I have been a member at the Prospect Park YMCA since 2021, and this has got to be the most poorly…read moremanaged YMCA I have ever been to. I stayed a member for so long because it's a convenient walk from my house, but I recently left here to join the Life Time and I couldn't be happier. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly from my experience.
The good: The pool. You really cannot get this anywhere else in/around Park Slope. That said, it is often crowded, with 4+ swimmers per lane, and the swim lane etiquette is not the best. They have lanes divided by speed - low, low/medium, medium, and fast - but basically I've found there is one fast lane, and all of the rest are slow. It feels like the fast-lane users are either former Olympic / Masters level swimmers, so I have to be in this awful position where I'm getting passed all the time in the fast lane, yet people get angry with me for going too fast in the other lanes. That's just my experience though.
The bad: The free weight room. Basically, everything is overcrowded, and the etiquette is horrible. The free weight room has ONE power rack, which is insane for such a large gym. This is compounded by the hoards of teenagers that camp at the gym during peak time, sometimes leading to long queues to use any of the equipment. And the etiquette is some of the worst I have seen. People leave weights lying around on the floor or haphazardly put plates back wherever they feel, leading to a ton of clutter and general chaos. There is usually an attendant in the free weight room, yet they do absolutely nothing. Generally, the staff sucks. They do not greet you and just generally seem disinterested except when they are talking amongst themselves.
The ugly: The locker rooms are just horrendous. Everything is filthy with dust everywhere. The lockers are super outdated, busted and rusting all over. There are often cockroaches in the dry sauna. But the worst is the showers. I think that was the final straw for me. It genuinely feels like a prison shower in that half the shower curtains are missing, and I even saw a bunch of blood on one of them. The ceiling is covered in mold; they don't even bother to paint over it. I don't need much, but I at least expect a clean and pest-free locker room. The state of it is shameful honestly.
There is also no towel service, which is insane for how much you pay. Meanwhile, Harbor Fitness has towels, and the membership there is $76/month.
All of this would be fine out of a low-cost, no-frills gym, but the cost of the regular individual membership is $96 per month, which is just out of line. The value is practically non-existent.
They will also try to scam you when you try to cancel, saying there is a 15-day notice period, despite that being against the law in NYS.
Bottom line, do yourself a favor and don't join this gym.