Ashburton Pool and Recreation Centre

Fantastic experience: Our daughter attends swimming lessons here. Highly recommend this facility. The staff are bubbly & fun, at the same time very professional. Magdalen has been attending lessons for 2 years now (since 1 year old), wouldn't go anywhere elese.

Fantastic experience: This pool is amazing for people like me who like swimming laps it’s also an excellent place for kids and babies. I recommend this pool

Positive experience: Nice suburban complex but mainly aquatic also gym and basketball. Indoor and outdoor pools. Great kids splash area. Cafe with plenty of parking.

Positive experience: Had one horrible time here that I would like to discuss. Me and about 7 other mates came here to play basketball and swim and all payed the price to rent the court for an hour and swim. When we got to the court there was a kids program on so we told that we had booked it but they just said to go talk to reception about it so we did go to reception but the guy seemed like he could not care less as he was just talking to the other person at reception as we were trying to tell him what happened. After we finished explaining what happened he did not try to help us at all. We were not paid any compensation for what we payed for the court so we were forced to go swimming. The great pools this place is the only thing holding it back from being a 1 star review.

Positive experience: Wheelchair-friendly swimming pool complex with car parking

Positive experience: It's a great place to take your kids to learn and swim.

Negative experience: Extremely disrespectful to our communities hero and lank gang affiliate BIG T. Boycott Ash Burton pool & rec centre!!!

Negative experience: Horrible customer service and no communication between the employees. If they say that have a basketball court free they don’t. I have travelled over an hour to come play basketball multiple times because they say they have a free court yet when I arrive they say that they’re booked and offer no kind of compensation or apologies.

Negative experience: Wish I could do less than 1 star. Have been told the basketball courts were available 3 times after coming from across the city, to be told they are booked out. Terrible customer service do not waste your time here.

Positive experience: Front staff weren't too helpful. First timer asked where Pickleball was and they just said go straight to the end. At least mention which court number or just say make a right once you reach the end. Pickleball was quite good, though a little disorganised. There was supposed to be a little tutorial but the instructor appeared to forget about us in the end. Can't blame him though... too many players but too little courts.

Negative experience: Family joined with Fitness Passport which is about family exercising together . Incredibly my 6’3 17 yr old son was told he can’t use the gym. Need to be 18 apparently. However, they allow 16-18 yrs old to use the gym but just not for Fitness Passport members! What’s the point! I was told it was due to “safety regulations “ as “we need to be able contact and monitor “ . Well if that’s the case, what is the different between an 18 yr old and 17 yr old on the same system? I can’t be contacted or monitored either. So much for family values YMCA! Only reasoning must be $$$$ - disappointing. Also, outdoor pool needs a digital pace clock…

Fantastic experience: Popped into this place after Parkrun just needing a shower before meeting friends and expected to have to pay for a swim at a minimum, but they offer use of showers for just $2.50 each. Who knew? Friendly service, and the kids slide looks amazing.

Fantastic experience: This is a great centre, tidy and clean indoor courts and many free spaces in the carpark, fairly priced and the staff are very welcoming and friendly.

Fantastic experience: Hannah who takes my daughters swim lessons (tadpoles) is a great teacher! My daughter thrives under her and I often find her approachable and friendly. My bub trusts her and her water confidence has only grown.

Positive experience: It's great suburbia swimming pool. Well kept. Love the consistent water temp. The showers are oldish. Lockers facilities inside the change room available for club members only. Non club members - not so great - lockers are rundown and worst of all - they are located on the corridor near the exit to the complex - logistically impractical. The gym looks somewhat like Anytime Fitness - nothing to rave about.

Fantastic experience: Definitely needed a spa day ahh

Negative experience: Over the last three weeks the indoor pool has been green and the outside pool was slimy on the bottom! The outdoor pool needs a lot of maintenance.

Positive experience: We come here for baby's swim class - it's awesome to have warm pool so the little one isn't feeling the cold in comparison to other pools we used to go. However, the baby changing facility isn't very up to top notch. It'd be awesome if the changing rooms could be updated.

Positive experience: Great atmosphere and welcoming swim instructors. Reception desk staff are a little less friendly. I do wish there was ramp access to the pools. Makes it difficult to get in with children or if you have a disability.

Positive experience: Great place to get into swimming also has aqua play area for those not wanting to smash out laps

Negative experience: The swim lessons for toddlers are less than satisfactory. I started with a toddler three months ago. My experience has been first a disconnected uninterested teacher who would be better placed as a matron of a hospital. The next two teachers were new and were fabulous - they left suddenly - to me this says something about the centre as an employer. The latest substitute was today - nice enough guy but he started from the very beginning teaching the kids what they have spent a couple of months learning already - again the management - it would be very easy for the teacher who was moving on to leave a status of the students in her class for the next teacher. I understand people move on but the centre management should be skilled enough to make the transition relatively seamless for its swim students - after all they are not new at the job. Have cancelled the lessons and moved to another swim school. BUYER BEWARE !!!

Fantastic experience: My son used 30 min swimming training session. Parents can supervise the children in the pool, which is good for parents to have fun with their kids All staff are friendly, young, and respectful

Fantastic experience: Very clean and excellent facility. Gym equipment are really good and the instructors were really helpful. Highly recommended facility

Fantastic experience: Nice little water park for young children.

Fantastic experience: The staff at the front desk and the pool deck are professional, attentive, and friendly.

Fantastic experience: Great facilities.

Fantastic experience: At 66 I feel blessed to have had access to this gym for many years. The instructors and people I have met are like a community family !

Fantastic experience: 小朋友在这学游泳真的很好

Negative experience: I have had three ear infections from this swimming pool. And I never get ear infections from swimming for over 10 years. Only after starting to swim here. The gym on the other hand is modern and uses new equipment. Shame about the small size however.

Fantastic experience: Great feeling the water on my skin when I dove in it was fantastic .

Fantastic experience: Overall Nice facilities , locked individual bathrooms, cheaper than Monash for a family of 4.

Fantastic experience: Great local pool. Outdoor pool is good for swimming laps and is open all year round. Indoor play area is small but keeps kids entertained!

Fantastic experience: Nice warm pool for lap swims, friendly staff, extended long hours for women only ! No rush, just swim!

Fantastic experience: 실내수영 - 20m 야외수영 - 25m 사우나 - 건식 샤워시설 ㅇㅋ (수압 빵빵) 1회입장 7.8불인데 다포함이라 개꿀 ㅇㅈ

Fantastic experience: É ótimo nadar em Ashburton Pool

Fantastic experience: Great amenities. Friendly staff

Positive experience: Good facilities for adults and kids

Fantastic experience: It is good place to swimming and sauna

Positive experience: Its busy on weekdays. The water play area is cold.

Negative experience: The swimming teacher is not responsible at all. Daniel you should find another job.

Fantastic experience: Ashburton was incredibly clean and the staff were super friendly.

Fantastic experience: Nice facility with friendly staff. Excellent for swimming training.

Fantastic experience: Great indoors n outdoors, good instructors and facilities.

Fantastic experience: Indoor and outdoor pools. Water adventure inside. Has cafe, amenities/ bathrooms. Loads and loads of parking.

Fantastic experience: Friendly people, loads of swimming fun. Perfect to take kids to burn energy

Positive experience: Very reasonable prices just wish the outdoor pool was 50M instead of 25M

Fantastic experience: Excellent. Free parking, warm water. Shower area clean.

Fantastic experience: Great family gym and pool. Been coming here since opening in October 1993

Fantastic experience: A great service, have been a member around 8 years and highly recommended.

Positive experience: Getting a little tired. Not enough space to sit. Water was warm though and the staff were great

Positive experience: Good pools with plenty of other options there and fairly priced! Sauna, spa and swimming is usually my go to.

Fantastic experience: The place is very nice, have indoor and outdoor pools. It also has fun pool for younger kid. The fitness equipment is also quite new and the staff is also welcoming.

Fantastic experience: Great service which includes swimming lessons, a sauna, spa, kids area and outdoor area. The area is amazing and all instructors know what they’re doing.

Positive experience: Busy pool on the weekend that could do with some better lighting. Indoor pool was used predominantly for kids swimming lessons but there weren't many lap-swimmers which is a plus for those looking to swim laps

Fantastic experience: Excellent family friendly pool with approachable, friendly and caring staff and swim instructors. We have used the swim school for over 4 years and our kids are now confident and happy swimmers

Negative experience: A new swimming instructor every week as they can’t hire an experienced instructor who would stay for longer. The management doesn’t care to reply to any concerns that you have. They seem happy as long as they are getting money. You will receive an email every week asking for feedback and nothing would change. Don’t enrol ur kids here for swimming lessons!

Positive experience: Had a kids' birthday here recently. I'd definitely recommend this as a birthday party option. We paid for the kids' lunches as part of the package, and the pool activities were age appropriate and fun. The kids loved it and the parents who stayed said they'd also consider it for a party. My only complaint is that after the pool activities during lunch, the swim instructors served the food (on platters) to the kids, but kept a stack of it for themselves! I didn't realise we'd be subsidising their lunch too. They didn't offer any to the parents who were there either, just squirreled it away; including, and I'm not exaggerating, a slab of kids pop tops. Next time perhaps see if the kids are done with eating first, and if there's anything left over, offer it to the people who actually paid for it!

Negative experience: The reception 50 age around women is rude and she said she is work here over 30 years, she said her words is policy. My daughter exercise swimming in the morning before 9am in the WARM EXERCISE AREA. this area NOT writing any tips --ONLY ADULT EXERCISE. the staff told us my kid cannot exercise this area and this is policy. i ask the 50 around lady reception where is the policy ? her answer is ridiculous--" i worked here 30 years, my words is policy, if you want exercise your baby skill you should find another place not here !" If you have work also want exercise your kids swimming skill don't choose YMCA Ashburton, they not care children swimming skill exercise ! stay away from here !

Negative experience: Hong is the worst swimming coach we ever encountered. She basically let my son sit at the side of the pool for the entire time while she is fully assisting one child. The reason being my son “ doesn’t know how to safe entry “ instead of teaching and encouraging, she just said to my son “ I don’t know what are you talking about” and turned away!!! She made it more clear by cheering with the other kid while showing cold face and tone with my son. I try to reason with her after the class and guess what, she got furious and shout at us! With very loud voices and blaming my kid “not knowing how to safe enter the water. “Ain’t we here to learn? Ain’t she here to teach? I have already made a complaint through the office, the minute she knows what I am about to do she talked to the stuff that “my son kicked her and so she didn’t let him in the water”, right before I walk towards the office! How can they let someone like this teach toddlers! Wonder has anyone have similar experiences as us? This is unprofessional n unacceptable

Fantastic experience: Visited the centre to attend a yoga class. The yoga was top notch. Amanda ran a challenging, fun, strength building class which was very enjoyable. Left feeling uplifted, energised and stretched! She changes up the class and sequencing weekly. Looking through the facilities, there was room and many activities available in different areas. The pools looked good. Staff were super friendly. And they served the biggest mug of pretty decent coffee. All round, a fabulous experience.

Fantastic experience: Great place for activities! Gym, Pool, Basketball and PICKLEBALL!!! Make sure you see coach Jay! Best time!!!

Fantastic experience: Great facilities including a central cafe with seating. Good coffee and friendly service. Rewards card with seventh coffee free!

Fantastic experience: Clean facilities and friendly staff. Enough lockers and shower/bathrooms are there and a little cafe for coffee/snacks, plus spacious parking area. Also, there are several good learning programs/classes. Great place to keep us in good health.

Positive experience: Got a spider web in a change room. Need to clean up a place properly

Negative experience: New gym machines not as good as before.bikes are stiff and not smooth

Negative experience: Always extremely and unnecessarily crowded, choric. One of the lanes have one instructor, having six (6) kids! God help her! Kids can never learn swimming here.

Fantastic experience: The aqua classes here are highly recommended. Great spa / pool and sauna. Friendly and helpful staff.

Fantastic experience: Excellent outdoor pool. If only it stayed open during the warmer part of the winter days! Solid gym too.

Positive experience: Does get super busy on weekends, then your stuck to pretty much standing in the free play area unless you want to swim laps. Otherwise, friendly staff and facilities are clean!

Negative experience: Best swimming pool for all ages in the metropolitan are! HOWEVER, staff members are extremely rude at all times! Plus the COVID- 19 chao, give them the top reason to be rude and hush to every living soul! Please tell me what the difference will make to enforce all children wear the god damn mask when walking pass the reception area for less than 5 seconds but wear no protection in the pool for the next 5 hours!!!!! Contradictory theory!

Negative experience: How many times do you guys clean the pools and water? The infection on my face and neck i got from the pool after my swimming sesh and i'm on antibiots and it's just so sickening and i'm in a lot of pain and that infection really stings. please clean your water and pools frequently especially when scoolies season.

Negative experience: The pool reopened, our membership reactivated for more than a week but we haven't received any communication. It was the same last year, our bank account got deducted for the fee. Called the office recently, unfriendly conversation then ended my call. Strongly not recommended.

Fantastic experience: Great place with outdoor & indoor heated pools. Basketball court, fully equipped gym. Sauna (yup it's got one). Cafe.. very popular with families!

Fantastic experience: Great set up for kids swimming. The instructors are always lovely and help our 6 year old feel comfortable and confident in the water.

Negative experience: Just what on earth happened to this place? If you are reading this and looking to join, I highly recommend the Glen Eira Leisure centres instead. Most of the staff here are unnecessarily rude and incompetent, and the service I’ve received has been less-than-professional on many occasions: - Constantly placed on hold or kept waiting due to new staff not understanding how to conduct basic tasks. Please do something about the standards of your onboarding training. - Drove back home during peak-hour traffic due to refused entry for not having a mask (and no option to purchase one from the front desk – why?), only to witness other patrons entering without a mask on multiple other occasions without ever being stopped or questioned. I can respect your “no mask no entry” policy, but this level of inconsistency/lack of support is highly unprofessional and frankly, insulting to witness. - Checked the stadium/court availability times with one staff member only to be directly contradicted by another staff member (and very rudely at that) – that same latter staff member then refused to help take down the badminton nets, providing the excuse that they are “only here to cover for someone else’s break”. - A personal trainer has actively attempted to solicit me into their private fitness business during my booked 30-minute training session. Why am I paying the centre, booking a session, and taking time out of my day to have to face unwanted solicitation? Honestly, I could go on detailing other examples, but I think you get my point. There are other, far more respectable centres out there that will take much better care of you.

Fantastic experience: Went there today for the first time with my little one. As we are new to the area,staff were happy to provide me with lots of information. Great pools and location.

Positive experience: It is a great facility for locals. There is a gym, two swimming pool (one heated), basketball court and one can attend group yoga etc classes. Improvements can certainly be made. Staff seem friendly although can be more accountable. The membership is not too expensive.

Negative experience: A decent facility that provided pleasant experiences years ago. With nice memories, my child went back to the holiday swimming program in early 2021, and subsequently was invited to join the junior squad training. Nevertheless, within less than one year, the child has changed from a enthusiastic, keen swimmer to a less interested and non-motivated one. At the end, he decided to withdraw from the training. The training program didn’t seem to be properly planned. Quite often there was little, if not no instruction from the coach during the hour-long training session. The requirement for trainee to bring in training aids (fin, pullkick, paddle, etc.) was confusing. The Parent Portal wasn’t able to be logged into. When we asked for a hard copy of training progress at the end, the answer was negative. Even taking non precedent lockdowns into consideration, what has happened with the swimming training was utterly disappointing and beyond belief. Do not wish that any other family has to go through what we did!

Negative experience: Swimming lessons are of an extremely poor quality. There is no consistency with instructors. There’s no lesson plan. The Front Desk staff are more often rude and arbitrary in their rules. Just how many useless ‘no lesson’ swim lessons do they need? Also, why would you start billing for lessons before you bother emailing to inform that lessons are back on?

Fantastic experience: I only visited this place because my son is reffing for Basketball game that was played in the Stadium. This seems like a nice local Pool in Ashburton. The Car park is almost full and It was a rainy Saturday afternoon. This shows that it is quite busy with local visitors.

Negative experience: You should really employ supervisors for the lifeguards. The sign clearly indicates that diving is not allowed in the shallow end, but it is in the deep end. There were parents up at the shallow end encouraging their kids to jump in the pool with complete disregard for anyone else in the lane. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against children nor children having fun and I don't blame them at all. Not one parent or lifeguard did anything about it, this is a public pool for everyone to enjoy, it's not a play centre. Also, on a 30 degree day at 3pm it's probably not wise to have a closed Kiosk on the basis that everyone will bring a drink bottle from home or be willing to use a water fountain, there was no other access to water, not even a vending machine ! Not good enough.

Positive experience: Nice local pool. I come here a lot. The outdoor pool is 25m, a nice temperature for swimming laps and isn’t as busy as other bigger facilities. Change rooms are a good size and clean.

Positive experience: Great facilities - indoor and outdoor pools, variety of classes (my favorite being Zumba), sauna, spa, gym with lots of new equipment - but not sufficient floor space for various mat exercises. Membership prices as expected. Sufficient easy on site car parking and on adjacent streets. Friendly staff. There's also an electrical waste bin here - very well used.

Positive experience: We visited here with our 4yo to swim. She really enjoyed it, although the water slide isn't steep enough to actually slide down! Water temperature was nice and warm, which meant we could swim for a good amount of time. The cafe sells great healthy snacks, which kids think are a sugary treat!

Negative experience: Swimming lessons are poor quality. Over crowded, inconsistent instructors with performance and scheduling. Inability to help my children progress through the swimming levels for over 18 months. Moved them to another facility and they were moved through the levels at a suitable speed with a weekly progress dashboard I was able to view. All for the same price.

Fantastic experience: We had a wonderful experience in the pool, there are several big pools for kids and adults.

Fantastic experience: Indoor and outdoor pools for lessons, water aerobics and hydrotherapy, a kids water play area, several courts hired out to local clubs and associations for various ball sports (netball, basketball, futsal etc, a gym and number of other rooms for aerobics and exercise classes. Also have childcare and a cafe

Fantastic experience: Very clean and upkept basketball courts, easy access and friendly staff to help you find what you're looking for. Doesnt smell too strongly of chlorine and a safe environment for children.

Fantastic experience: My kids LOVE playing at this pool! The small warm pool is great for them to practice their swimmimg skills in and the paddling/play pool is awesome! A great place to get your kids used to the water before they start swimming lessons, or to practice thier skills.

Fantastic experience: Been going there for 25yesrs very happy

Fantastic experience: Excellent sporting arena for basketball and swimming for both of my grandchildren,Very clean,well organised,very safe

Fantastic experience: Great pool area and changing rooms. Little restricted due to covid safe requirements but still good.

Fantastic experience: Plenty of lanes in the pool, wonderful staff, clean facilities

Fantastic experience: Very relaxing and the lifeguards happily turn on the spa jets when required!

Fantastic experience: People were already waiting outside for it to open...so yeh it tells its own story...

Fantastic experience: Very popular local pool and sport centre.

Fantastic experience: Great facilities, kind and helpful staff

Fantastic experience: Newly equipped place. Good for any type of swimmers Warm pool for little kids

Fantastic experience: Nice sports centre good outdoor pool

Fantastic experience: Fantastic pool, ticks all the boxes for all ages