Hillcrest Aquatic Centre — Attraction in Vancouver

This is a facility that would be pretty good for many, if not most, people, particularly children over the age of 8 or so. For us, it was a complete disaster literally from start to finish.

The entry into the parking lot, and the parking itself, is confusing. The stalls are small, and the parking is quite a ways from the pool main doors. We went on a night when it was very cold, with three small children and a stroller. So just getting access to the building was more difficult than, really, any other pool we go to.

The changing situation is a little weird. There is a men's change room, and a women's change room. There are no family change rooms. Then in the middle there are four banks of unisex changing cubicles set out in an H pattern (two banks across the middle), which I guess is great for those who have issues with getting changed. Two of the cubicles are large sized, and appropriate for families like ours to use. (All the others were too small.) The doors for those two rooms are about 50 feet from each other, so if both are in use, you have to pick one and wait rather than wait for the first of the two to come open. The way the place is set up, it isn't made obvious that these larger rooms are intended for families, so both coming and going, the rooms were in use by single people who could have used any of the other cubicles.

There appeared to be exactly four toilets for the entire pool/fitness area to use, one in each corner of the large changing area. Two of them had no TP, and doubled as changing rooms (sign said "washroom - change room" or something like that). If you have to go, you can get some great exercise running from one to the next to the next trying to find one that's both available and stocked.

Then there's the pool. There's a very small area that's very shallow, with some spouts shooting water across, and some on the floor shooting water up. It's suitable for babies and small toddlers, but it gets boring really fast. Beyond that there's the kiddie pool, with lots of water cannons and other things shooting water around, a basketball hoop, and a river ring. It's great, but with a shallow point of .8 meters, it's too deep for toddlers.

There are two lap pools, one long and one short, and there is a diving area with a very high diving board and a higher diving platform. It's great, but of no use for us.

One further caution: our oldest child (4 y.o.) is autistic, and like most autistic kids has sensory issues. The Hillcrest Park facility is very open and echo-ey throughout, and he melted down a couple of times because it was too overwhelming. As a parent of small children, I have to say that I found almost everything about the place to be creepy. I appreciate the challenges of designing something to be multi-use, but the end result here is that it is very much...

Came today for the first time for Parent and Tot swimming lessons, starting at 9 am. We traveled by bus so we had to first figure out which building was the aquatic one, where to park the stroller, and then the front desk was very confusing, we were told to go to opposite ends of the building until finally we were directed to the changerooms. The change rooms are a disaster for families. There are some single change rooms in the middle, but quite small for more than one, and all were occupied. No benches to just put a toddler on and get him changed, as I was already changed. Edit: I found the women's change room with plenty of benches. Showers very busy though.

Lessons were held in the middle of the lazy river!!! Old ladies and older kids kept bumping into our area and it was distracting, possibly dangerous. It was also hard to find the lesson area to begin with. It seemed like the pools were either too deep or too shallow for my fairly tall 2 yr old. The hot tub was the only area that we really appreciated as it had slowly increasing depth.

Back to changing and getting out, we left at 11:30, and it seems everyone else did too. We finally found the women's changeroom, but there are few showers (all of which were dangerously hot, my skin was burnt and I had to shield my child), and only one small bench. Next to find a changeroom as I couldn't change on that small bench (too small and too close to the entrance). Waiting for a changeroom took forever, and the locks don't seem to indicate that a room is in use (green= occupied, red=occupied). Edit: we were able to use an accessible change room the other day, which made things with a toddler easier.

I was frankly relieved when we finally left, and wish that I still lived close enough to Templeton where a family changeroom complete with...

As I must mentioned the lady who signed me in was extremely nice, the organization of the public swim session is not ideal. This was my first time back at this location with the Covid protocols and I did not feel safe. There were too many people in the leisure area and no social distancing. The lifeguards did nothing but stand around and chat with eachother. Wave pool had people standing around exercising their arms which meant I would have to stop myself from the force of the pool just so I didn't run into people. Not only that ,there were people who were lane swimming in the leisure pool expecting people and children who are supposed to be there to sit on the sides to stay out of their way. I was not aware that I was in the middle of the leisure pool where people were swimming back and forth and got hit in the face. This is completely unacceptable when their middle pool is strictly for lane swimming. There were new born babies and kids who couldn't even swim in that area. A few senior regulars even came up to my partner and told him to move as they were regulars and expected people to follow their rules they made. The lifeguards or management need to look into this. I did not pay admission to just sit at the end of the pool just so regulars could lane swim in the kiddie pool. I do not plan on returning to this location but hope...