, it’ll pay for it self.

If you want bitchy servers, expensive drinks, $ 11 fries and a $ 27 charge at the end of your visit, you’ll love Fantacity!
… Don’t go here. It’s a shameless ripoff that chooses to leave its customers feeling pillaged in stead of happy.
PLEASE boycott this business. Go to free karaōke anywhere else. I’m hoping I can cost this business at least 100x what I paid with this truthful and terrible review.
I’m so sorry for humanity that places like this exist on earth.

Way over priced everything. Service was not friendly nor unfriendly. Food is terrible and unoriginal. Just frozen stuff put in an oven. Song selection is very limited in, at least, the English and Japanese selections. Also the volume was not nearly loud enough even after adjusting it ourselves. Not recommended. I will never go back here again.

I think it’s a money grab to have to require people buy food in order to buy alcohol.
Here’s a list of complaints:
— Sound quality wasn’t great
— The sound insulation sucked so I could hear the people in the three rooms around us singing. It was hilarious to hear (I’m sure the feeling is reciprocal) but it sucked when we wanted to sing and it felt like we were trying to sing above them.
— The selection was great for English and Korean (I get that it’s a Korean karaōke bar, so the list of Korean songs is longer than other languages), but the Chinese one was appalling. Less than one page (just one side, not the other) was so disappointing.
— The actual mics weren’t great. One worked but the other one was barely audible.
— Not giving us ANY warning before they were about to close was surprising. I would have thought a 15 minute warning would have been nice. Coming in and just taking the remote and saying «this is your last song» was an unpleasant surprise. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended with Spice Girls had I known it was the last song of the night…
Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of karaōke bars in town, so though we complain (look at the other reviews!), we keep coming back because we aren’t left with many options. In that way, they’re lucky.

French fries were nice n good portions, ambience feels more for the upscale crowd, it’s really nice and all but at a karaōke place I’d like to feel laid back n not stiff, however service was great, fries were good, and in order to get drinks you must buy a food dish first.
I thought it was really small n could’ve had a few more rooms but that would take away from their bar and lobby, overall it was a great experience, we were given a stuffy room and before you know it we were all sweating buckets, I asked for air conditioning adjustment but they had none, but eventually after asking we were able to move to a double sized room which was really nice of them, excellent service,
I’d probably go again if I’m feeling in need to hang downtown, but definitely would prefer going to more cheaper laid back karaōke’s in burnaby!
Mat

I want the old Fantacity back. The new Fantacity is a ruder, pricier, more sterile, no fun version. Or maybe I wasn’t drunk enough to overlook all these things. It’s very possible. In fact we were barely drinking at all at this venue for reasons listed below.
Our group made reservations ahead of time and when we showed up 10 min late (thanks to Vancouver’s taxi situation which we will not get into right now), we were penalized. But not only were we not told that ahead of time, we were not told when we arrived. Only after we paid up for a full 2 hours, did the staff rudely tell us that we were wasting our time and that we wouldn’t be given time back. There was no reservation following ours.
And they have changed what’s included in the price which has increased from previously. Food and drinks used to be included and as a matter of principle, our group did not order more than a couple drinks because we were not impressed. They are sure to lose money this way because as I recall, our groups almost always ordered more drinks than what was included in the price and stayed longer because we were having more fun.
Granted they do have a good selection of songs but you spend an inordinate amount of time looking through badly organized songbooks. After all this time, they have only managed to print one English songbook in order of artist. All their other books list songs alphabetically — how the heck does one search by song title?
Bottom-​line: This is No Fun-​tacity. It is not worth it.

I’ll start off by saying I don’t have high standards for karaōke because I don’t go often. Every so often I’ll feel like bellowing my heart out with old school jams and end up at fantacity.
I’ve been here 3 times and I’ve always had fun. The sangria isn’t bad either!
Price-​kind of pricey (but you’re downtown and there’s also no other options)
Ambience-​Enjoyable
Staff-​Super friendly!
i’ve tried to go twice on the weekend and they were too busy. I’d suggest calling ahead and making reservations if you know you’ll be stopping by!

Private room karaōke is a lot of fun, and Fantacity has a pretty good setup. Rates are maybe a bit expensive, and the song selection could be better (though it’s certainly decent), but it’s the best downtown option.
Heads up for those drinking (which should be everyone) — because of their liquor license, you have to buy food. Unfortunately the food is awful. Make sure you’ve eaten beforehand, and put in one order for the cheapest thing on the menu (edamame beans I think), then fill up on beer/​other booze.

With Karaōke, there are really only two types of people: those who love it and those who hate it. Unfortunately, Fantacity is a Karaōke location that can provide some glitz and glam, but it is done in such a way that it can cause even the those people who like Karaōke to second guess if they really want to that evening.
Located in the heart of the action of Robson Street, Fantacity stands to be in the perfect location. When you first enter the facility on the second floor, you will greeted by a large bar and musical sounds emanating from one of the many rooms to the side. Although looking full of music and fun times, things start to become less whimsical fairly quickly. On busy nights, (Friday/​Saturday) a large private room costs $ 100 for an hour. With this said, the room did hold ~15 of us, but to me this still seemed like a bit. Each room has a television (where the lyrics are shown), a few musical aids (tambourines, bells, etc.), sitting benches and a table or two. Nothing glamorous, but nothing really cheap looking either.
Although the rooms are adequate to hold people, the service was both slow and erratic. For example, when we first arrived they took our drink and food orders (coming back and talking to us 3 or 4 times within the first 10 min to make sure they got the order right). But then they didn’t check on us again until the last 5 minutes that we had to room booked. To me, when you’re paying by the hour, you hope an establishment can get the order on one go, and will hopefully check in (not necessarily stopping you) to see if you need something else, with more than just 5 minutes to go.
To add to things, the music selection was not really up to date or full. For me I was excited to see Billy Joel, but sad to see We Didn’t Start the Fire and Piano Man were both not on the list, and Cake was missing all together. I know I am probably not the exact crowd that Fantacity is targeting (as shown by having what appeared like an extensive list of Asian songs), but it would have really been nice to have more selection. On the note of songs, many of the song lyrics had typos on the screen, and the screen didn’t even show the music videos for any of the songs (instead it was a continuous safari/​jungle/​hill/​mountain montage).
Even with all these things, I was still remaining in a fairly positive spirit towards Fantacity. However, after paying for a second hour, I decided to order a beer. A 12 once glass of Canadian or Okanagan Springs 1516 Lager, $ 6.50 (plus tax). To me, with the high cost of the room, lack of songs, slow service, extremely over priced mediocre beer was the last item for me to recommend Fantacity.
Overall, the experience was ok at best at Fantacity. Althought Karaōke can be a tonne of fun, I would recommend going elsewhere (even if it’s at a bar where you have to sing in front of everyone) as I’m almost certain you’ll have a better (and definitely cheaper) time.

I came here with my husband and some of his coworkers after their Christmas party since we were all pretty excited about the prospect of singing karaōke. Since the Christmas party was really close to Robson Street, we decided to check out Fantacity.
Fantacity definitely gives you the karaōke experience. They have private rooms that can comfortably fit ~15 people and a huge binder of song choices. Each room comes with two microphones, and there’s plenty of seating on couches along the edges of the room. They also offer a full bar. However, that’s about where the positives end.
Fantacity is really expensive! It cost us $ 100/​hour to rent the room. I understand they have to make money, but the song selection wasn’t that stellar. They had a decent selection of karaōke favorites (Sweet Caroline, Don’t Stop Believing, Wonderwall), but outside of that the selection is slim. Also, there was a lot of typos on screen for the song lyrics, which doesn’t really matter when you’re drinking and having a good time, but is a bit sloppy. Alcohol is a bit pricey too.
If you’re desperate for karaōke in Vancouver, Fantacity is okay if you’re willing to spend a lot of money. I have the feeling that there has to be better karaōke places in Vancouver and the lower mainland, so I can only give this place two stars.