I LOVE bowling with my daughter. She may be 16, but they know her, know her disabilities and they automatically put up the bumpers for us. They are the manual kind, so once they are up, everyone uses them. The alley in the next town over has computer controlled bumpers. You set them per user and the bumpers go up and down each frame, depending on the bowlers.No bumpers (assuming you mean the tubes placed in the gutters to prevent the ball from dropping into the gutter. Kids new to the game use the bumpers; not sure what the cutoff age is.