This review is for Wollman rink. The place is spectacular looking, but there are just too many issues. The price for their clinics and open play is pretty expensive - $60 up from $40 last year. The community play is a good deal for $5 an hour, but can be very problematic depending on who is running it. The open play spots go in minutes when the signups go live and it seems some people sign up nearly every day. There should probably be a limit as to how many times a week people can book community play in the interest of fairness.
There are some really good people who sign up for community play. As someone who's more of a beginner, it makes it much less fun. These people often make it clear they don't want to play with people who are just learning and honestly I don't blame them. It's not fun for me either to have to play with people who are so much more skilled. Today I was put into a game with two very experienced players and one of them hit a ball with incredible power directly at my head. Luckily I ducked out of the way in time, but was that really necessary? Not to mention if it had actually hit me, I probably would have had a somewhat serious injury. No apology from the player either, so it was probably deliberate. I've had a number of people (players and the occasional coach) just be really rude to me on the courts in addition to this incident.
A lot of problems could probably be alleviated if they made the ability to be ranked much more accessible both in terms of finances and in terms of availability. It's always later in the evenings and expensive. Right now a lot of people are self-ranking which may or may not be accurate. Community play is best when the coach running it is grouping people by ability even if it is self-ranked. It's really of paramount importance for everyone's enjoyment and yet City Pickle doesn't seem to understand this. Instead of making sure that the coach knows to do this, they let inexperienced youngsters handle it however they want and some get how to do it correctly, and some don't unfortunately.
They are at least letting community players use open courts so no one has to rotate in and out for the most part, but once again it's become too disorganized not to mention dangerous for me to continue to participate. I wish I could like City Pickle, but I just can't anymore. There are plenty of other places that are doing leagues, open play, etc. that are at least much, much cheaper, although I cannot yet speak to their quality. read more