It saddens me to write this review. My first impressions of Aspire were very positive - clean facility, friendly staff - it seemed a natural fit for my active 8-year old twins. I enrolled both of them in "League of Ninjas" because they love ninja courses.
There were around 8 kids in the class and my kids seemed to be the oldest. About halfway into the first class, my kids were moved over to the larger area where the warped walls are. Their instructor stayed with the younger kids in the zipline area. I believe there was someone watching my kids in the other area, but I didn't go over to see. My kids were having a great time racing around the ninja course, and I could hear my son getting more excited with each lap. On about his fifth time around, while swinging from the ring, he let go and put his hand down to stop his fall.
I heard him crying and he ran over to me. I wasn't sure what had happened so I tried to comfort him. After a few minutes, and because I didn't want to overreact, I asked another mom if she thought his wrist looked swollen. She wasn't sure so I brought him over to the desk where several staff were standing. They thought it looked okay, but I asked if we could have some ice. When I was icing it, his instructor (finally) came over to see how he was.
Looking back, this lack of response to my son's injury makes me upset. As we discovered after spending the night at the hospital, he had a distal radius fracture (the main bone in the wrist). He also bent his bone and they had to straighten it by 10 degrees (it still has an 8 degree bend).
The next day, I emailed Aspire to let them know his wrist was broken since I assumed they would need to do an incident report. I did get an email from his instructor wishing him well, and another from a manager who said they like to learn from such incidents. I took that to mean that they would like some feedback about what happened, so I asked my son for his thoughts.
I'm paraphrasing but my 8-year old basically said he thought they should have mats out for the kids (he landed on the floor), better supervision, and also should have taken his injury more seriously. I conveyed his feedback to Aspire and have never heard another word from them.
A week after his fall, we went to the fracture clinic and it was then that I realized just how bad a break it was. We were told he would need the cast for another 5 weeks (as it turns out, he will need it for 8 weeks total) followed by 3 months of physio.
I emailed and asked if we could please get a refund for my children's lessons since this happened on the first day of class and we obviously can't return. There has been no reply. Quite frankly, they should have offered a refund without me asking.
I understand that accidents happen, but this seems like a rather poor way to run a business. There are so many ways that they could have handled this better. They could have replied to say they are taking our suggestions seriously and that they are taking steps to improve. They could have offered to switch our kids to a later enrollment. They could have sent a card to make my son feel like they cared. They have done nothing, and it's left us with the unfortunate impression that they not only do not care, but that they also continue to operate in an unsafe manner. read more