Great 66 Entertainment Center (Lucky 66 Bowl) - Bar Rescue Update

In this week's episode of Bar Rescue, Jon Taffer and crew are in Albuquerque, New Mexico to rescue Lucky 66 Bowl.  Lucky 66 Bowl is a bar and bowling alley that is owned by Mike Draper, a Vietnam veteran.  Mike bought the bar as a tribute to his father and is supposedly in debt $1 million and losing $15,000 a month.  While doing recon, Jon finds that Mike isn't liked by his employees and customers. Mike also tries to cut-off and kick out patrons that had only had a few drinks.


During the Bar Rescue makeover, Jon Taffer decided to slightly rename Lucky 66 Bowl to The Great 66 Entertainment Center.  They currently go by The Lucky 66 Entertainment Center. Let's take a look at some information, reviews, and updates for The Lucky 66 Entertainment Center since Bar Rescue came and made all of the changes to the bar (All reviews are post-Bar Rescue):




Positive Reviews:

• "Lucky 66 is a little gem. The atmosphere is fantastic. Plenty of lanes and games. Got a decently new pair of shoes for rent too. Had a blast with my friends. Definitely recommend going. Maybe you'll get lucky and get the haunted lane."
• "Had my son's birthday here, everyone was super friendly and helpful. Had a couple issues with the lanes and a few games that didn't work but overall it was great. Very chill environment would recommend especially since it was the best deal vs everywhere else."
• "I've been coming here since I was a teenager. I like it here and people are friendly. I love the Ally cat there!! Sometimes you'll just see him strolling around. The reason why I took off a star was because the keyboard panel you put your name on is hard to operate. Sometimes you have to push the keys really hard to get them to work and when they work they put 4 extra letters. And the air on the ball holder didn't work on any of them so fingers got really sweaty and I ended up losing to my boyfriend 😠😤 regardless... This place is fun and it's nice to have a bar area to get our drinks."
• "A fun and inexpensive place to have fun with the whole family! The staff is friendly and bowling is great."
• "Place for adult fun while kids can bowl here. Parking is easy.
• They have three bars here. Except you have to get your mixed drinks in one bar which is to your right side when you walk in. I went to their Overlook Lounge that they just opened (on the left side of entrance) and it was nice! It had a large dance floor with cocktail tables to sit at. You could even have a dance party here!"

Negative Reviews:

• "Worst place to go in town don't go here. The owner is a dickhead. Not even bar rescue could save this place. They treated my friends like trash. We will never go again"
• "Terrible every lane we got switched to messed up kept shutting on my kids turns and resetting, they charged us 80 dollars refused to give a refund, we had 8 people and they gave us a card for a free 1 hour for 6 people but we had 8 people, ridiculous, careless and also didn't accept their coupon when paying for everything. Never going again hope I save people the headache of going here."
• "This place was Terrible it had bad lanes"
• "This place is dying not satisfied. The owner treats people like crap. Done"

*Reviews from Yelp, Google, Facebook


Other News and Links:

• The Bar Rescue for Lucky 66 Bowl happened in August 2019.
• Here is a 6-minute preview video of the episode from the Paramount YouTube page.
• Here is the Lucky 66 Entertainment Center website and Facebook page. 
• Here is the Facebook page of Mike (owner) which posts a lot of political things. Jay (Mike's son), Daphne (Jay's daughter)
• In 2017, Lucky 66 Bowl was sued in a vehicular homicide case.  The lawsuit alleges Lucky 66 Bowl overserved a woman who, shortly after leaving, struck and killed a pedestrian.
• Lucky 66 Bowl also has an outdoor sand volleyball court that is open March through October. (Link)
• The bar inside of Lucky 66 Bowl is referred to as Dewars Pub
• The food inside of Lucky 66 Bowl was cooked by a restaurant called Leilani's.
• Here are the reviews for Lucky 66 from Yelp and Google
• The older reviews are pretty negative and mostly 1-star with a lot of complaints about no AC.
• In early August 2019, someone told Lucky 66 on Facebook to install air conditioning, and Mike responded that the building was sold and he's hopeful the new owners will install AC. (Link)

Conclusion:

Jon Taffer decided to slightly change the name of Lucky 66 Bowl to The Great 66 Entertainment and the bar changed it to The Lucky 66 Entertainment Center.  There weren't too many reviews for The Lucky 66 Entertainment Center and most of the reviews are about the bowling area and not the bar area.  People seem to like the fact that Lucky 66 is a place where grown-ups can take their kids and also have drinks, while there are negative reviews about the bowling lanes and the owner.  A lot of negative reviews over the years have been about there being no air conditioning in Lucky 66 and Mike is hoping that the new owner of the building will install AC.


UPDATE - Lucky 66 Entertainment Center closed for good in January 2021 - More information on the closure.

*To see how all of the bars from Bar Rescue are doing, go to the Bar Rescue Updates page, and also Like us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter to stay up to date with all things involving Bar Rescue.