I joined the new lifetime fitness in Austin earlier this week because I thought it was a family friendly place. I thought that I would be able to drop my kid at the childcare place for 30 minutes while I play ball or lift weights and then take her to the pool and swim since she loves the water. I feel guilty enough for sending her to daycare all day, I wanted something we could all do together. After work today, my wife and I rush to get everything ready to go swimming. We even decide to eat at lifetime so we had more time to spend more time in the pool before my daughter had to go to sleep. I left her at the childcare area for about 20 minutes where she played a little and then we picked her up, changed her, and went to the pool area. We are about to go in the water when a girl comes up to us and says the pool is closed to children. So I asked when is it open for kids. She tells me that it is only open during weekends and 12-3pm for children to swim except for Tuesday and Friday. I couldn't believe it. What is the point of have water slides and kids pool when it isn't open when we actually have the time to use it. I was livid. I wasted a whole evening getting my daughter hyped up to go swimming and she could even sit in the pool. So I change and go to the service desk. The assistant manager says that they have had a lot of complaints about the hours. So I ask "Are you going to change the hours?" She tells me that that they may in a few weeks and ask me to fill out a complaint card. I told "better yet, why don't I cancel my membership and they can call me to join again when they fix it." She tried to talk me out of it but I cancelled anyway. I know that they aren't going to change their policy unless they lose some money. As I was cancelling, another guy with his two buys come up to complain also. I walked up to him and told him that I was cancelling and he should also. I'm not sure if he did, but it made me feel better to have someone else share my pain. To be honest with you, I don't normally care about policies like this but I don't like companies marketing themselves as this great place for kids with waterslide when all I really have access to is a big childcare room. What use is the family change room if I can't use the freaking pool. I doubt they change their hours since I looked at the Sugarland and Plano lifetime fitness centers hours on the web and they are even worse than the one in Austin. I am really dissappointed because we were really excited about having something we could do as family and getting some excercise in the process. I just wanted to vent. Hopefully they change their hours so we can join again. Otherwise we will have to come up with other activities that we can do together that doesn't involve eating, watching TV, or shopping.
It really sux, especially when you felt you let the kid down. May I ask how much is the annual membership cost for a family? Same question to other posters here. Ours was $375/yr when we joined. It was raised to $425 a year later, then $475 a year later, now it's $525 ...
I wish ours was that low. It was a $140 and $100 a month. That's pretty steep since I only pay $100 a year for my Gold's membership.
I guess there are a couple of reasons for the low annual fee. First, it is a community center, partly financed by our property tax. "Non-residents" pay considerably higher memebership fee - $750/yr. Second, it's part of our local high school. Many "employees" are really the students from that school. Prior to becoming members of the current club, my wife and I were sort of "lifetime" members of Bally's Total Fitness (a nation-wide fitness club). So we are actually paying double membership fees. I can tell you though, our local community center is a lot better than the Bally's.
Wow! I transferred my membership from Full Court Fitness over to the new Lifetime here in Austin. I didn't realize they had those hours. I took my son there last Friday to get our swim on, and just assumed that anyone could use the pool at anytime. So thanks for the tip as I was going to go yesterday after work. What a waste of time that would have been. I have noticed that some of the employees I have encountered there are quite rude. My wife was picking up my son the other day at the childcare and the lady who checks the kids out was very rude. She kept asking her "Have you been checked out, yet" over and over. My wife kept saying "I don't know" since she had the impression that they already scanned the card to check out. Then the lady just walked off! So my wife had to go and get the manager who happened to be in there and have her "check us out". It turned out we were already checked out! It would have been a lot easier if they would have just checked to see if we were checked out than asking that annoying question over and over again. I guess that they are going through some growing pains and will have to make some adjustments. But the two fullcourts are pretty sweet!
How'd you get only $100 for Golds?? As for Lifetime, verrrry sorry to hear about that. We were excited when we saw the family-oriented marketing also, and they said that they would prob build one in SW Austin next year. Totally bait-and-switch. They have pics of the kids in the pool in all of their marketing materials.
I got with worlds when they were getting desperate. I had to pay 2 years in advance for me and my wife so it was $400 dollars for 2 years for 2 people. Now I only pay $100 a year. I know some people that got that kind of deal with 24 hour fitness last year.
I didn't want to start a new thread on this and I figured this topic heading would get people to look in here anyway. We are considering joining lifetime fitness because of our kids. There's a new ones in Sugar Land and Cinco Ranch we could use. I emailed them and this is the reply I got concerning costs: First, let me thank you for your interest in Life Time Fitness. In your situation, you would be classified as a couple membership. We have a Fitness membership that runs you $89.90 a month with a one time enrollment fee of $209.00, and a Sports membership that runs $99.90 per month with a one time enrollment fee of $159.00. The Sports includes unlimited rock climbing, racquetball, squash, and two vip guest passes per month. The Fitness membership is just your basic membership. As for your children. It's $5.00 per child, per a month, and that takes care of the child care center. Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions. How good is their child care center? Our kids are young and we've never left them at a place like that yet, although I think it would be good training for them for school down the road. (We are lucky in that family takes care of our kids.) Any more thoughts on Lifetime Fitness?
you know I keep getting a flyer in my mail from them. They do make it seem very family friendly, but after I saw how much it was for the membership it went directly in the trash. Damn that place is expensive.
FYI - check to see if your health insurance offers any discounts. With our insurance (live in Minnesota), if we visit our health club 8+ times a month, we get $40.00 off our monthly dues.
I've been in the Lifetime at Cinco it was HUGE.. it reminded me of the Rec Center at A&M.. I couldnt bring myself to pay the monthly fee they wanted, but it looked like a great place to work out..
