Roller Palace

Only $ 8 weds 1pm during Christmas break includes rental?! Sold! Very big. Lots of cubbies and changing benches to sit on. Roller skates to rent. Lots of beginners. If you’re a standby watching person ITS CHILLY! But if you’re skating it probably feels good. Arcade has .50-​$ 1 games. CASH ONLY ATMS available

Roller skating is making a come back & the Roller Palace is keeping the flame alive. Reminds me of all the dingy roller rinks of my youth, but much better kept up, with a better sound system. My daughters (5 & 8) love coming here, and the relatively low price of admission ($ 8 per skater) makes it worth while.

As far as i’m concerned, they earn at least one star for the audacity to call a dim, dingy, cinder block-​and-​acoustic-​tile warehouse a palace. Then again, i’m pretty sure the more deserving roller chateaus, castles, and temples of my youth probably aren’t as amazing as my memories either.
Crazy kids veering all over the place and crashing in front of you with zero warning? Check. Parents counting down the minutes until they can go? Check. The uncoordinated kid clinging to the wall (that was me, Slidell, Louisiana, 1985)? Check. And my personal favorite, the borderline sketchy forty-​something guy who owns fancy skates and loves nothing more than zooming in and out of everybody in the name of impressing thirteen-​year-​old girls. Check and check.
On the bright side, it warms the cockles of my heart to know that no matter how much you’re not impressed with the mainstreamest of the mainstream music, generation after generation, there are always a handful of songs that are just about perfect for roller skating to.
Long story long, you basically can’t screw up roller skating, and the Roller Palace is perfectly fine.

I went yesterday for their adult hours (Tuesdays from 10-​noon) and had a blast.
The location is great – less than 5 minutes off the highway, easy to find, and tons of parking. The building itself is pretty non-​descript, save for its «Roller Skating» sign outside. Inside, there is plenty of benches and cubby spaces to get your skates on and store your belongings. There are also locker rentals (the 18 inch by 18 inch small square type) and a water fountain between the two bathrooms.
For only $ 7, you get a 2 hour skate, free rentals, and a heaping dose of nostalgia! The rink has quintessentially 1980’s stripes lining the perimeter. Also, there are awesome signs warning, «No gum chewing» and «Skate at own risk» in chunky 70’s font. And, to top it all off, Garfield is painted on the wall in their snack bar – amazing! Did I mention their neon intergalactic carpeting? I was instantly transported to a simpler time when knee high gym socks and scratch-​n-​sniff stickers were de rigueur.
The best part were the super nice older folks who were there skating. They saw me struggling and stopped by to offer encouragement and advice. I highly recommend going during the adult hours if you’re a beginner, because there’s few people there and you’ll have plenty of room to fall/​hang on to the railing/​take your time without feeling sheepish in front of a crowd.
My only (slight) gripes are:
–As mentioned in the ‘tips’ section, they don’t accept credit cards (but do have an ATM.)
–When I went, all of the arcade games were off and some had ‘out of order’ signs affixed.
–No one was at the front booth to take my entrance fee; I had to track down an employee inside.
All of the above were no big deal whatsoever, though, and didnt really take away from my enjoyment of this fantastic circa 1984 time capsule. Definitely recommend!

The coin operated machines often do not work. The last time I was there I put in a $ 10 bill and did not get any change out of it. When I told the staff it wasn’t dispensing they sent someone over to fix it.
The guy handed me $ 1 worth of change. I told him I put in a $ 10 bill. He said that was the last bill in the machine (insinuating I was lying). I walked away minus my missing $ 9 change… and vowed to never go back.
After researching these machines on the internet I now know that there are bill sorters inside the machine. The guy was a complete liar. He ripped me off.
The place maybe fun for roller skating but there are other places.
I will never go back there again.

It should come to no surprise that I am once again reviewing another roller skating rink. If you have been following my reviews lately you’ll noticed that I’ve been spending a heavy amount of time skating with my girlfriend. Along with a bunch of other people I’ve been going from location to location skating at different venues practicing on developing my skills. I’ve been to Tynsboro, Hudson, Saugas, Whitman, Dorchester, Leominster, Haverhill and now Beverly. I think I’ve covered them all in this area, phew!
Like all my reviews before the quality of the experience always is based on: distance, prices, appearance of facility, quality of the floor and crowd size. Beverly hits the mark on all of these points! Roller Palace is a 40 minute drive from my home which is about average to some of the other roller rinks I’ve visited. Prices on a Saturday night are $ 7 per person which includes skate rentals, but I’ve noticed that most people who are frequent skaters own their skates. Roller Palace is definitely one of the cleanest looking rinks I’ve visited to date. Everything is well maintained, super clean and has plenty of seating. The walls look like they have been freshly painted too. Floor quality is great but on some turns you can feel the individual boards through your wheels. However, I’ll admit the floor could use a buff at some point. Crowd size is beyond perfect! Last night was Adult Night (18+) and the crowd skating had to be between 30 – 50 people. I wouldn’t say there were more than 30 people skating at one time which was awesome because it gave me plenty of room to skate fast and work on my turns. Adult Night attracts Roller Derby enthusiasts, players, fans and an older generation of adults (40+). Last night we happened to see a few patrons from other rinks like Skateland in Haverhill by chance.
Overall this place is fantastic and I feel that I could be coming here more often because I was so pleased with my experience last night!

Okay, I wouldn’t call this a palace but there’s definitely some rolling going on in Beverly.
I hadn’t skated in 16 years (and can’t believe I can actually say I haven’t [insert activity] in teens of years… yikes) anyhow, skate rentals and fun on wheels can be had at Roller Palace for $ 7 per person. This is definitely a family friendly place so expect to see people aged 3 and up. Roller Palace is pretty much no frills but functional and kept well enough. My issues with the place were as follows:
1. No referees on the floor – I haven’t been skating much in MA but where I’m from there are a couple of referees on the floor to nip tomfoolery (read: texting in the middle of the rink) in the bud and help people who are having problems getting up etc.
2. The walls are straight up CINDER BLOCK. I saw a kid bite it into the wall… not cool
3. There was a bit of strange smell… locker room meets drive through carwash bizarre smell. The place didn’t seem to be well ventilated.
All these issues aside, I think I had more fun than $ 7 should have bought me. I was cut off by a child and fell… I took her down with me… I was lucky her parents weren’t in the wings waiting to take me out. Here’s a tip for the future little girl… don’t jump in the pathway of a MACK truck… or a buxom Black woman. Other than that, fun all around.

Sunday afternoon:
YMCA. The Chicken Dance. The Hokey Pokey. The Macarena. Filled in by all manner of thumping more modern dance tunes.
12 eight-​year-​olds that didn’t want a thing from me the whole time. $ 9 a kid gets you skate rental, cheap ass crappy doody pizza, sugar water of your choice, paper plates and cups, and private tables enough to fit everybody. $ 7 got me skate rental so I could have fun too. F***. .orget being one of those other parents looking like they were having their wisdom teeth extracted without anaesthesia.. .if I have to be here, I’m gonna rock and roll! And roll! And roller skate!
So I drank a cup of Hawaiian Punch, ate two slices of previously frozen weird spongy bread substance with bland tomato sauce that had been sparingly applied with a pastry brush and a little cheese sprinkled over — and I was ready to test Newton’s laws of motion.
1) A body in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force: so far so good, I can coast.. .and after a few touch and go moments, the turns are OK! Just like riding a bike.. .
2)The relationship between an object’s mass (m), its acceleration (a), and the applied force F is F = ma: So the force of a 5′ 1″ woman coming in contact with a flailing 3′ 11″ six year old is a product of their mass and their perpendicular acceleration vectors.. .luckily I managed to lean over and grab her around the waist so that we spun off in an entirely new direction — ameliorating the force of impact.
3)For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: NO SHIT. Like little asteroids flying through space, kids slammed into each other, the floor the wall, me.. .and I did NOT FALL ONCE. Those 7 years between 1977 and 1984 (when I skated in the cool sneakers attached to wheels roller skates in my grandmother’s driveway to the BeeGees playing on the mono radio pressed up to the kitchen window screen) stood me in good stead. Stayin’ Alive, Stayin’ Alive.. .
The food sucks. But the hot dogs are only 1.50, which even for lip and asshole parts is parts ain’t too bad — with mustard. The skates have been around since 1957; however, they must have been pretty well taken care of, because the skate rental area only smells like feet — not 50 years of nasty smelly feel like one would expect. So far, my toes have not turned black and fallen off from a previously unknown species of flesh eating foot fungus (Tinea beverleyis rollerii).. .but I will keep you updated.
There are video games and vending machines in case you need a break. All in all, a satisfying and nostalgic roller skating experience. Sounds like things heat up here at night, though. Smokin’.
BONUS:The 50ish woman in tight black pants, a short sleeved black hoody and neon yellow in-​line skates who hip-​hop boogied at about 73mph through the throng. And the guy with the beer gut who could grapevine like nobody’s business.
There really is a place in the world for everyone.

When you’re friends with several Boston Derby Dames, you should expect to do some roller skating yourself.
We live in a world where roller skating is considered uncool, homosexual, and out of style. But ya know what, I don’t mind! Roller derby is back, so let me lace up my rented, amoeba filled skates and dance (crawl) across the floor until my feet get soar (from toe fungus).
Sure, I spend 83% of the evening clinging for life against the walls surrounding the floor… and yes I scream anytime a 13-​year-​old hoochie skates within a 4-​foot radius of me. But I still have fun attempting to skate to the loud hits of the 90’s whilst pointing and laughing at the 40-​year-​old men who show off their ‘skills’ and the young girls who would shame any mother with their tight jeans and inappropriate sing-​a-​longs to sexually perverse songs.
But what did I enjoy most about my evening? Roller Skating is a valid excuse to pass through a Massachusetts State Police drunk driving checkpoint…
Trooper: «Where are you coming from at this time of night?»
Me: «The Roller Palace in Beverly – went roller skating!»
Trooper: «Well, where are your skates?»
Me: «Oh, I rented them!» :-D
Trooper: «…»
*car filled with anti-​Bush lapel pins and a rainbow flag*
Trooper: «Move along.»