Since everyone is so interested in hearing the differences between the two types of bowling that I’ve observed in my 2 hours of American bowling and lifetime playing NORMAL bowling :P, I thought that I would illustrate the differences for you all.

First of all, the balls are bigger and have three holes in them in American bowling. Canadian balls are smaller, and all the same weight and size so you don’t have to pick up your own unique ball, with different weights and are color coded according to weight and finger hole sizes. So you only have one ball to chuck at the pins in American style, so every time you bowl, you have to wait for your ball to come back before you can continue your turn, instead of just taking the next available ball. They also get returned to you under the floor, instead of watching them return.

The pins are a little fatter too, but not really all that noticeable.

The scoring method was a tad different. Instead of a sheet, the scoring was all electronic and automated. We entered in our names, and there was a monitor overhead that kept the score. Each player only had two turns instead of three, except at the end, so if your first turn was a strike you could go twice more. And on the monitor, instead of a shaded-in square for a strike it was an X and instead of a shaded-in triangle for spare it was a half-X. During the gameplay, little bowling animations would show up on the screen, those were probably the highlight of the night.

The shoes and uncomfortable chairs were the same. Happily, the place was a Pepsi establishment, and with the group package we got, we had free pop and popcorn. Oh, another big difference, was the price. They had different weekend and weekday rates (probably that’s the same as home), but the weekend rates were $5 a game!! As opposed to Friday/Saturday $1 a game bowling at Pubnico Lanes.

So that was my bowling experience. I kind of prefer the speedier way that Canadian bowling is, you don’t have to wait for the machine to tell you who’s turn it is, or to get your ball back, or to reset the pins even if you got a gutterball and didn’t hit anything. Everything down here is either automated or drive-thru.

Here’s a few more things I found interesting down in the states:

  • Drive thru banking
  • Drive thru dry cleaning
  • Pizza delivery orders online
  • The amount of stores that manage to survive