Hangar 18 Indoor Climbing Gym - Orange — Attraction in Orange

This bouldering gym should not be 4.8 stars, and I’m not sure what warrants it.

For background, I came in from out of town, and wanted to show friends bouldering. When you first walk in you are attacked by a stench of feet. Of course climbing gyms have some feet smell. I’ve been to several bouldering gyms in Portland, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Oahu. The feet smell is a different level of bad. And it’s because this place has such poor ventilation. It’s an old office space that is converted, but they ripped out the AC. Really hot and humid.

We made a mistake with our Groupon. I called ahead and thought we were all set up. We were only told we needed to come at the top of the hour, not that we needed to reserve it too. No worries, that’s our mistake; we could have figured that out. The problem was one of the ladies working on staff giving us such a bad attitude about it. I imagine others have made similar mistakes, so I understand the lack of patience, but she went too far. She just kept pointing at a sign and saying she won’t allow us to take advantage of them. We sorted it out by just buying a day pass on top of the Groupon.

One of the male staff members was nice and helped teach my friends how to fall.

The problems at about V4 and below often were ladders, just with worse holds. There were no thought provoking starts or cool crux moves. They felt uninteresting.

There are no outside sinks to wash your hands. Every minute we were there, there was a line to the gender neutral bathrooms in the front. The place was super crowded on a Sunday afternoon (we came at 2pm). I can’t imagine how it looks after work hours on the weekdays.

There is no rentable chalk, only purchasable chalk.

There are no showers or lotion.

There is only bouldering, and since the overall space is so small the slab problems were totally lacking. I think maybe they were painting a section that was slab; it was empty. The weights and campus board area is the minimum. No kilter, moon, or tension board. Also there is no spray wall.

This place is barebones y’all. In my experience, it’s the worst bouldering gym I’ve been to. I’m bummed I chose to take my friends here instead of Cliffs of Id or...

I’ve been going to this gym for 3 years now and this year has been the worst for climbing at Hangar 18 Orange.

Almost every weekday at around 6-7pm, there is a line that wraps around the building. I’ve waited 45mins to an hour just to get in. The gym closes at 10 on weekdays. I understand that the employees are people and they want to go home. Usually they’d begin cleaning up, turning off the fans, closing the doors and telling climbers “Last climbs” around 9:45, which is reasonable. Last time I was there, they started this process at 9:30 by turning off the fans and making it crazy hot in the gym. The gym already has bad airflow and it smells like feet. Really feels like the workers just want to kick people out as quickly as they can. Parking is not great either, due to the many people who go to this gym.

It’s just not fun and management has done nothing to combat these issues.

The routesetting is pretty neat, but having to wait to get into the gym and then having to wait to get onto the wall because of the amount of people is very disheartening and leave not only me, but so many other patrons bitter.

Also the ping pong table…I’m sorry but it’s so unnecessary lol. It takes up so much rug space when people could be stretching, and there are players who are so into the game that they’ll bump into people who are trying to stretch.

I hope the management at Hangar 18 can address these issues and make it more enjoyable for their patrons who come here for good climbs...

I started going to The Factory about 6 months ago. Since then, I am completely hooked on bouldering. The route setting here is A1; there's problems (routes) for every skill level, style and taste. Sections of the gym are changed once every couple weeks to keep the mind and body fresh and engaged. There is a competition style problem that changes on a weekly basis, the sending of which earns yourself a few fist bumps from the friends you're guaranteed to make by climbing here regularly. Bonuses include an inventory of rock climbing gear for sale at the front counter, a workout area with a good selection of free weights and machines, pool table, table tenis, hang boards and an epic new campus board! The atmosphere is positive and everyone I've met has been super cool. It's a great place to meet new people who share an interest in climbing, to introduce your friends to climbing and learn all the climbing lingo. Overall, this place...