St. Cloud Area Family YMCA — Attraction in St. Cloud

If I could leave zero stars I would. I was so excited to join/visit the YMCA because it was newly renovated and supposed to be awesome! We have a 2.5 year old son and were excited for him to get to swim in an indoor pool. However, we were sorely disappointed. When we entered the building, not a single person greeted us, despite several workers standing at the counter. I told them that we have never been here before and we weren't sure of the process. He handed me a form and said "fill this out", so I began to fill out the form. All the while my son was anxious and wanted to go swimming. I filled out the form and handed it back to the, rude young gentleman. He said "$15". I said, actually, we were interested in a membership. He sighed heavily, and at this point, I should have just said forget everything. He came back to me and said, now you need to fill out this form. So, I filled out the form. He said, "Do you have a card?" I gave him my credit card and then he told me it would be about $70 bucks. I asked him what would happen if my health insurance offers a discount, he said, "Oh, I already ran your card". He brought me a brochure and said, if you have any of these insurances, we partner with them and we waive the initial fee, which would mean I would have saved $60. Well, I did have one of those insurances. So I told him and he said I would have to come back next week to talk to Jacob because he didn't know how to process a reversal. No apology. My problem with all of this is that, if he simply asked me what I was there fore and whether or not I had insurance, all of this could have been avoided. All he did was sigh the whole time and treated me like I was such an annoyance to him. Nobody even thanked us for our membership or anything. Finally, we were able to go swim! However, nobody showed us where anything was, so we wandered the halls until we could find the family locker room. It was FILTHY. Like disgusting. I am no germaphobe, but it was horrid. The entire floors were soaked with water. There were bigger family changing rooms with no hooks or anything, so where were we supposed to put our clothes, all over the wet floor??? Then the floor was not only soaking wet, but it was COMPLETELY COVERED in hair! It was so filthy. We also didn't have towels, so I trotted back to the desk to ask them if they had any. They did for 75 cents a piece. Another thing that they could have offered me or told me about right away to save the time. Anyway, we finally went into the pool and my son had a lot of fun. However, there were a lot of 10-12 year old children that were just being brats. The lifeguards would blow the whistle at them and eventually told them to leave, however, these kids didn't listen and so the young and shy lifeguards just got ran over by these kids. They didn't even do anything about it. I was so disappointed. Nobody even thanked us when we left, we said "thank you" and there was silence. I would be extremely horrified if I was the owner or responsible party for this team of incompetent, rude people. Then I called back for a refund and they told me that they wouldn't be giving me a refund and if I want to cancel my membership, they will still charge me for the next month. I am BEYOND right now. I will...

The YMCA is a community gym, with that in mind lets proceed with this review. I began going to this YMCA a year ago, and the service was far from acceptable. How might you ask? The staff that goes to this facility do not complete their duties, and one of those assigned duties in ensuring the weight room is not completely destroyed. I came in on a daily basis to the weight room having EVERY SINGLE plate weight on the floor, no joke. I thought okay, this can't continue daily right? WRONG! There are several teams that use that tiny weight room to work out, constantly leaving their weights on the floor and really just not caring about anything but themselves. This means when you go here, you will constantly pick up weights that others had left behind. I had addressed the issue on several occasions with the staff and no improvement was seen at all. Essentially asking these 'workers' for a lack of a better term is wasting your breath. Do yourself a favor and avoid them, and this establishment. To add insult to injury, if you go on your own and tell members that they are breaking rules in that weight room, be prepared for a scene. About a month ago I encountered a member slamming 65 lb dumbbells from about waist height onto a concrete floor. I tried to logically explain to this member they are breaking the rules (which are posted in BOLD PRINT ON THE WALL ) and their response was, its no big deal. This member then proceeded to go downstairs and TELL on me for correcting them (enforcing the YMCAs own rules.) I was then told because I am of white origin I can't tell anyone who isn't white they are breaking the rules because its 'racially motivated'...Yes, we live in a world (specifically the YMCA) where whites will be accused of being racist in all situations because race baiting is clearly acceptable. These words were spoken by the last person I expected, the CEO of the YMCA in the area of St Cloud. God forbid if anyone calls anyone out for breaking rules, because you will be accused of being racist....I can't believe that I even have to type these words into this review, its absolutely idiotic that this type of behavior is allowed. I would like to add one other thing to this above situation. Right before I spoke to that member, I had told the staff someone was slamming weights. They laughed and told me to "talk to him? Please do!" right before I went up there to address it. The staff are completely lazy, and their management is run by a CLEARLY intelligent CEO who uses race baiting against its members. I never thought a gym would punish another member for doing the right thing, but then again this is the St Cloud YMCA.

One other thing, this gym is a community gym so I didn't have high standards AT ALL, but my god the level of idiocy here is astounding. Go ANYWHERE but this gym, there are much better gyms in St Cloud where you wont have to deal...

I am utterly disappointed in the St Cloud YMCA supervised visitation program, and frankly scared for other people's children who have to utalize these services. I don't even know where to begin... My son and his most basic needs (being 2 and unable to care for himself) have been neglected by his father under the YMCA's supervision, and the YMCA condones the neglect! It's been over a year the YMCA has been condoning this neglect. I have documents and recorded phone calls with Sara Salas-Ramirez and Greg Gack to prove this as well. As a mother I have not taken this lightly and voiced my concerns hundreds of times and have been written off by Sara every single time. In light of recent unacceptable negligent events at the fault of the YMCA supervising staff we have been unjustly terminated from the supervised visits and they made a slew of lies about what actually happened and falsely painted me as the one to blame. Slander is illegal. Sara didn't even decide to terminate visits until half way through our phone call when I started saying things she didn't like, and what I was saying is why she would condone neglect and not put a stop to it since she is the director! She even admitted, on recording nonetheless, she had training but could not tell me what abuse or neglect looks like for her to report it to CPS because she doesn't know. PARENTS: I am not the only one who has had a terrifing experience due to the untrained and unqualified staff in the YMCA's social services department. For you're children's safety and well being, find another facility for supervised visits. After all you need the services for the child's safety, this isn't the place. I tried speaking to Greg Gack, he is apparently Sara Ramirez boss. He seemed very bored and disinterested while I was voicing my concerns about the incident that happened. We had scheduled a meeting to resolve the issues, with which he cancelled same day without any explanation and than refused to speak with me on the phone further about it. And when I asked if I could speak to his boss or the YMCA board or someone that could actually help me he said "I am the boss" and hung up on me. On top of it all, the front desk staff are very unprofessional and I see a lot of bad reviews regarding this, not surprising! Jessica Stevens, a front desk girl, was bad mouthing me and calling me names and swearing RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME AT THE DESK! In front of everyone.

If a higher up sees this review, Please contact me!!! I haven't been able to get through to anyone, as soon as I say my name whenever they ask who is calling, and than I'm told "they're not going to speak to you", when I could hear Sara, Greg, and Jacob in the background.

They might have a brand new facility but this is the most unsafe and untrustworthy place for...