Oxygen Acton — Attraction in London

Organised my daughter’s birthday party over the weekend and we were very disappointed by the absence of our party host, lack of organisation and no communication whatsoever by her. This was an experience like none other we have experienced over the years of booking venues for birthday parties (across different continents) for our kids. Overall, we’ve likely interacted with her for about 5 minutes in total during our session in the trampoline park and in the party room.

When the children were brought into the party room after trampoline play, we noticed that the party tables and chairs were not properly cleaned from the previous party, which we had to clean. The birthday girl was not provided her gluten free pizza (food allergies) with the guest food and this arrived about 25 minutes later (which was the only thing she could eat at the venue as we could not speak to the hosting team to obtain allergen information for the rest of the food served). There was no drink in the room, no guidance on why there were more pizzas on the delivery trolley (we thought these were for another party and accidentally left in our room), we spent 10 minutes waiting outside the staff room for a water jug, 15 minutes looking for someone to bring us slushies, another 15 to find our birthday cake that was kept in food storage as it was nearly time to vacate the party room, then went looking for someone to bring the ice cream and found our host in a room not far from ours was engaged in conversation with the rest of the hosting team oblivious to us constantly looking for someone to bring things to the room or to tell us how the service is supposed to be organised. She informed me that she serves ice cream when we are ready to leave and asked us if we were ready to leave the party room. Shortly after, we were informed by another member of the hosting team that we had to vacate the room in 5 minutes. We finally got our ice creams and were about to leave when I remembered that the children were supposed to receive vouchers to the venue. Found an envelope with our name written on it resting on the window sill in the room (along with an envelope for another family’s party), took a peek and realised those were our vouchers and took the envelope with us to give to the children. Throughout the entire session, she did not wish the birthday girl, ask at any time if we needed anything, inform us of when everything would be served in the room and how to contact her if we need anything, and also didn’t see us out. We only had the jug of water for drink and were not served the squash even though this was included in the birthday package.

We are grateful to some other members of the hosting team who cheerfully served us when we went looking for her, and also cheerfully waved the children goodbye when we left the venue. All through our party time, I could see the other hosts engage in conversation with their party group children, leading them to the wash rooms, telling them what was to come, etc. and was hopeful that our host would join us soon so we could organise ourselves. Unfortunately, that never happened.

My husband has provided this feedback to...

It is a shame when such a lovely place hires an inexperienced Manager with no customer service skills and a very unprofessional attitude. It seems Oxygen Acton's new approach is to increase short term gains on the expense of their safety measures and regular customers satisfaction.

We have been going regularly to Oxygen Acton for the past two years and even had our son's birthday there in October. We were always surrounded by friendly staff and continiously had a swift experience, whether it was at the greeting point (even at peak times), on the trampolines, at the cafeteria and organizing my son's birthday party. Until last night when we met Gabie.

At the door we were asked to pay for all 3 adults (including my 80 years old father) accompanying my 4.5 years old son. David, the guy that greeted us said that the cafeteria is booked for a private event (which was not the case - only the lounge area was booked - noting that the park including the cafeteria were almost empty). He added that these are his new manager's instructions and offered us to speak to her.

And there was our surprise, Gabie, a young manager, who either is that unprofessional / inexperienced or I would hope to think she had a very bad day. Her approach was aggressive, dismissive and inappropriate.

She had no sense of time respect (we were held back for almost 20 min and my son only was able to jump for 25 min from the 60 min we paid for). We were not offered a refund (as we booked my son's ticket online) but we had to pay an extra adult ticket for her to let him in.

She spoke in a disrespectful and provocative manner which ruined our experience. She informed us that previous staff were fired for not implementing the park Policy which she is here to force. She said that her driver was health and safety (which clearly was not, asking an 80 years old to pay and go on a trampoline). She added that we have to pay for at least an adult to go into the park with my son to take care of him as there are no safety measures in place for his age. (Noting that we always accompany our son regardless on the trampolines to ensure his safety, we were never asked to pay. The only time I read about a paying adult was when I was booking my son's birthday and I was then told that management are changing their policy and this is no longer applicable). She continuously refered to her power as a manager dismissing what I was saying. She had no sense of respect for a customer and kept acting arrogantly. She does not stand corrected, even when I was pointing out that she was giving us an extra wristband when we already had one. Even when we paid for an extra adult, she still held us back arguing. I clearly had to state, that I did not come to the park to argue with her but rather to have the experience we always had. She initially refused to provide her manager's contacts to file a complaint claiming she is the ultimate person to speak to and offered me to send her an email with my concerns. When challenged she eventually gave me an email and mockingly said: "what are you going to say, I am rude!"

Being rude is one thing, but acting inappropriately is...

I've given it two stars instead of one because we've had better experiences in the past here, particularly the toddler sessions. Today we came on the weekend with a 3 yo ams 6yo. We booked 1 hour jump for the 3 yo and 1 hr jump followed by 30 min climb for the 6yo. We got there before our allocated slot at 2pm but there was no where to park nearby. There are 2 blue badge spaces however one is consistently blocked by other cars wrongly parked, something I told the staff about on my last visit and it was again an issue today. Therefore despite having a blue badge we had to park in the overflows furthest space. By the time parking was done it was 5 past 2. We did the waivers in advance to save time, we waited for our wrist bands but the doors to the bouncing area were closed. I asked a member of staff how we get in and she said you wait 20 minutes. I told her we booked 2pm and she said you can go in at 2.30, which was fine with us. However 25 mins into our play session the announcement told us our session was over according to our colours, thereby we were either given the wrong colour wrist bands or should have been let in at 5 past 2 when we were trying to get in. My kids were excited to do the big jump but on the 3 occassipns they tried to do so the secrion was closed of for various parties. My toddler needed to pee and my husband took him into the male toilet. There was only one stall with a long wait. They waited over 10 mins and the toilet was covered in pee and not clean at all. My 6 yo then went to climb, we were told only climbers no adult to go with him so we waited outside. Afterwards several other children joined and all of them were allowed their adult inside the climbing space with them, supporting them and getting the stagfs attention when required. There was a change of staff and a male came to take over the role of one of the climbing staff. He spent the majority of the time playing with a ball, not looking at the children while one female member of staff was busy attending to all the climbers, stopping people walking in without booking and answering questions. This meant my son did a lot of waiting around between climbs before being told to get off 5 mins before the end of his climb, this wasted at the very least a third of the climb time we booked. Another issue we experienced was that while bouncing a child upstairs was throwing crisps down which landed on my son several times while climbing. Aside from the gact the rule of no food wasnt insisted on, it's not directly the fault of Oxygen however I did finally find a member of staff to alert as it was not stopping. Despite this ten minutes later this wa still happening. I like the place, my sons enjoy it but honestly today was not the best experience. It was super busy, hardly any staff and the staff there were busy talking amongst themselves and not really available. To note also a lot of the lockers were not working my husband wasted 10 mins trying to secure his belongings at the start. I was very disappointed with...