Kingsport Aquatic Center — Attraction in Kingsport

We went yesterday for the first time. It's a small park but we had a great time. My only couple negatives as follows. While at the kiddie area, there's one smaller slide (dual slide so two can actually go down beside each other) and my son has autism and I asked the life guard if I could go down, I was further away and I didn't go into detail and tell her the reason but it was because my son has autism and he was scared so I wanted to show him it isn't scary. Fast forward an hour later and a lady is taking her child down the slide to show her it's okay and no one said anything about this but when I asked I was told no.

This lady may have been 120lbs and I'm around 140. This being said, I don't think the weight was the issue. My son was a little older then her little one but that's beside the point really. My son did end up going down the slide eventually without me so I'm not too upset about this.

We also made a trip to the concession stand 3x and had to ask the lady for part of our order twice. The first time she forgot our drink with the combo (not a big deal) and the 2nd time it was sauce for nuggets. I also didn't know the cost of nuggets and a drink alone would be the same cost as the combo but I will say that the food cost is actually reasonable and that time she almost forgot the drink again but she remembered. Maybe she was new but she was certainly polite and friendly so that's a thumbs up. I think most everyone here was really friendly but a few of the younger life guards appeared meh.

The chicken salad sandwich is really good, better then my son's nuggets I tried a bite of. Those were already prepared too so seems like all the food comes already prepared.

Also a wait for the restroom and the indoor pool was closed but most of the above complaints are minor annoyances. It would be nice to see an expansion here.

While my son played at the kiddie pool I was able to lounge on the chairs while watching him and there was plenty of seating and a lot of shade. I was pleasantly surprised they don't charge for lockers or floatation devices. There isn't much for adults to enjoy besides the lazy river (love), a regular outdoor pool and they have two larger slides but it appears the green one seems to be a favorite amongst the kids I saw. For the cost it was definitely worth it..

We stayed hours and my son didn't want to leave. I felt like he'd get bored easily because there's honestly not much at the kiddie area besides one dual water slide and some sprinklers and a splash gun that didn't work well. There's also a splash bucket and he liked the water being splashed on his head lol. I would definitely love to see an expansion in the kids area because there was sooo many kids there and they were just really packed waiting to go down the little slide. We had a small water park when I was little but the kiddie area was still a lot bigger. They had a lot more slides to enjoy in the kiddie section. This kiddie section is just a bit small for as many kids who were at the park but besides that it's a nice little park and we...

Good points--it's got nice pools and other facilities, it's clean, and of course everything is fairly new.

Bad points:

1. No outdoor pool. Especially for the kids and those who just want to splash around in the water and not really swim. The lazy river is not a substitute.

2. More proactive policing of the lap lanes. Too many times the lifeguards just sit there as kids jump into the lap lanes. The easiest solution for this is to simply have an outdoor pool for the kids, and keep the two indoor pools for lap swimmers and for competitions. This is also why I think they should have kept the old Legion Pool open, as a 'just kids' pool.

3. In addition to this, there should be a policy where if more than two swimmers have to be in the lap lanes, no backstrokes or any other strokes should be allowed where one can't see where one is going. I have experienced this problem here and at other pools, some man or woman gets into the same lap lane and does a backstroke and can't see where they're going and crashes into you routinely.

4. While the warm pool water is acceptable, the large pool water is far too cold. I can swim more than 2 hours in the warm pool (and in other pools) but often I have to exit prematurely from the large pool just because I'm freezing.

5. The hours are not convenient. Too-often the pool closes early, even on holidays where'd you'd think it would be/should be open longer (July 4th, Labor Day, etc). Too-often the pools are closed for swim meets and competitions. It seems the pool neglects people who use it to maintain a healthy lifestyle and who want to workout every day in order to serve school swim teams or whatnot.

And forget about using it for training for a triathlon, where you need the daylight hours to put in runs and/or bike rides (you can swim safely at night, after all, and need to save the daylight for bike rides or runs). The pool closes at 6 pm on weekends! I can't for the life of me see why they couldn't close early on Wednesdays and Fridays for their parties and leave weekend nights open to 10 pm. The pool used to be open until 10 pm on weeknights but now closes at 9 (and really, they chase you out 10 minutes before closing, so it's really only open to 8:50).

As I said, you can't rely on this as an reliable...

I was so excited to finally get the time to give the Aquatic Center a try. Its great location with a view of the Appalachian Mountains in the background. I was startled from the beginning when I was told there is a mandatory bag check in which my water was confiscated and thrown out. This is very unnecessary for a public facility. I understand not letting people in with alcoholic beverages or a 12 pack of soda, but some people have medical conditions requiring certain food and drink that may not be served in the concession area or that they can not afford to purchase from there. I think this policy is not very inclusive and quite discriminatory towards those with medical needs or the inability to pay for food from the concession area. The ticket price was half off when I visited and cost $5. There was also very ample seating as school has started back and I went during the week. There is no where to actually swim outside. There is a 3 ft lazy river, a 3ft section to stand in, a 3 ft section that the slides dump off in and a very shallow kids area. You are not allowed to bring in outside floats or noodles as well. My friend and I (we are in our 30s) were constantly getting fussed at by life guards for everything from standing up in the lazy river bc there was a family of slow moving floats in front of us and we were trying to not run in to them to bringing our pool noodles with us, although no one said anything at the door while they were confiscating my water. The concession area is nice and the attendants there were friendly. They have offerings like corn dogs and nachos to muffins and candy bars. The bathrooms were as expected for a pool. I could see this being an ok place to take a kid if you have no expectations of swimming, but as a childless adult who likes to swim, I won’t be returning. I can’t...