Children only ever allowed to swim for an hour

[LadyJos]

Most swimming pools in the south east only offer hour slots in which children can swim. Many only 45 minutes. The rest of the day is dedicated to adult lane swimming. This kills me. Kids only just starting to enjoy themselves and have to get them out! AIBU?

YABU - my kids don’t want longer than an hour.
YANBU - I want to have a relaxed time splashing with my kids and they have just as much right as adults to use of a pool.

I never claimed total authority nor did I claim to have data.

Ill post on whatever threads I like

Our locals with lots of slides and waves are £7:20 adults and £5:80 children. Sessions are about 3 hours.

No lanes getting in the way of the kids pools.

Right, onto you, @LordSnot .

Whats the cost of a children’s swimming ticket at my local leisure centre? Less than that of an adult. As it should be. Should the tax payer fund children’s leisure? Yes I think they should, beyond pure sport.

However, I think there’s also a private sector opportunity for the kind of big stay and splash pools - and that parents would pay for that in wealthier parts of the country. Why do I think that? Because it’s been tested in other countries with similar demographics and been commercially successful.

Good, because it turns out you’ve got neither😂

So put your money where your mouth is and take advantage of this amazing unspotted opportunity to make money!

(I’m not buying that even wealthy people will spend £50 per person, or even per family, for a day at a swimming pool more than once or twice a year. If you’re that rich or willing to spend money you surely just buy a house with your own pool or go on holiday a few times a year?)

I know you’re trying REALLY hard to hand my arse to me but it’s embarrassing and it’s not working

How much do you pay for your kids session OP?

Depends where you go. Basingstoke aquadrome has a 25m pool mostly for lanes and swimming club; a 20m pool for lanes, school lessons, aquafit, swimming for all; and a separate section with slides and other fun stuff. For lanes at least, you can stay in longer than an hour these days - but you are expected to swim lanes, not mess about.

Newbury lido has a lane for length swimmers, the rest for children. Can't remember how long you can stay in, as I've not been this year so far. They also have an indoor pool, but I've never used that.

Petersfield lido is quite a small pool. Can't remember if it's got timed slots or not. I think it did. Tonbridge has indoor and outdoor pools. Again, I can't remember the restrictions.

I used to work as a lifeguard - we always ran with coloured armbands when it was busy in the holidays, and you wouldn't get more than an hour. (Unless you worked as a lifeguard and your kids got in for free - I did spend whole days up the pool, in and out of the water in my early '80s childhood, and Mum didn't have to worry about childcare, as we were there as she worked.) But pools are expensive to run. Councils are struggling to pay for all sorts, including essential services.

There's the sea, but you need to check if the water is clean.

It's not like Freibäder in Germany and the like, though. Some of them were quite chilly, mind you, at least early I the season, if it wasn't an all-year-round pool.

Sadly, I don’t have the capital to start that kind of business 😂I do, however, have £50 - £100 to spend on kids’ leisure twice a year. So do the many other families that keep theme parks like Alton Towers running. I can imagine an indoor water park would have a similar draw.

But, in the end, neither of us know, right? I’m only challenging your view that it’s lack of existence means no market. That I don’t agree with.

I have no idea which thread you mean. You’re not famous, I don’t recognise you, you’ll have to spell it out.

Also no such thing as butting in on a thread on a chat forum 😂😂 it’s a public forum not you having coffee with your mates.

How much do you pay for your kids to swim?

Alton Towers actually has an indoor water park. If you are really that committed to spending all day at a pool, and you don’t want to just go on holiday a couple of times a year (£500 buys a weekend at Center Parcs in January…) then go there. If you’re willing to pay enough and travel enough then there are a few options - but that’s a completely different thing to expecting all day kid swimming, leisure and chips to be available at the council pool in your local area.

Yeah that's fair. I think the only conceptual match for that is places with lidos in the UK. I know there's a big lido (100 ish m I think) in Cambridge (Jesus Green) and they have another totally separate area with a paddling pool/learner pool up at Lamas Land. Bit of a trek obviously but if reviews confirmed they met your requirements it might do the trick.

Why can’t you just go to the beach for a day or book a few back to back time slots for swimming? This sounds like a non-issue.

Oddly, there is planning permission for an outdoor leisure area near my house.
Its definitely aimed at the older market though... its a swimming lake, times for paddlesports, outdoor hot tubs etc in a natural environment. Not a slide in sight. Apparently a lot more profitable that way!

Letchworth Lido has 4 hour slots. The indoor Letchworth pool used to just be open entry but looking at the website they may have changed to session times, but you can certainly book back to back. The indoor pool isn’t huge but does have a ‘beach style’ entry rather than steps. And 2 flumes.

Where we live the family splash times are pretty much all weekend but you can actually only be in the pool an hour. You get a coloured band on entry and the whistle goes every 15 minutes to kick that colour out. 4 colours an hour. My kids don’t swim much now but we’re usually fed up before the hour to be honest but our pool was always supper cold. On holiday they spend longer but in more leisure type pools with added features such as slides and sprays etc. and waves. More like play areas. And in hot places they’re in there to keep cool.’

We live near a fun pool and an outdoor pool. Both used to use coloured wristbands so that once the pool was full they'd call out the first colour. It worked that you got a minimum of an hour but more likely you'd be there for an hour and a half or as long as you liked. Then they moved over to 1 1/2 hour slots with massive queues for the slots. Now it's one hour and has to be booked in advance. As my DC has needs that means we can't really do things in advance and need longer getting ready at the pool we haven't swum in years. The only place we can swim is hotels where the pool is small but they don't care how long you're in it for.

Where I live it's a good two hour drive to the beach and they don't let you go back to back as it's considered unfair to other customers.

We pay more and visit hotels with spas and use their pools. Make a day of it. Council run pools are far too cold, always heaving and minging. Swim for hours and have a walk and dinner afterwards. Most hotels within 20 mins or a 30 min train journey are more accommodating of families and children and have much better facilities. You pay a little extra but it’s worth it. If that is an option obviously where you live, we live just outside the Lake District.

As a kid I’d spend hours in the swimming pool with my friends! My poor dad used to take the paper and wait for us (and then buy us obligatory chippy chips on the way home). It’s also so bloody expensive now too! We currently pay for swim lessons for our kids because it includes swim sessions too, otherwise for a family of 5 (2 year old is free!) it’s about 30 quid for 2 adults and 2 older children for an hour session- no bloody chippy chips after!

Ours does 90 min slots which is plenty

OP, if you're in the Herts/Essex area, the lido at Ware Priory does 'swim for all' sessions that last an hour and three-quarters (which is actually longer than the lane swimming sessions) and there are often two swim-for-all sessions consecutively in the afternoons, so you could get a ticket for both sessions and stay for the whole afternoon. Looking at their timetables, they split their day pretty evenly between lane swimming and swim for all. There's also a lovely park at Ware Priory with playground, duck-feeding etc if you've got young kids and want to make a day of it.

Lots of people are saying that they used to spend all day at the outdoor pool with friends when they were kids. Yeah, you spent all day at the pool with friends on the few days when it was a) warm and sunny enough and b) the school holidays. Those are pretty much the only days when those sorts of splashy-about, sunbathe-on-the-side, pretend-you're-on-holiday sessions are actually in real demand. And those days in a British summer time are very few and far between and can't be timetabled in advance because they're weather dependent.

Whereas lane swimming for adults who want to swim outdoors for exercise and aren't interested in sunbathing and Slush Puppies, as @YaMuvva has pointed out, is in far more demand and they make a lot more money out of it. Obviously in an ideal world they'd be able to say 'Ooh, it's a scorcher today and the kids are off school, let's make it swim-for-all for the entire day' but they can't just ditch the usual timetable on a whim.

So while I appreciate that it's nice to spend a whole day at the pool now and again in summer, it seems to me that lidos operate the way they do for a good reason, and given that loads of them closed down through lack of profit during the years when 'swim for all' all day was the norm, I'm pretty sure they do timetable things the way they do because that's what enables them to actually keep the pool running.