Plunge! Aquatic Centre — Attraction in The Blue Mountains

Management has Gone Crazy.

If you plan to stay at Blue Mountain and visit the Plunge pool/ hot tub, take a moment for a quick read so you can at least know what to expect.

Very friendly lady at the entrance ready to take our payment—we are large family, so we spent close to $400 in two visits. We paid the extra $10 for two bins as lockers were closed. All cool.

Now lets have some family fun - nope! not so fast. Once you are in bathing suits, you cannot leave anything in the sealed lockers, so you must take the bins to the deck by the pool, as it says on the website “This bin must remain with the guest on the pool deck while they use the facilities.” It does NOT state that you must go OUTSIDE and place the bins and your shoes outdoors in the below-zero temperatures. I am not sure how that helps COVID, but ok.

This was strictly enforced by the manager, lets call her madwoman. Next she went after our stroller. The baby stroller can NOT stay there, it can NOT be outside with our frozen bins and can NOT be in the locker room, so we have to ignore the kids in the water (thats not dangerous) and focus on moving all our stuff to various different places (each one has a COVID safe place it seems).

Ok, personal belongings and stroller in their random spots and out of your view (hide your purse and phone) and we’re finally ready to go into the hot tub. Nope! only 6 in the hot tub at a time, so mom dad and our six children— our bubble—can’t be in the hot tub together. Why not? COVID! Those are the rules!! Go figure. We can stay in the same hotel suite indoors but can NOT be in a hot tub together outdoors.

I guess the only redeeming factor was watching the lifeguard’s amused expression as “madwoman” was determined to enforce the incomprehensible rules, which they acknowledged to us seemed to make no sense. Madwoman furiously pointed to confused people in the pool, seeming agitated and hostile— clearly not the PR welcoming committee. So finally it came to the point that we just decided to leave. The fun was gone and we went back to our hotel. From the locker room talk seems many felt like we did.

Anyway, perhaps after COVID we will try again but I have a hunch COVID may have just brought out some very deep hostilities and power trips that may pre exist...

We visited Blue Mountain Village at the end of March Break and was hoping the pool would be open and it was! The pool is an indoor to outdoor pool and it was heated! If you are not staying in the village or have a ski pass you will be paying full price which is just over $100 for a family of 4 for 2 hours. They have fresh towel rentals for you for just $1 which was great since we did not come prepared. We had to leave our winter boots outside of the change rooms which you would have to be a bit trusting (bring flip flops) The change rooms were as expected and there were lockers to put your stuff in so don't forget your lock with key or dial lock. The indoor end of the pool has surrounding seats and a kids 10 and under splash pad water slide structure. The main indoor swimming is shallow and has a water drop bucket which our 9 year old loved. There is an indoor hot tub, but unfortunately the bubbles were not running so you are sitting in a warm tub with friends... You can swim through to the outdoor pool which is all heated. There is a little water basketball setup on one side, one simple waterslide and a large swimming area (all shallow). There is a fun separate 11ft deep heated pool with rope jump and diving board (quick swim test required). There is also a larger outdoor hot tub. Also has many outdoor seating as well. It was the perfect add on for our families' quick getaway. It could use a little updating aesthetically. The hot tubs could be a bit warmer and ideally working bubbles. Even though it seemed a little well played, we still really enjoyed it! Sorry no photos as we were all...

Great place for kids! I love how the indoor pool leads into the outdoor pool. Really loved the set up and variety of pools. Indoor, outdoor, hot tub, plunge pool, outdoor waterside, indoor splash pad for younger ones.

While the following cons are strong, my son was happy and loved every second. Most important point :) Hence the 3 stars.

This is why I gave 3 stars and not 5:

I know that it's inevitable that the pools will seem less clean given the nature of the place. However, the water didn't seem as clear/clean - it was slightly cloudy.

They offer lockers but no locks. You can buy a lock for $10 but it's a dollars tore lock. At least have people rent the lock or have some other system. I gave mine to a family when we left and just asked them to pay it forward. Noone needs to be paying $10 for a dollarstore lock. What a money grab.

Towels are $1 when I feel they should be free given the cost to come to the pool.

I get it, they have to monitor flow of traffic. But you have a 2 hour limit. I'm not even sure how they track this. For the price I paid, 2 hours is very short.

Unsolved Mystery: Given this time limit of 2 hours, I wonder if people pee in the pool so that they don't have to spend time going to the washroom?? We will never know. Maybe that's why the water seemed not so clean.

The women's changeroom was decent but could have used some cleaning up given the number of people coming through. It just didn't feel clean. The towel bin was flowing over. (Maybe someone was on their way to clean up).

Tips:

Bring your own towels and locks. We had slippers of our own...