Planet Ice Coventry — Local services in Coventry

Decided to visit for my 40th Birthday with the family. 20years ago I was a regular visitor every weekend so was keen to have celebrate the day with a trip down memory lane.

My god its changed and not for the better. Let's consider there was 4 of us paying over £15 each with rental.

Got to the desk with our pre booked ticket. Two ladies working, first says can you go to the other lady. Move towards her and she says "errr not right now, I'm having issues". Not the most polite way but ok. We stand around like lemons until the first lady calls us back to her.

Get in and go collect our skates. Two young girls on the rental desk. Both spending more time moaning about having a break then actually concentrating on busting the ridiculous queue down. Anyway she comes back with a size 10 and very clearly one of the buckles has broken off. So I give them straight back and for others because how can I tighten them. So I go to the side and ask for more and she asks me to wait while she serves the queue. I politely say I've queued for ages and now, I need to queue again because you gave me clearly broken skates. She then reluctantly takes them back into circulation. I'm thinking what's wrong with you, clearly they are broken.

Anyway, wife gets hers and says something is stabbing her foot inside. I check and the plastic tongue has broken and a sharp edge is sticking out. So I go and swap them and again, straight back onto the shelf.

My daughter who didn't tell us until half way through, the back of her skate was missing meaning to was sharp plastic and it cut the back of the foot. So again swapped over and you guessed it, back onto the shelf.

The skating itself was fine other than the fact after the first hour it became so over crowded it was pointless shuffling around because you couldn't actually get any speed up.

Go to put my skates back and the same two incompetent girls are still there. Now the queue was shorter because we left early to avoid the chaos to get skates. There were 5 people in front of me. 3 of the 5 were handed someone else's trainers. One lady was stood for a good 10mins with no shoes because they've clearly messed up which rack they got her skates from. The lady didn't speak great English and the staff were getting short with her because she couldn't describe her trainers or have a picture to show them. Hold on a minute, why are you getting arsy with her? It's your incompetent ability that's caused all this mess.

Anyway, as a trip down memory lane, it wasn't ideal. The skating was fun eventually. Ice was fine and the atmosphere was good inside.

But your staff need to actually pay attention and actually do their job effectively instead of moving like sloths because they cant be arsed, your rental skates are horrendous. Its completely unacceptable to charge so much and provide such a rubbish service.

Such a shame because I was really hoping for a better experience and to be honest, you ruined it.

Visited on 9th December afternoon...

I took figure skating lessons here for a bit over a year. The staff is wonderful and the teachers are amazing and make every lesson fun. The rink itself could really do with some improvement though as the floor around the rink is really dank for the lack of a better word and the lack of changing rooms or an area to warm up or stretch makes it a bit annoying to work out there. One of my biggest complaints has to be the DJ though. If you're a regular and you have to listen to the SAME songs EVERY week at some point it just is infuriating. On top of that the guy does not understand what copyright free means because he refuses to play songs that are legally available and rather sticks to the SAME FREAKING MUSIC. He needs to learn how to do his job. Please hire someone else. Lessons during public sessions can be a nightmare as there is no area designated to the lessons and having people who can't skate yet everywhere on the ice instead of just the barrier thanks to the safety hazards that are penguins plus ice hockey chavs who are all over the place at high speeds without looking where they are going makes practicing advanced moves not only difficult but dangerous to you and everyone else. On top of that under those conditions it is next to impossible to train things the other way around which is why after learning most of the single jumps I still struggle a bit to do 3 turns three left way around. Ticket prices are fair but it's sad that the year pass only makes sense of you go at least 3 times a week (at the time of writing this review). However with the ice card the pricing is nothing to complain about. Despite its flaws I had a great time at this ice rink mostly thanks to the...

We were unaware we had to book online, there is no method of payment at the counter so had to stand at the front desk and do it all online. Paid for socks and gloves for the kids and the socks were ment to be thermal but we're cheap thin socks from the market. Then we go the skates counter to get our skates. I asked for a size 10 but they had none so had to have the next size up. Needless to say, they were to big and I was very uncomfortable. I will point out I can't skate and this made it alot more difficult. Never got told I'd have to rent a penguin support for my daughter as I assumed they would have them around the edge of the rink. £7 to have it for 30mins and when we got it on the ice it just stuck. Not sure what was wrong with it but it just didn't seem to move or do the job. Me and my daughter were on the ice for 5mins before I got told by 1 of the staff I had to get off the ice because I had a backpack for my daughter on my back. There was no talking or reasoning, i just got told to get off the ice. As it was my daughter's 1st time I chose to ignore them and carry on to try and give her the best experience. After about 20mins my niece (I went with my brother in-law and niece) was crying as the skates she had on were rubbing so bad on her foot it peeled her skin away. Needless to say we called it short and left. Staff are rude, not helpful, skates are terrible, Tacky socks. Not going back there again £70...