Bowl America Dranesville in Sterling, VA

Bowl America Dranesville
46940 Woodson Drive
Sterling, VA 20164 (map it)
(703) 430‑1350

We man­aged to avoid test­ing the food and the video games, but we did try out the lanes at Bowl America last week­end. The bumpers made the game more fun for my two and four year olds. And maybe I have been liv­ing with my head in the sand for the past 20 years, but they have a nifty device we have never seen before. It is a lit­tle ramp for kids to use to aim and release a bowl­ing ball to give it the momen­tum it needs to get all the way down the lane. However, my kids though the bowl­ing ball com­ing back to us back­wards was even cooler. Maybe they have a tilt but­ton or a puff of wind that an oper­a­tor hits when they see a lit­tle one’s ball stuck mid-lane, but as far as we were con­cerned it was pure magic.

Even though it was a Saturday night the vibe was still pretty fam­ily friendly. I don’t bowl often and always for­get how close you are to the folks in the next lane. Either we were lucky or the staff is thought­ful in assign­ing lanes, because our neigh­bors on both sides were patient with the kids and seemed to enjoy them.

Other tid­bits par­ents might care about:

• Smoking is allowed after 5pm on Saturdays, but we didn’t feel like the place was too smokey for a short visit with our kids.
• The bath­rooms were clean, but very nar­row so a bit awk­ward for wran­gling tod­dlers or chang­ing diapers.