Acord Ice Center — Attraction in West Valley City

The facility is very nice, clean, and bright, with friendly staff. There are a few nice options to engage in learning or improving your skating skills through Learn To Skate, Aspire, and/or Learn To Perform sessions at a reasonable price. That makes the Acord center more attractive to the public.

However, public skating sessions seems to be at the mercy of hockey planning and the admin people's mindset and attitude.

Here are the two biggest issues that I've observed and expressed concerns. No one seems to care to make changes.

PUBLIC SKATE HOURS: Public skate times are mostly scheduled in the morning at 10 am or 11:30-1:30 M-F, all year long. During these sessions, the rink is mostly empty except for the lucky few who can skate during the work/school hours. In the winter time, there is usually ONE evening session per week, on Tuesdays.

Repeated requests to add more evening sessions to accommodate the public have gone nowhere. No one seems to care to make changes. According to the hockey manager, it has been this way for the past 20 years so nothing is going to change.

ICE RESURFACING:

When there is a night public skate session, on Tuesdays, no one cares to remake the ice. There is a 15 minute time designated for ice resurfacing. However, it seems to be up to the MOOD of the staff if they feel like to do it. Repeated requests have gone to deaf ears. The staff of 4 or 5 people just sit in their place and talk to one other. There is a total disrespect for public skate sessions and participants.

However, it is a completely different treatment when it comes to hockey. They always resurface the ice before any hockey activities no matter what.

Yesterday (9/19/2023), I took the issue to the figure skate director (FSD) hoping it would be correct. Much to my dismay, the FSD rambled with a range of reasons for why the ice should not be cleaned. Here are a few of the FSD's absurd arguments:

FSD: "Do you want me to take away all my programs?" If I have to do the ice I will have to take all the programs away."

Me: "Why is that? and what programs?"

FSD: "It's because we don't have time."

Me: "There is that 15 minute between any LTS sessions and Public Skate."

FSD: (change direction) "The ice should not be made because people who are new or don't know how to skate will fall and hit their head on new or clean ice."

Me: "Oh, really? What about those people like me, who are taking LTS or Aspire and need to practice? They are the majority, if not 99% of the skaters there. Do they not matter?"

FSD: uh..., on and on and on and on the FSD went.

The staff there is definitely rubbing off on that attitude and mindset of disregarding the public views and opinions. Email and phone comments usually go unanswered or ignored.

I did not ask for any special accommodation. I ask them to follow the protocol of resurfacing the ice for each Tuesday night, right BEFORE the public skate session, especially after LTS/Aspire sessions. I understand there may be circumstances where things happen otherwise.

Comparing to the two other county rinks, Sports Complex and Murray, the Acord rink has the worst ice quality. Many parents expressed their frustration for the public skate hours. Most skaters expressed their dissatisfaction with the ice quality. Many skate learners are not happy with the lesson quality.

I recommend that the county Park and Services conduct a survey on customer satisfactions at the ice rinks to learn more about issues and improve the...

Our kids had their first ice skating lesson today and I was really disappointed with the lack of patience and professionalism of the staff, specifically a woman who appeared to be the director of the program. She shamed our kids for "not knowing how to skate" and blamed us for signing them up for the wrong class. The signup process itself was confusing because not all of the available class levels were published with the schedule, we didn't know there were lower levels available based on the flyer.

When this woman told us our kids were in the wrong class she also accused us of being late (which we weren't, in fact we were early) and shamed me for not giving my kids gloves (my bad on that I guess). Too much passive aggressiveness, I just wanted my kids to have a good experience learning how to ice skate, this is not the place for that.

I will say the instructors seemed to be really good, especially the instructor for the youngest class. She was really patient...

Overall, I loved the arena it is a super fun and relaxed environment. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed they couldn't bother to clean the bathrooms after a record attendance against the spud kings in the Jr hockey playoffs. We came for both days and on on day 2, the bathrooms we horrific, you could clearly tell they were not touched in between games/days.. I understand it is hard to get people to clean the bathrooms these days, but please just take this review to heart. Concessions were very slow, but other than that, it was a great arena and obviously great...