Palace Club (Budapest, Hungary)

Quality of Dances (10.5/20) – The privacy leads me to believe that more may be available from some of the girls, but all of my dances had little to no grind and nothing extra was offered.  Still, they weren’t bad at all with the girls getting naked and encouraging upper body groping. 

Quality of Dancers (8/10) – Some of the ladies have a hard, stereotypical Eastern European look, but most of them are fairly attractive and would rate somewhere around a 7 on the 0-10 scale.  One girl was absolutely stunning, but I wouldn’t count on meeting her, and due to her attitude, you might be better off if you don’t. 

Number of Dancers (7.5/10) – For such a small club to have over a dozen ladies working was very impressive.  Every group of guys was joined by at least one lady, and several more were just waiting for the opportunity to pounce. 

Variety of Dancers (0/5) – If thin white girls aren’t your preference, you’re out of luck at this place, because that’s all they have.

Attitudes (0.5/10) – Things started off promisingly, with most of the girls sitting and chatting until the waitress came by to ask if I’d like to “buy the lady a drink.”  If a club insists on using the dancer drink business model, that’s the way they should do it, so that was appreciated.  Then, the girls were even friendly while sipping their drinks and chatting, but things went south once they started the lap dance sales pitch. With several girls, it followed the same pattern: get me to agree to one dance (which I was more than willing to do), then try to upsell me to get more expensive dance options.  That’s not totally unexpected, but one girl in particular got belligerent when I declined her offer of a 70,000 HUF dance (about $350 US).  I’d already dropped about 40,000 HUF on her by this point, but she spent the entire 10 minute long dance calling me cheap and asking why I couldn’t spend money like all the other guys (who, by the way, didn’t appear to be spending much of anything).  Initially, the truth was that I needed to save some cash so that I could sample multiple girls and make this a more accurate review, but by the end, I had the additional justification that she was being a huge bitch.  

Value (0/10) – This, and it’s sister club, P1, were the only places in Budapest where they tried to charge a cover charge.  Here, it’s normally 3000 HUF, though it’s a better deal to print out the coupon from their website that gets you entry and 2 hours of pen bar for 6000 HUF.  Even if you just have 2 beers, since they’re 1900 HUF each, you’ll come out ahead.  Still, it’s pretty insulting to be charged a any cover at a club where you’re expected to buy inflated dancer drinks that start at 18000 HUF and go way up from there.  And, to make matters worse, they pour a glass of champagne for you from the lady’s bottle so that it will go faster.  Basically, they use every move from the how-to-nickel-and-dime-your-customers handbook.  The dances are the only aspect of this club that are an ok deal, at 10,000 HUF for 10 minutes, but agreeing to that is really just opening you up for an aggressive sales pitch for dances that are several times that expensive.   

Club Setup (4/10) – When you enter the place from the street, you’d think that it’s just a very unpopular restaurant, but the club is downstairs in a room that almost feels like a miniature airplane hangar.  There’s bench seating along the wall and nin small tables in front of the bench, so everyone has a great view of what may be the smallest main stage I’ve ever seen.  It couldn’t be more than about 4 feet by 4 feet.  Needless to say, there are no crazy acrobatics going on up there.  There’s also a nice bar in this room and a separate room with a few booths and another small, unused stage, but everyone seems to stick with the bench seating unless the place is busy. 

Dance Setup (10/10) – Dances are given on couches in fairly large individual rooms that are enclosed by opaque curtains.  There are a lot of things that I dislike about this club, but I have absolutely no complaints about the dance setup. 

Atmosphere (6/10) – The crowd was good and the atmosphere, while somewhat low key, was pretty solid.  If you can ignore the pushier dancers, this isn’t a bad place to have a few beers.

Location (5/5) – Palace is located right behind St. Stephen’s Basilica and is within easy walking distance of the Chain Bridge and most of the main tourist attractions in town.  The closest strip club is this place’s sister club, P1, but if you’re looking for better alternatives, Hallo Bar and Marilyn Table Dance Bar are both easily accessible from here as well.    

Overall – Unless you’re willing to make some enemies by drinking heavily for the 2 hour open bar while rejecting most or all of the approaching ladies, I’d skip palace.  It’s designed to take money from uninformed tourists, but luckily that’s not you. 

RAW SCORE = 46.5