Gem City Skate — Local services in Millcreek Township

Absolutely terrible. I would not recommend going here to my worst enemy.

First, let's start with the physical building. The exterior is poorly lit and overall dirty. From the small, unsafe parking lot to the unwelcoming abandoned warehouse-esque building, you'll find yourself hesitant to even go further. If you're brave enough to even enter the first room, you'll immediately notice that the design, carpet, stench, signs, etc haven't been updated since the early 1990's. Carpeted walls with intentional vomit-designs and cyan blue haven't been "in" since 1987. Once you enter the main skating area, it really does compliment the outside. That being unsafe, crammed, unwelcoming... the list goes on and on. The snack bar and dining area is incredibly tiny and always a hassle to navigate, and once you do the bathrooms are absolutely horrendous. They smell like porta-johns and look like them, too. There aren't doors to the bathrooms themselves, and on top of that none of the stalls close correctly.

The snack bar is extremely limited in their selection. They have one person working it, therefor it takes forever to get your items and wait in line. In addition they charge for water, despite the fact that by law water is free within private property which has a licence to and actively sells other food and drink items. The owner and snack bar attendee will tell you the charge is "For the cup," however if you have your own container you're given a hard time and likely will not get any water.

The music selection is extremely limited, meaning that they mostly only play modern rap. Therefor, if you are a human being over the age of twenty five, you're already out to a rocky start. The songs that they don't play are always one of the top tens, and they only take suggestions from the same group of songs. It is not out of the ordinary for the D.J. to play the same songs three or even four times. On top of that, still, about twelve minutes into the beginning of a skate session, they'll hang a lovely little "NO MORE SONG SUGGESTIONS" sign. Perhaps they would be able to allow for more suggestions, and thus for more people to enjoy themselves if they didn't play the same songs three or four times.

The actual skating area itself is always way too crowded, and there are people who skate too fast and quickly whip around regular skaters who are going at normal speeds, causing them to lose their orientation and in certain instances fall and even injure themselves. This happened to a friend of mine who had attended my birthday party I had held almost a week prior to my writing this review. While we were in attendance, a female approached another attendee of my party and then continued to use profane language and slurs towards them out of nowhere, for no reason. When I took it upon myself to tell the skate attendee, they looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language, then proceeded to ignore me. I then went to the D.J, who then directed me to somebody else. By this time, after my lack of entertainment for this place, I was not surprised by this buck-passing sand-bagging behavior. I then approached who I was told to and made them aware of the situation. They seemed jaded by my telling them this, and then told me there was nothing he could do. Over the course of the night, this situation escalated to the point where the girl and her friend group kept antagonizing mine, and threatened to start a fight with us, and making homophobic remarks. Again, we made it aware that this was happening, which only led to the D.J. threatening to kick us out.

Eventually we then left, only to have the same group of people to try and start a fight in the parking lot prior to us leaving.

I would not recommend that anybody goes here. It is always extremely unpleasant...

We have had probably over 50 parties here over the years for the children in our families for birthdays. My daughter really wanted to have a party here for her 12th birthday, so I made it happen. I paid $275 for her party. Beginning, seemed to be okay, they let us in promptly at 2pm, guided us to the party room. I’ll start here. The party room has an air conditioner that 100% has mold in it. Multiple people in our party were affected by it. Very musty and smelled horrible. They chose to have two parties at the same exact time. So when asked what time I wanted my pizza that I paid for, I told her by 3pm please as we had to be out of the party room by 350pm or we are subject to a $300 fine. She then says “oh, it’s going to have to be later than 3pm, the other party already said 3pm. Mind you, this party was in the high up tables by the bathroom. They didn’t have a time limit. We did. I asked if we could have some pitchers of water for the guests as they were going to be skating for over an hour before eating and we aren’t allowed to bring in ANY beverages of our own. So I ask the female.. it’s free, right? She says yes.

Well that water quickly went with 20 kids and guests that came along with them. So I walk up, with. REUSABLE PITCHER, and ask for WATER. You know, the stuff that’s free, out of the sink? And the man at the counter tells me “first pitcher of water is free, after that you have to pay, it’ll be $4”. I instantly thought it was a joke, and said “it’s water, you’re kidding right?” He very rudely, said, no I’m not kidding, first pitcher is free… so I took my happy a** with my pitcher of ice and filled it up in the bathroom sink. After paying almost $300 for a party, I had to PAY FOR FREE WATER. I didn’t ask for more cups, no supplies were used. Just tap water.

Then the woman told me, our pizzas would be ready at the ABSOLUTE latest, 315, but would likely be ready a few minutes after 3. Pizzas didn’t arrive until after 320, giving us only 30 min for over 35 people to eat, eat dessert and sing happy birthday..

So we clean up and go out to the floor area where they took down ALL the tables. Besides one.. so my family puts their things on it and the leftover food. Then we’re asked to take it all off because they had someone else coming for a party… fine, whatever. I get it, but it would have been nice if that was communicated prior, and it wasn’t. THEN my ONE YEAR OLD niece who is new to walking is walking along the table and touching a chair and the man comes over to my sister and asks her to move the baby away from the table because it’s another parties space.. you’ve GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. So children for ages at Evan’s, PI skate and now here, bash into one another on the reg, you take away all the tables so everyone that comes is packed in there like sardines, personal space is non existent in this environment. However my again, ONE YEAR OLD NIECE touching a mf chair is an issue? Because a party is coming in? Mind you… this table is in the PUBLIC area. Not the party room.

$275. The staff was rude. Unprofessional. Such a shame. We have 14 kids in our family and this place was a staple for us. So many birthday parties, open skates etc, since it was Evan’s. You won’t get our families business again.

I’ve seen the replies for these reviews too. Shame to respond so negatively to a bad review. Shows immaturity. A new business should learn from constructive criticism. If I could rate this place a...

I used to be a regular in my teens for years when this was Evans. A group of us went last night for something different to do for my birthday. It's been 26 years since I've been skating. Took a little getting used to but we had a great time. We will, without a doubt, go again. The nostalgia was great and it was every bit of fun as it used to be. I do wish it was more than 2 hours on a Saturday night. Back in the day it was 5 to midnight. I did fall once but not because of the floor, due to my own imbalance. I did not see numerous people falling because of the floor. It was all due to their own balance. The skaters that did fall were very shaky to begin with. The floor does have quite a few divots in it but it did not affect us skating at all. You glide right over them and barely feel them. There were some parents that were wearing shoes on the rink, which back in the day was a huge no no. We also stood against the wall at times by the snack area and while I felt like we were doing something wrong.the whole time, nobody said anything. When it was Evans there were no shoes on the floor At all and nobody standing along the walls for safety reasons. Even on Tuesdays when they did the skate/dance, when it came time to take the skates off, socks only on the floor. Smooth out the floor and then add some floor rules. The man working the door seemed less than thrilled to be there or for anyone to be there for that matter, but everyone else working was super helpful and very polite. The music wasn't bad, but I do wish they played some of your basic old school skating songs like Freestyle- don't stop the rock. Thats an absolute classic that I think the younger crowd would also enjoy. We tried requesting it but as I saw in other reviews, the man who was less than thrilled to be there said he wasn't doing requests. Everyone in that building who went skating that night looked like they were having a great time. Lots of smiles. I highly...