Brunswick Zone Hawthorn Bowl

It’s depressing that this location is the only alley relatively close to my home. I’ve been a good 2 – 3 dozen times and it consistently disappoints. The staff are disoriented and unprofessional, and the prices are ridiculous for the quality of bowling offered. I’ll share my most recent experience here:
My friend and I had decided to go bowling on a boring weekend afternoon. Knowing it was the weekend and midday, I decided to call ahead and check on lane availability. I called 3 times with absolutely no answer from the front desk. We drove the 20 minutes anyways and were rudely informed that they wouldn’t have any lanes available until 4, 2 hours later. Bummed we decided to grab food and and wait it out. We returned at 4 pm on the clock, paid OVER $ 45 for 2 people to bowl, and then we’re told by the same abrasive employee that she needed our lane in less than an hour. We bowled on overly oiled lanes and went home disappointed.
This has been a recurring theme with this location. It honestly seems like the sad lonely forgotten child of the Brunswick company. Avoid it if possible, if it’s not, expect nothing positive. S

Drove out to meet someone here. I am not a local to Vernon Hills so my biggest complaint is that it is hard to find. Luckily my friend said that it was across from the Whirlyball place. My GPS also knew exactly where to go. Still it was weird almost driving into a condo/​town-​home complex or whatever to get there.
Driving up to a big brick building there is NO sign. Only once I got to the other side could I see the Brunswick sign. Part of the building blocked it so I could only see it once I parked.
Other than this it was clean, not too noisy, and even the cosmic bowling wasn’t crazy loud. My ball never got stuck, and the bar only got stuck once. This was easily fixed with the reset button. A bit pricey in my option, but what do you expect on the weekends.

If you are looking for a fun Saturday night bowling game with friends I highly recommend you look into either: a) a new bowling alley or b) a new activity. This facility is not only dirty, with rude employees, but it fully books itself on Saturday nights for «bowling leagues». I’ve given this bowling alley many chances to try and impress me, but still every time I walk in they either have very poor customer service so I have to stand at the counter for over 10 minutes waiting to buy a game (at that point I leave), or they don’t have any lanes open due to a «bowling league». Might as well just stop the public from being able to bowl here and making for leagues only.

No longer has a senior discount. Price went from $ 1.35 or so to $ 5.65. WTF? I turned around, walked out and went to Fairhaven in Mundelein where there is $ 1 Sundays from 10 – 2.

Not our usual alley (see what I did there ;) but came for the pro shop. Jamie in the pro shop got us newbies off to a good start. We were there to buy shoes and balls and had tons of questions. Jamie was very helpful for the most part — drilled our balls, called around to his other pro shop locations to see if they had my shoe size inventory. What I might suggest to raise the bar on service is some follow through to the alley lane with the newbies trying out their new balls to ascertain proper fit, etc. That would raise the service to the next level and would complete the full circle from purchase to execution. While my ball felt fine, my wife was having some thumb concerns and we went back a couple times to have Jamie adjust the thumb hole but he kept insisting she was squeezing the ball when she wasn’t. Had Jamie spent a few moments on the lane with us, he would have been able to tell this and give her additional feedback. While I fully realize that Jamie is not an instructor, when you are coming to him to custom fit your ball, it seems like an obvious next step to me that was missing. Jamie did come out to the lane to let my wife know that her first ball pick was not in inventory, so she could make a different selection but that was the only time he frequented the lane. In addition to this, the free set you get to test your ball out was under duress due to the impending birthday parties that were about to happen. The desk staff cut my test set short by several frames with no warning, just lights out. My wife’s test set happened after several lane changes by staff, once again due to impending birthday parties. As it was, at the end of her set they turned the lights out so fast that her brand new ball did not even have a chance to return. I suspect the relationship between the pro shop and the alley may have something to do with this. To the best of my knowledge I think they are separate businesses and are not as in sync as they could be. Birthday parties are important and deserve attention, but not at the expense of your own league people coming in to drop some big coin on hardware. Per the headlines, looks like the recent sale of the business from Brunswick to Bowlmor is still struggling to strike a balance between the league customer and the entertainment customer. My personal experience confirms this. Here is to hoping both Bowlmor and whoever the future buyer of the Brunswick products line ends up being are able to accomplish this goal soon —

It was a regular bowling area but had upto 40 lanes almost here, so I thought it was fairly easy to get a lane. We paid for 2 hours on a saturday so it was pretty fun.

As a league bowler, it is becoming painfully obvious that management doesn’t care about the leagues. The shot is terrible. The food has gotten worse and the bar selection has gone down. Makes me ready to finish the season here and think about going to one of the independent houses in the area.

Absolutely awful. The alley is completely outdated and the service is horrible. It took over and hour to get a flatbread. I had to check in multiple times and they never even offered anything complementary for the unnecessary long wait… still waiting. Definitely never spending another dime at this place. Extremely disappointed.

We went there on saturday evening. It wasnt completely busy but about half of the lanes were in use. They were not understaffed by any means however they only had 1 employee handling the customers. We got stuck behind a group of high schoolers who took a good 15minutes. Another couple who waited behind us was equally as frustrated. Eventually it got to a point where we laughed it off because it was quite funny how we stood there for 15 minutes without even being acknowledged. 3 stars because we still had fun. Good place to go overall. Management just needs to start a fire under the butts of some of the staff.

We went there on a Friday evening. Staff was v friendly. They were very busy that night but we got lane to play with in few minutes. We had a great time. We will go back any time. Keep up the good work.

My 12 year old bowled here with his Waterpolo team back in February and had a lot of fun.
This month (april) decided to bring here 15 friends of my 9 year old as a walk-​in. It was Saturday afternoon, cosmic bowling. Plenty of people but not crowded. We had 3 lines and couple empty lines on each side of us for a nice space buffer. Kids had tons of fun. Employees are super-​friendly and efficient. They got 16 boys fitted with shoes and started in NO time. I also bugged them with questions from time to time and got very nice friendly smiles and responses. AWESOME experience.
p. s. I did call in advance to see how booked saturday afternoon was shaping to be :)

Good employees I bowl here on Thursdays nights with a league enjoy the food and has a lot of space I also like the cosmic here great place to bowl

My boyfriend and I come here on Friday nights for their special. You can get shoe rental and 3 hours of unlimited bowling from 9pm-​12am for only $ 10 per person. It’s never crowded and you can have a shot at winning some serious cash! If the front pin in your lane is gold, you can win the jackpot amount if you bowl a strike. I did it once but I didn’t know you have to notify them before you bowl if the pin is gold. Since there was no witness, I only got a card good for 1 free game. But you better believe I’ll be back to win me some money!

Ok… I have experienced better. Better being the upscale wallet rape that is PInstripes. For the basic bowl and drink I would say come here. Its cheap, not ghetto, and doesnt smell like feet… very much anyway. Super crowded on sundays, not sure when they do cosmic bowling but I want to try that.

We had our daughter’s 7^th birthday party here and it was awesome. The party host, Daniel was really great with the kids and was very organised.
This bowling alley is somewhat unknown, it’s not advertised and unless you were looking for it you’d never notice it.
If you sign up for the Brunswick Zone coupons online you can get 99c per game coupons, which make this a really affordable family activity. They have cosmic bowling every weekend too which is great for the kids. We’ll be back!