Rinconada Pool — Attraction in Palo Alto

Long time community resource, now under private management. Like many community pools, this is primarily used by Palo Alto residents, but is open to all (residents get a modest discount for some, but not all usage).

This is also the largest site for one of the bigger age group competitive swim clubs, Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics, who use the 25 yard pool year round for practices for enrolled athletes from 5-6 year olds, all the way to college swimmers on break, and the occasional professional swimmer.

The pool is nestled in Rinconada Park, a sparsely developed space in the heard of residential Palo Alto. Consisting mostly of open space, tennis courts, a newly built fire station, and the local public elementary school, this is always a pleasant area top stop by.

There is also a substantial community center and library on either side of the park, so anyone that lives locally is likely to visit this location for a variety of purposes, and having the pool here just gives you another reason to treat yourself to a...

The front desk staff is great. Lifeguards rotate often to make sure you are safe. The kid pool is shallow with a fun slide. It is unfortunate they don't support emerging swimmers in the open lane in the lap pool. I gave my daughter some of the flippers (kid sized 11/12 for a 7 year old) and a kick board to strengthen her kick. A lifeguard informed us we needed to take a swim test in the deep end of the pool in order to use the supports. Make it make sense, lifeguard? If my daughter could pass the swim test in the deep of the pool, we wouldn't need tiny flippers and a mom supporting her doing half laps in the shallower open-swim lane. But no, you made us take the supports back and promptly walked away a now more unskilled swimmer in the pool. And ultimately denied us the opportunity to progress my daughters skills (for what another whole ten minutes) in a public, community pool we paid to be at. Why? Not very...

Very disappointed by the customer service. The website clearly says the summer schedule has lap swim until 6pm. When we arrived at 5, the manager told me the pool always closes at 5pm. When I showed him the website (screenshot below) he said it was a mistake. Then he went into the office and tried to show me that the website said 5pm. A lifeguard then asked what was going on and when I explained the website said the pool was open to 6pm, she said it must be a mistake. We are now ten minutes in and no one has apologized. Instead the manager kept trying to refresh the website to show me I was wrong and the young lifeguard said I should have called to verify pool hours. Who calls to verify when the website is crystal clear? Oy vey. I was excited to hear that Team / Tim Sheeper had taken over running the pool from Palo Alto. This was my first time coming to lap swim and now I’m...