Too many "restrictions" ...

- Online registration for lap swimming ONLY, can't just drop in 

Through COVID I swam at a few different pools. And have friends who swam at others. It seems just about all pools employed some sort of reservation system to control attendance. For whatever purposes, some pools have continued using it post-COVID. My experience is that you can actually “drop in” if you haven’t made a reservation. If there’s a lane open, they’ll let you swim. That includes the possibility of people not showing up for their reserved time. Unfortunately there are people who’ll reserve time well in advance (sometimes days in advance) “just in case” they want to swim. But then they don’t swim, and fail to cancel their reservation. Consequently a lane reservation goes unused. Usually if a reservation person isn’t there by ## minutes they’ll open the lane.

- Almost all pools have time limit on lap swimming ... like 30 min some of them  - I like my sprints but 30 min limit ???

The reservation systems I’ve used do go in :30 increments. And, they’ll allow you to make two back-to-back adjacent reservations. 

- Closed for "maintenance" over the Xmas holidays ... thats complete nonsense ... have one pool closed for a month for maintenance starting today ... yeah, they are gonna do "work" this weekend.

Seems like a common practice everywhere, every winter. I don’t get it either. Pool management seems to always want to schedule maintenance when they’re the busiest. At the very least why don’t they do it in the summer when the open water is available. (I know this doesn’t really work for swimmers wanting to do sprint workouts. But it’s ‘something’ anyway. I’m an open water swimmer myself.)

- No lane sharing, or no circle swimming

Seems like this is a holdover from COVID. No pools I know of currently have those restrictions.

- No "early" mornings on weekend... nothing available before 9am on Sat Sun ...

This might have something to do with the staffing of lifeguards. In my case, and other pools I know of…pools lost guards when hours were restricted during COVID. Guards went and got other jobs, and now there’s difficulty finding replacements.

- kids have all priority everywhere ... I have 3 kids, and yes they need sports but who has greater benefit swimming for exercise - a 12 year old or a 62 year old ?? It’s not even close.

Are you saying they close off the entire pool for kids/play/open swim…and don’t have ANY lap swimming during that time? My pool does have open swim play time for kids/parents/families. But there’s always at least three lanes also available for lap swimming.

If your above comments are a result of what you’ve seen online. I’d suggest that you talk to the pool manager. It might be that they just haven’t updated their webpages. Talk to them at any rate. Maybe they’ll find a way to accommodate you.

Dan