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Downtown Echo Karaoke Box
- Hours:
Mon-Sun 3 pm - 3 am
- Price Range:
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$$$
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Alcohol:
- Beer & Wine Only
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- No
8 reviews for Downtown Echo Karaoke Box
8 reviews in English
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Review from Corey V.
Bolton, ON
7/18/2010
I just can't get you outta my head....
As in, I can't get the fact I sang Kylie Minogue out of my head....poorly, yes, but I sang it nonetheless.
This place was in hardcore China town, and at certain points I felt like a tourist in a distant land.
Cheap bottles, cheap food, and a comfortable environment to let your guard down (although the cheap bottles help with that anyway). Definite must for anyone who has no problem making a fool of themselves! -
Review from susan c.
7/27/2010
I was going to be all lazy and not review this place since Shari M. and Avitania B. pretty much covered everything I wanted to say but my sense of Yelp civic duty kicked in when I saw that it had an average rating of 3.5 stars. My experience was 2-stars at the most.
Chief complaint: Severely limited song selection. If all you sing at karaoke are current Top 40 hits then this place was designed for you. I am not this patron.
Other complaints:
-Retarded browsing system instead of song books; you have to use a remote control to scroll through artists' names on a single screen. This means only one person can browse and select at a time, and the artists were arranged in some strange order that was neither strictly alphabetical nor by genre. WTF?
-Lyrics missing from some videos; I don't know all the words to Kanye's "Gold Digger" by heart. Can a bitch get some help with the lyrics, yo?
-Actual music videos instead of the hilariously cheesy B-grade karaoke videos. This is just wrong.
-The place smells of greasy Chinese food.
-Pricey if you don't use enough of the alcohol credit for the room.[1]
The two stars are for:
-A/C
-Not smelling like a bordello
-Not judging when they're closing up and you down a full glass of vodka and need to be escorted out of the building with a barf bag[2]
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[1] Actually, this doesn't apply to me.
[2] Not saying this happened. Just saying.Listed in: Don't Believe the Hype
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Review from Eric L.
7/17/2010
Just pure fun. That's what this place is.
I've never been to this type of karaoke bar, but I thought it was brilliant. This bar has individual rooms with their own karaoke system built in. The rooms can sit about a dozen people comfortably. Each room as a 40 inch screen LCD that plays the video and lyrics. Just beneath it is a smaller 18 inch monitor to browse the song catalog. There are 2 microphones with long cables so you can pass them around the room with ease.
The only knock is that they need to update their library and have a better interface to browse them. The songs are organized by odd categories and the alphabetical system is all mixed up.
We were 10 people.
From 10:30 until 2 am.
3 - 26oz's of Vodka @ 90$ each. That's like 3.50$ a drink
2-3 appetizer trays.
Bill was ~370$ after tax.
40$ each for 3 hours of fun + drinks = Hard to beat. -
Review from Avitania B.
Toronto, ON
7/18/2010 1 Check-in Here
Echo Karaoke Box has the makings of a great place (large space, decent location, lots of seating) but several major weaknesses keep it from being awesome:
1. Ri-cock-ulous bottle service price. $100 gets you a bottle of crap vodka (Smirnoff) and three mixers (flat Coke, fake tasting cranberry, and something else similarly unmemorable). It would be more worth it if the mixers weren't awful; hell, I would have paid more for vodka that didn't taste like distilled hairspray.Bottle service price aside, the room rental price is one of the most expensive I've ever seen for a private room Karaoke joint. Also, no Diet Coke. Hmph.
2. Poor song selection. A bunch of modern stuff, but not much by way of classics. I'm sorry, but who does Little Bow Wow at Karaoke? Where are the standards? Frank Sinatra, Journey... hell, only one measly Tom Jones song? Booo.
3. Many songs selected didn't even have words at the bottom of the screen to sing along with. Whaaa?
With that said, the rooms are large and did well at accommodating our big group. The service, though nice, was on the meh side - when I asked our server what our vodka choices there were, she looked at me like I'd grown a huge accessory nipple out of my forehead.
It was my first Karaoke joint in Toronto, so I'm hoping that there are other places that step up the game. -
Review from Melissa J.
Toronto, ON
11/17/2008 3 photos
Echo is on the 2nd or 3rd floor of the Chinatown Centre at Dundas and Spadina. The place is pretty nice inside, I've only ever been there in the dark but it didn't feel too scary or intimidating. They have huge flat-screen TVs and comfy chairs. Washrooms are nice but are often packed due to everyone drinking to excess.
I have been to this downtown karaoke delight twice so far, and even though some things went wrong, both times I absolutely loved it and will probably be going back.
Round 1: Testing the place out with a group of 4, and we booked the room over the phone a week in advance. It was a super tiny room but it did the job, and we ordered a bunch of drinks by pressing a button on the remote (they come to the door and order your food/drinks! You don't even have to get up!). Ended up being around $15 for each of us to sing to our hearts' content for the entire night (9pm-3am), not including drinks.
Round 2: This time we had a larger group of about 10-15 people coming and going. Booked their largest room a week in advance, only to find out upon arriving that they had only booked the room for "happy hour" and had gave it away because we showed up closer to 11pm instead of at 9. They offered us a smaller room instead, which ended up working out perfectly. This was the time we found out that they offer drink credits, and since the room cost $150, we were entitled to $150 in drinks. And we only had an hour until last call. So we got a ton of free booze, essentially, and everything worked out to about $160 including tax. $10 each, including drinks, on a Saturday night.
My experiences here were good, as long as I booked it in advance. If you want the room for the whole night but don't plan to arrive until about 11, let them know very explicitly (I had told the guy over the phone, but I guess it wasn't very clear). Ask them about the drink credits because they make everything so much enjoyable!
As for the music selection, they have a bunch of classic karaoke songs, but they are missing some older hits (no Bon Jovi except for "It's My Life"? That should be illegal). After another couple times here, I think I'll need to find another place just so I can sing some different songs, but Echo takes the cake because of location and those drink credits. -
Review from Marie F.
Updated - 5/29/2010 3 Check-ins Here
You don't know what you've got t'ill it's gone...
Since my resent trip to BKB Karaoke (http://www.yelp.ca/biz...) I've been forced to upgrade my rating because frankly this might be the best Karaoke in town!Listed in: Chandeliers & Indoor Christmas…
1 Previous Review: Show all »
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5/2/2010
I made sure to warn the birthday girl that despite the ridiculous amount of fun she was going to… Read more »
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Review from Shari M.
Toronto, ON
7/18/2010
Sigh. I was hoping this place was going to be better.
Let me do a breakdown of this place
STRENGTHS
- takes reservations
- large space, tons of different rooms
- serves food
- does room service
- wide array of boozy and non-boozy drinks available
- great mango slushies!!
- clean
- they will take you to your room if not all of your party is there
WEAKNESSES
- no song books. You have to use the screen, and the sorting is odd. Eric L was looking for Incubus, and when we would scroll through the alphabetical artist listing, sometimes it would show up, sometimes it wouldn't
- very limited choices. Some of the songs they had would have no lyrics. These wordless songs were a bad taping of a MTV or Much Music video.
- no Drake
- no System of a Down
- creepy. Echo is in a little mall at Spadina and Dundas. The parking garage underneath smells like wet dog and urine. When you take the elevator up to the second floor, there is a security guard there. He checks your ID (which, at almost 33, this was a compliment!), and stamps your hand for re-entry. At one point when one of the servers came in, I thought he was wearing a bullet proof vest! When you leave, you can't go out the front door, you go out the side door. Hello...was I at a karaoke place or an oral surgeons?! In order to take your money, the staff go into a little room with a window. Weirder, is you can pay by debit, but there is a bank machine right in front of the window.
- expensive. Of the four karaoke places I have been to, this was the most expensive. If the song selections were better, and I didn't feel like we were going to be mugged or something, this place would be return worthy.
All in all, the best karaoke place has still yet to be found.
Echo is open from 3 pm to 3 am. -
Review from Laura C.
Toronto, ON
Updated - 5/3/2010 2 Check-ins Here
On weekdays it's happy hours from 3 to 8:30pm / weekdays 4 to 8:30pm. We couldn't get there until 6 to 6:30pm, and they gladly extended the happy hour fee til 9pm for us. Just ask. It's quite reasonable, i think. It includes 2 non alcholoic drinks.
1 Previous Review: Show all »
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3/22/2010
It's okay. Not the cleanest, and not the most fancy, but does the job. Has a decent selection of… Read more »
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