The Hollywood Bowl in Crawley has a £450,000 makeover: this is what our reporter thought

With works carried out during lockdown, the upgraded venue in Crawley Leisure Park has seen its existing 24 lanes revamped, plus four new ones added along with what the company described as a 'new state-of-the-art scoring system'.

In a press release, the new decor was repeatedly referred to as glamorous, which I thought was over-egging the pudding, but it did look fresh, colourful and clean.

We got to try out the VIP lane, which had plush sofas and walls separating us from the other players, adorned with tributes to Star Wars and Marilyn Monroe, in our case.

It was nice to have some privacy, but let's face it: you don't go bowling for the decor.

There were a few technical hitches early on with the scoring, which meant one of our group's turn kept being skipped, so we used the 'call for assistance' feature on the system.

In the end, it was quicker for us to seek out a member of staff. Ashlea was very friendly and helped sort the issue.

We were also given the option of ordering drinks at the lane using this feature. But again, it proved faster to go to the bar, where the friendly staff were happy to help.

So we were finally ready to play - and the experience was a lot of fun. They are clearly not trying to reinvent the wheel, which is good: just giving it some new alloys, so to speak.

As it was October, the graphic displays were Halloween-themed, a nice touch.

After scoring a few strikes and spares we had worked up an appetite, so paid the American diner-themed restaurant area a visit.

The menu included all the classics you would expect, from milkshakes and fries to burgers and hot dogs.

The chicken wings were a miss, but the hot dogs hit the spot and the nachos were great to share.

Thanks to the 10pm curfew, we had to cut our evening slightly short - but aside from that, all the covid measures were fairly unintrusive.

In fact, with alternate lanes being closed for social distancing, bowling is now a less cramped experience.

Our only major concern was the hygiene surrounding the bowling balls themselves. But we were assured by staff that the finger holes are deep cleaned after each use and different size and weight balls have to be requested by players, avoiding cross-contamination.

Overall, we had a good evening and thanks to Ashlea in particular for her top-notch customer service.