I believe the cons outweighed the pros during our visit to Luxor, a unique noraebang (Korean…read morekaraoke establishment) in Duluth. Three stars is still okay, but I wouldn't consider myself a fan of this joint just yet.
I called and made a reservation for 20 people on a Saturday night at 10pm. I was told over the phone that our group would get the biggest room in the house. When we arrived, on time, this was not the case. I think we got maybe the 2nd or 3rd largest room in the place. We got Room #6 which is a rectangular-shaped room with a long table running down the middle and an open, U-shaped couch lining three of the walls. This couch could seat 16 people max and we were all sitting rather snug. When all of our group was there, this meant that some people had to stand. Fail. It was already a bit uncomfortable for the 16 of us who were seated just to get up and move around, pass the mic and song book, order/grab drinks and food, etc.
Due to our large group size, we were told there was a two-bottle minimum for the room. Bottles start at $100 per. We ordered Johnnie Walker ($100) and Grey Goose ($120). These two bottles got us 4 hours of karaoke. After tax and automatic 18% gratuity added to the bill, our total was about $300 for the room. For 20 people, this works out to only $15 per person, so it's actually a very good deal. (We were actually a few short of 20, so our per person total was higher.)
Those two bottles weren't enough for our group, so we ordered an extra bottle (Crown Royal, $120). Someone in our group already paid for this bottle in advance, separately as soon as he ordered it. At the end, when it came time to pay the bill for the entire room, I was presented with a ticket with all 3 bottles on it. We almost got double-charged for the bottle of Crown! If we didn't question the staff about the extraneous line item, we would have paid an extra $120+ for nothing. After bringing this mistake to the staff's attention, they seemed apologetic. I just don't know for sure if it was an honest mistake or not.
Apart from the small room size and billing discrepancy, some other things I did not like about Luxor were: (1) song selection access and (2) smoke. Actually, smoky environments don't bother me *that* much, but I thought it would be worth noting. Like Ai Tunes, Sound of Music, and other NRBs, Luxor has a restaurant/lounge/bar-type area outside the karaoke rooms where people can order food, drinks, and just hang out. It's smoky in this area, so be forewarned.
I think Luxor actually has a good song selection, but accessing all these songs is a pain For example, I noticed they had Adele's Skyfall theme song in their database on the same weekend the Skyfall movie premiered. That's pretty impressive. Unfortunately, the song book only had a mere fraction of the songs that were actually in the system. Not only that, but there was only one remote for the entire room (and it was written in Korean) so it was bothersome to hand off the remote due to the aforementioned spacing issues, plus we had to keep asking our Korean friends to help operate the remote for us.
All these issues aside, Luxor does have some great things going for it. While this place is super Korean and caters mainly to young Korean clientele, the staff are also young and Korean and thus, typically speak and understand English well. Everyone seemed friendly and attentive and service to our room was generally good.
Each bottle of alcohol ordered came with regular glasses, shot glasses, mixers (Coca-Cola and cranberry juice), and platefuls of fruit and snacks. The fruit plate was beautifully presented and included pineapple, watermelon, grapes, oranges, kiwi, and strawberry. The snack plate had peanuts, seaweed, cuttlefish (win), banana chips, and a couple other extras. All of that was very nice and among the best snacks I've seen at any Atlanta-area KTV.
The theme of this place is awesome. It's like you're singing karaoke in an Egyptian pyramid complete with wall carvings and hieroglyphics. Yes, it sounds bizarre and that's because it is. Outside the door of each the rooms are colored lights. They blink and light up when people are inside singing. Inside, the rooms have plenty of fun, colorful lighting from lasers to strobes to rotating, light-up disco balls. Our room had one big TV at one end and two smaller TVs in the corners of the opposite end. In general, the setup was nice -- we just had too many people for the room. The sound and video quality were good.
One fellow Yelper described Luxor as it being "the Clermont of karaoke joints." I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The actual build-out is nice, but I did notice an exceptional number of drunk people here. There was vomit on the floors of both the men's and women's restrooms. Apparently, this is the karaoke joint to come to if you want to get wasted.
As my friend CJ told me, Luxor is more of a place to drink rather than to karaoke.
