I have had my foid for almost a year now. I have had a wide range of opportunities to shoot and most of the times i have been to this gun range have been pretty positive. However, I took a group there last night and had an awful experiance that has completly changed my attitude towards this place.
First thing to mention is that if you know how to shoot and have time to shoot during off hours, then this is a great place to shoot. The range itself is nice and it really is the cheapest indoor range in the area. This is why i have been coming here. The other reviews also mention horrible staff. Im not going to lie and tell you they are all great. In fact, i can only think of four that are great. I have not had a good experiance with the other employees, including the owner, Barry.
So my friends wife calls me and wants to do a surprise birthday party. She wants me to take him and some friends shooting. The rule there (different employees told me different variations of this rule) is that there must be one foid card per lane. So the plan was to bring the group and splits into smaller groups. 3 of the 9 of us had foids and experiance. That means we would have reserved 3 lanes, and had 3 guys per lane. I have done this in the past, just not as a larger group. The fees are $20 for the lane and $12 for each additional shooter. Rentals would be an extra $18 per lane for two guns. So $21 per person. A total of $189 plus ammo.
When i called and tried to arrange this i made sure i asked about renting an AK47. The group was a bunch of russian guys so renting that rifle was the main reason for going. I was encouraged to do a class because the AK47 is not a good beginners gun. The owner, Barry, worked out a deal of $40 per person, so $400 (10 guys, one was invited after). This made sense considering there was alot of untrained guys and I was told that $10 of ammo was included in the price along with any rentals we wanted. He told me he would get us several instructers and we could all shoot at once. Awesome! We invited one more guy, after i asked permission from Barry and i collected the $40 per person. The wife also gave $150 for extra ammo if we ran out of the class ammo and the ammo i brought. I called Barry once i recieved all their payments and he put the class in the books and reviewed our agreement again.
The first red flag was when i tried to confirm everything the week before. i called several times asking for barry and he was always busy. I was told, "Whatever you worked out with Barry is in the books and should work out the way he agreed to." We get to the range that day and none of the employees knew about the group. the guys behind the counter tried contacting Barry and wetre directed to the schedule. The schedule read, "$40 per person plus ammo." I tried really hard to fight it but they would not budge. They even called Barry and he agreed, $40 plus ammo. ok no big deal, we are all big boys, whats $10 more dollars. Plus i brought enough .22 to go around.
So we only get one instructor, and he is not happy. He told me about 5 times to not ever bring a group that large to the range. He was rude and clearly agitated. I apologized and was as helpful as i could be but he was just not happy and nothing was going to change that. Last minute they gave us a second instructor who was a volunteer, this guy was awesome. i dont know his name but he was great. because there was onl;y two instructers, shooting my .22's and the .38 ammo we purchased took all of our reserved instructor time. we were 5 minutes over time limit and he handed me the rest of the 38 rounds and said hurry up. We need the brass back for reloading. Shoot these immediatly. i finished them off and returned the gun. He looked at me and said, "NO, there was one more .22 hand gun." I was puzzled and told him the other instructer handled that weapon, i never even touched it. He told me to go get it and that i was mistaken. Again, this guy was rude and very upset. Flustered i run back to the range and look in the intructors stalls... nothing. Im freaking out and check the range counter. Sure enough, the other instructor had the gun there. So our time with the instructor was over, and i told him i wanted to give the birthday guy a chance to pop off a few more rounds with my rifle i brought and then we were done. He has never shot a rifle. The guy said, " Just call it a night. You brought a group way too large for this kind of class. Just go home and come back when they have experiance. your done. Leave." I wasnt asking to bring the group in, i just wanted a few shots for one person. I left extreamly angry and cheated. i did not get the price the owner agreed to and was treated horribly by the staff. read more