East Lake Family YMCA — Attraction in Atlanta

I think 2 stars is generous based on a few encounters I’ve had since joining the YMCA over a year ago, but this will be a very honest and hopefully helpful review to help them improve:

I’ll start with the positive; My son played on the basketball team and took swimming lessons. The basketball league is a bit unorganized, but I believe that is due to low staffing. The coaches are all parents of the Y so you won’t get a real experience as far as learning skills goes unless your coach happened to play basketball maybe. I will say that Howard Reed, the Regional Sports Director, went out of his way to accommodate teams and he really does care about the kids. My son’s swim instructor, Jason, was the best. My son has a legit fear of water and Jason was extremely patient and attentive & even helped my son overcome his fear of water. If you take swim lessons, I absolutely recommend Jason. He also needs a raise :)

The facility itself is nice with newer equipment.

Onto the not so good; The basketball court is always packed with the students and older kids. If you’re looking for a place for your little ones to just shoot some hoops this may not be the place to go. The bigger kids take over and leave trash everywhere which caused insect problems.

The front desk staff have no customer service skills. They talk to each other half the time, leave you hanging to have a conversation while you just wait at the desk to be serviced, don’t have an answer for you half the time, give you wrong information, and are straight up rude for no reason. Lebron has been nice to my family though. Other than that, I did not have a good experience at all with the front desk staff. They really need to be trained on how to treat paying customers.

One incident happened where my son was at his swimming lesson and we had to evacuate due to a thunderstorm. All of the family rooms were taken so I brought my son with me in the women’s room (he was 6 at the time). One YMCA member threw a fit that he was in there, told me he needs to be in the family room, and ripped the shower curtain open while my son was in the shower with no clothes at all on. As a parent I’m sure you can understand this next part but I went straight to cussing her out. The staff member that came to deescalate the situation told me that I needed to leave instead of the other member. I told her off too and haven’t seen her since. They did an awful job at helping the situation.

All of this caused us to no longer feel comfortable going to this location so we went to cancel our membership last month. The lady at the front desk told me she would take care of it, didn’t ask me to sign any paperwork or anything just said she would take care of it. We got charged again the following month. When I went in to explain what happened they told me there was nothing I could do to get a refund. I’m not sure if my account is actually cancelled or not yet but we’ll see on the 22nd when the payment usually comes out.

Since we still until the 22nd to use the membership, I brought my son and his cousins to use the pool over the weekend. The lady at the front desk, Demetria I think, gave us a bit of a hard time about our guests, two 12 year olds. She kept reiterating we could only have 2 guests and we were confused what the hostility was about because that’s exactly how many guests we had but ok… like I said they are not the kindest people. Anyway I left my Nike Metcons in the locker. I called maybe 20 minutes after we left when I realized and asked her if she could put my name on them and I’ll pick them up the following day. She had the worst attitude about it and basically said she can only put it in lost and found and if it’s there then it’s there and if it’s not then it’s not. I’m sure you can guess by the time I came to pick them up today they were gone. Something that could have easily been avoided.

All of this to say, I think the facility can be great with a few adjustments and maybe some new staff. I will not be signing back up until then....

The staff is pretty friendly for the most part. Ebony, that works in the outdoor pool area was very nice and respectful. Great customer service from her. I wasn't happy that all of a sudden my child wasn't allowed to be in the shallow area of the pool as he had been without an adult being in with him. Ebony informed us that these have always been the rules even if they were not previously enforced. I requested to speak with management to understand the rules fully as we had just left the indoor pool.

My child nor the other children were told they could not be in the water without an adult in the indoor pool. I wasn't able to get a phone number for management, but I sent an email and she promptly called me back. As soon as I answered I could hardly say hello and thank her for calling so promptly. Raquel, very unprofessionally and rudely proceeded to state her name and the rules. I had to stop her and remind her that the same respect I gave her with a friendly acknowledgement, I should also receive. Her response was she was busy with someone else. I told her that this is not an excuse to be rude and I did not call her, she called me.

I wasn't rude in my email I just wanted to understand the rules. Her tone changed to a more calm tone, but we must work on customer service. We were actually given her information by a different employee to get swim lessons for my children. Maybe she was having a bad day but her staff Ebony and the other lifeguards were...

My son spent a super 4 weeks at the Eastlake branch's summer camp. He really enjoyed the activities such as crafts daily swimming. The camper to counselor ratio is terrific. It was always easy to find a counselor to speak to or to direct you to anything. I like the ease of check-in and check-out was really terrific. We did have one issue there with a student who my son felt was bullying him. After speaking with the director and sharing a problem, she was very attentive compassionate and responsive. The problem was resolved and my son was able to continue to enjoy a great Camp experience there. I really need to give a shout out Nyebah, the camp director. She was always very present visible accessible professional and ran the camp with excellence. I highly recommend the camp I think it's a great place for kids to learn to get along with people from various racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds in a supportive environment which is an important value in my family. My seven-year-old son made great friends there and he's looking forward to returning again. Thank you...