Rivermead Leisure Centre

Positive experience: Nice place , however think they need a bigger reception as only one desk . It gets very busy with long waiting lines to sign in , otherwise nice place

Positive experience: Don’t have creche/ nursery for mum’s do exercises

Negative experience: Very rude and unprofessional staff, especially Roy who had us waiting for half an hour to solve an issue to then disappear without saying anything. We could have been waiting there for an hour if we hadn't noticed him leaving his office.

Positive experience: Nice place to go swimming, gymming, or playing on the courts. Also a space for toddlers to play.

Positive experience: Visited the pool with our 3 year old granddaughter. The air temperature was much too cold. We couldn't stay long in the play area as we were all shivering, totally spoilt the visit. We won't be going again unless this changes.

Fantastic experience: A nice and family orientated centre. Gym, swimming centre, play area, party centres, cafe, basket ball centre and plenty of free parking outside. Charging car ports, disabled pays, mother and parent parking too. The place is totally revamped. The users need to do those bit with regards to keeping the premises tidy by being respectful, if it’s too last. Staff are polite and welcoming.

Fantastic experience: Great swimming facilities, always kept clean and tidy! (one message I have for other swimmers however, PLEASE for the benefit of you and other swimmers make note of the speed of the lane you are in, too many slow people get in the fast lane and cause a qeue behind them...)

Positive experience: Love this gym, I really do. Really great equipment, large spaces between equipment so you don’t feel like you’re on top of another person working out (like pure gym). Only issue is the opening and closing times over the festive period. I work for the NHS, the gyms closing at 2pm really isn’t fair for myself and probably a lot of other colleagues that want to go after I finish work. I went in the other evening, website said they close at 6pm, receptionist was turning me away at 17:15!! Saying you close at 17:30. Not documented anywhere and a deflating and pointless trip. Receptionist was also blunt and rude. Please review this for next year, I understand your staff need a break but 1400 is just pointless.

Positive experience: Pool was nice and the splash area. Went for toddler splash but water freezing. Multiple people commenting how cold and we couldn't stay the full session as our sons lips, hands and feet turned blue. Perhaps older kids who can jump and run about would keep their temperature up, but even as an adult we all found it very cold! I can't find the temperature listed anywhere on the website which it should be so people are aware in advance.

Positive experience: Great location for Badminton, well ventilated during summer. Vending machine doesn't work with my contactless cards or Google Pay

Fantastic experience: Wow!! What a beautiful big clean leisure centre.very impressed and highly recommend to all to use the facility and all the activities on offer.

Positive experience: Good swimming pool, but not for professional. To many people on the line , and swimm slow.

Fantastic experience: Amazing new building, swimming pool and changing rooms clean and staff very friendly.

Positive experience: Good to have another competition pool in the area. Lots of seating but the usual poor design of fixed seating with no space for coats and bags etc.

Positive experience: Only went to the soft play which was nice and clean. Staff members were polite and friendly

Positive experience: Now fully open and although it's confusing to book through the website, mostly it is run very well and easy to use when you arrive. There's a lot of parking, including EV charging, although several bays had petrol cars parked in them. There is also now a bus stop on the main road and there is buggy parking with a lock inside if you're walking with a baby. Changing rooms were clean but it was first thing. It's shoe free so bring flip-flops ideally to change into. Pool timetable is complex. The learning pool mostly is for lessons so not available for smaller kids except a few sessions but the main pool is shallow at one end and warm enough anyway. Things that could be better: - Changing tables with a belt to avoid babies rolling off when you're getting changed as well - Only half the learning pool being for lessons at least some of the time - The barcode to enter only let's you in during session times. So we arrives twenty minutes before to get changed and sort the baby and had to ask to be let though. Confusing.

Fantastic experience: Great place to attend multiple things to do with children like softplay and aqua play

Positive experience: Great fitness classes here

Positive experience: Good equipment and facilities is a plus. However, access without a car, unless you live in the immediate vicinity, is a struggle as there are not many buses in the area

Fantastic experience: Used the swimming pool. The showers are great before and after the swim

Positive experience: Toilets were all out of water and leaking, buckets left outside, disgusting and no sign on walls or staff visible to address

Fantastic experience: Good modern facilities

Fantastic experience: Good facilities for all ages, gym, swimming, soft play area, onside free parking.

Positive experience: I'm sorry to say that I was not impressed. The reception took 8 minutes to help. The swimming changing rooms were not very clean. The system for lane swimming was quite right. The slow lane had 2 sections, and the bigger of the 2 had some people in, which were not lane swimming, the life guard spoke to them, but they carried on. The whole experience put me off.

Negative experience: Horrible cafe experience .. I literally waited 20 minutes for a coffee and hot chocolate .: so slow ..

Positive experience: The newly renovated badminton courts are awesome. I enjoyed badminton here. The swimming pool looks awesome. Perfect place. The only issue is the sports hall is small looking at the need for the local need. Event sports halls are occupied for other sports. As a badminton lover the courts are never available in the evening.

Fantastic experience: Great New leisure centre facility, clean, smart and well thought out

Fantastic experience: The best leisure centre in Reading. The investment shows the quality of facilities available.

Fantastic experience: After a long refurbishment, Rivermead has re opened and they have certainly done a lovely job. Parking is convenient and reception area is good. There is a lovely little Cafe, fitness and pool areas. The pool areas are divided into a children's section and a main variable depth pool that has a maximim depth of about 1.8m. Sections can be roped off for laps or competition swims and there is a viewing area and lifeguards are akways on station. Showering and changing areas are clean and atteactive, with fully accessible facilities. Well worth a visit.

Positive experience: SOFT PLAY Wow what a small space and a lot of kids, standing parents trying to watch kids that you can't see 3 floors high. Not enough seating. Probably a lovely place during term time.

Negative experience: This was our second visit. Overall it is great however the toilets are the dirtiest I have ever seen in a leasure centre. Very disappointed with the cleanliness.

Fantastic experience: I used the swimming pool and it was excellent ! Happy Swimming for you all who visit Rivermead Leisure Center ‍♂️

Negative experience: Why you can't let people book a court without downloading your stupid app is beyond me

Positive experience: The newly updated leisure center looks and feels great! There is a great selection of things there, from swimming, diving, badminton, the gym and more! The gym has a wide variety of machines, cables and weights (as well as warm up and down equipment), allowing for a good session. The staff are often helpful but some can seem a bit direct. Overall a great place, of which I will continue going to!

Fantastic experience: Lovely swimming coach and very nice renovation

Negative experience: This gym is great for most things but doesn’t update members or communicate if there are closures.. I walked all the way to the gym only to get turned away and get told that it is closed until Tuesday! I understand it’s due to the Reading Festival but there was 0 communication and even google shows it’s still open? I find it annoying I’ve paid for a months membership and have a whole week taken away and need to find another gym to attend on the interim… jokers. Would be great for you to update google and members. I gave it a low rating because despite it not being a bad gym but I do wish that both the studios had the same equipment for members to use for workouts during the classes happening in the other studio. Also find it weird that most of the machines are switched off or “not working” which means having to wait for people to use certain machines… i.e. stair master - there’s two of these but only 1 is ever on… during peak times I think most of the machines should be on.

Negative experience: Gym is very small so hard to get hold of any machine if you only do gym choose other gyms

Positive experience: Brilliant splash and small swimming pool for toddlers and children. Clean changing rooms. Softplay is good but cam sometimes get very busy during school holidays. Adult swimming lanes are good for those who wish for a proper swim without people playing.

Positive experience: Excellent disabled changing facilities. Changing rooms clean. Water temp ok if a little chilly. Adult only sessions would be a huge bonus.

Negative experience: The pool water was freezing, the changing rooms were filthy and smelled terrible, and kids were running around and shouting. There's no dedicated adult swim time, and there is a limited space for shallow swimming. All that along with the cold temperature makes the pool more suitable for athletes or kids who are practicing sports, than for regular users. The facility offers very little for the high membership fees they charge. The pools are too cold, the classes are very limited on weekends, and the weekend hours are off-peak. You have to pay extra for courts that are often unavailable. Essentially, all they provide is a gym and very few classes after working hours as most of the classes are during working hours. You can find a better gym with 24/7 access and more classes for half the price. On top of that, cancelling requires 20 days' notice, so you'll often end up paying for an extra month you can't use. They also demand a medical certificate to freeze your membership for even one month.

Fantastic experience: Nice and clean swimming pool! Big changing area, showers are nice with in off button, which means you waste less water. Friendly staff

Fantastic experience: Very clean and spacious New gym has almost everything, the pool has 8 lanes and they also have a diving section The sports hall also has basketball, badminton, trampolining etc

Fantastic experience: After a really, really long wait it's great to be able to finally enjoy our local pool ! The facilities are fantastic, every time we visit there is different stuff going on so it's nice to see its being used to it's maximum potential- we've seen dive classes and kids swim classes, and last time we visited the toddler splash area was open which my 3 year old LOVED! Facilities are still relatively clean and I like the no shoes policy in the pool area but don't think it's particularly enforced because staff themselves don't take shoes off so not setting best example- although I saw a couple with dedicated pool shoes which I think should probably be the standard for all staff. The floors of the changing room on a Saturday felt kinda gross underfoot by lunch time so I think they might need to either enforce the no shoes thing or clean the floor more regularly- ill be wearing flip flops from now on ! However it's still 5 stars from me because this is such a great local thing to have, it's being well run and I think the staff there are really friendly and helpful .

Negative experience: Went on Saturday soft play isn't safe they need to change the flooring to something softer my 3 year old tripped and smacked her face on the hard floor causing bleeding and a loose tooth and a trip to hospital....it's not child friendly at all we won't be returning...told manager about the incident he came across as tho he didn't believe us as the bleeding stopped ...tho you could see my child was distressed from the accident

Positive experience: The pool is great and fun. But when i went i for the all female session, they let in the next class before the time was up which was really annoying and stressful as a lot of them were men and as a hijabi it was not good

Fantastic experience: New machines, amazing pool what's there not to like.

Fantastic experience: Good facilities. Very busy pool at 8am on a Sunday. Too many to swim comfortably

Fantastic experience: The leisure centre has recently opened up a new swimming pool which is outstanding. There is a café right outside the pool where I would usually eat cheese sandwich and watch my children go for the classes. Sovery good arrangement. There’s a kids play area right next to the café, which is very well-made as well. You can buy the tickets for the kids play area from the reception counter. The viewing area of the new pool is also very very good and it gives a very theatric feeling for somebody to watch from the arena.

Fantastic experience: Hi” it’s not to far for me to go with in walking distance can’t Waite:) to join for me

Positive experience: Had an hour in the soft play yesterday with my little 8 month old boy. Had a lovely time apart from the fact there were older kids running around in the baby section. I appreciate the fact that it is unattended but more signage for the parents would be helpful. And I think the baby area was too easily accessible for the older kids, it needs to be cordoned off somehow. I don't want a 6yr old jumping and diving around my little baby.

Positive experience: New Swimming Pool- Family Review I called ahead to check which session gives access to Splash Pad- you have to book “Family Fun Swim” or “Toddler Splash”. For the other sessions the Splash Pad is closed! Facilities are obviously super clean, slick and new. Family changing etc. Plenty of lockers! For community pool it’s pretty aesthetically pleasing. Pool temp: 22nd July pool was decent temp! Our 1 year old had no trouble with temp until 45 mins in. Splash pad water surprisingly warm and fun. Life guard seemed a bit OTT, constantly ringing whistle loudly. In retrospect this makes sense because there are dangers for toddlers everywhere. There’s a 3m deep diving pool right along the shallow end, right where children naturally jump in to main pool and next to the Splash Pad! There needs to be railings! It’s too close to the kids stuff even with close monitoring. Whilst we were there life guard nearly fell in! Disaster waiting to happen. Sadly a three year old in our party landed in A&E needing stitches from a way too slippy apparatus in the splash pad with normal use. Beware of the slippy frog! Don’t let your kid climb on it. Needs friction gripping! Staff were however prompt to help with first aid and very professional. But much more needs to be done to improve health and safety. All in all promising new pool for Reading but needs work. We’ll go again but there needs to be much improvements.

Negative experience: New pool (only half in use because of lessons) but not one I would go back to. The session is sold as ‘family swim’ but according to management the temperature is set for the race teams/school (think cold). ‘A variety of floats and toys available for everyone to enjoy.’ I certainly didn’t see toys or anything ‘fun’. It’s a misleading representation. Overall-not a good experience, and the changing rooms are freezing!

Positive experience: Great new pool with full access for disabled, with a pool pod. Only used pool and cafe. I only gave 4 stars as it was disappointing that the cafe doesn't open u til 9.30 am, surely with so many waiting from just past nine maybe reconsider opening time.

Negative experience: NEW SWIMMING POOL - 1 STAR . Booked to come for a swim at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning with my family for a ‘swim for all’ session. . Turned up, very clean as it has only been open 2 days, Kids Pool was closed due to lessons, Splash Park was closed too, we were only allowed in the adult pool with swimming lanes in, also everyone that seemed to get in was commenting saying it’s freezing cold. We stayed for 10 mins then left. . Not a great start for a £40 million investment. . Won’t be rushing back, much better accommodating pools around.

Negative experience: DONT GO! New pool opened yesterday 17th June, we went today thinking it would be amazing. It was freezing cold water, our 2 year old wasn’t allowed in the kids pool as it was being used for swimming lessons and the kids splash pad was closed! Not very good when it advertised online and on the BBC news that it was open after having 40 millions spent on it! Yes it was clean and tidy but that would be expected after being open only 24 hrs. Paid £15 to go and will be contacting for a refund.

Fantastic experience: The new centre is now fully open and running. The state of the art swimming pool is now ready. The centre is superbly organised and well managed to provide excellent sports and leisure facilities in the Borough.

Positive experience: Nice place overall, but the reception today was not friendly.

Negative experience: Cafe closed and vending machine broken. You got kids in soft play unable to even get a drink.

Fantastic experience: Very safe and welcoming venue with good and modern facilities

Fantastic experience: This review is for a shout-out to the swimming teachers. I never get a chance to thank them after my kid has their lessons. Always super helpful and on point.

Fantastic experience: Pretty much all activities available. Huge parking is definitely a plus haha

Positive experience: Small changing rooms , good showers , school kid leave bags on the benches in stead of using lockers don't help , regular swimmers think they own the pool and don't like to share lanes , gym is good but small , clean ,

Fantastic experience: Good leisure centre in Reading. A lot of parking space. Cafe on site. Attractive for kids softplay area

Positive experience: A good modern centre, but a little disappointed with the new gym, it feels quite small, there could be a better selection of exercise classes also but I have enjoyed the ones I attended.

Positive experience: Some really bad design choices, coffee shop is awful.

Fantastic experience: My kids love their soft play! I do diving and can't wait to try that, their badminton court is nice and clean and has a lot of chairs !

Negative experience: Horrible treatment by the staff. I tried to rent a court to play basketball but apparently they “don’t do it”. Raised the issue through email and no response, I was willing to pay for 2 memberships.

Positive experience: First time I have been here to the new centre, and really like it. The Soft Play was a good size and had a good range of things to do.

Negative experience: If I could have put zero stars I would have! Went to the soft play. Busy. Nowhere to sit to watch your small children. They double charged me and now and month later I’m still waiting for the refund that I’ve been told twice I’d been sent!! Worst customer service too!

Fantastic experience: The newly revamped center is fantastic! Ample parking with numerous electric charging stations for EVs adds convenience. Clean toilets and a decent cafe make it a delightful experience for quick bites. Highly recommend!

Positive experience: Nice gym with new eqiuipment and staff are very pleasant. However, I fear the gym space will be too small and cramped when the new pool is open and more members join. The cycle studio within the gym should be relocated and that area opened up to increase gym.size

Fantastic experience: Best soft play around! Nice coffee and good atmosphere

Fantastic experience: The lovely and most helpful staff make it what it is. It would be good when the check in desk is brought into the swimming pool entrance rather than the long walk to and fro between the two

Negative experience: Went for the soft play. Small but clean and reasonably priced. Main negative points were that the cafe, at 13:00 did not have hot lunch on offer. I asked if the hot food on the visible signs at the back was available. To which a male employee with blue starwars AT-AT walker jumper gave me a sarcastic and patronising response that this wasn’t available hence the signs being where they were. The other female employee was very good and made a good coffee. Another concerning point being that electric sockets in the cafe area were not covered, a child was walking up and down putting the switches on and off (could have put fingers in the socket). Finally, and maybe most concerning, a lady took over the cafe after 2pm and was clearly not happy to do so, she loudly said she was not allowed in the kitchen as she did not have her relevant health and safety certificate for working with food. I noted an older man come back and seem to inform her she needed to work in the front part of the cafe (still handling food and drink).

Fantastic experience: Great gym and great staff. Really enjoyed teaching my first yoga class in these new studios

Positive experience: Good facilities, and sports options..The ground floor coffee shop is good!

Negative experience: Absolute disgusted with the service today , Only one changing room mixed with men and women, no safety for women, Pool was dirty and salty, no one around to help . A few members of staff just turning round giggling, wish I could give you -100 stars , will never be coming back again

Negative experience: Absolute disgusting , swimming pool was dirty , water was cold n salty , changing rooms are mixed with men and women, no safety for women,

Fantastic experience: Nice and clean. Plenty of parking. Great facilities.

Positive experience: Normally I’m not keen on play places . They are normally really dirty and not very clean. However this soft place is really big and great for the little ones to keep busy for a good while. Cafe on site is ok has few options for both kids and parents . Overall would say it’s worth going

Fantastic experience: Played badminton, excellent courts. Very good showers and enjoyed coffee in cafe. Attended with family members. Friendly staff and excellent facilities.

Fantastic experience: First visit to Reading. After a long journey we needed somewhere to park, walk the dogs and a light snack. This leisure centre was perfect. Masses of parking. Great in-house café. Very clean facilities. Acres of riverside walking for the dogs. Very popular leisure centre. A constant flow of people arriving all afternoon and early evening. Brand new facility. Run by Better for the Reading and surrounding area. Highly recommended.

Negative experience: Very bad and worst experience!! Swimming pool is like a scrap felt no safety and particularly staff are so rude with customers at swimming pool. No place to sit or stand for parents and can’t see how their kids are performing and what they are teaching. When we requested “can we sit inside politely ” to see my kid that lady (I believe lead) over there is so rude and I can see clear racism the way she behaved with other people and with Asians. Shame on them

Positive experience: They are still building the new swimming pool but the gym facilities are fabulous. Decently priced and easy to get to.

Positive experience: Good soft play for young children with a cafe that sells drinks and snacks. helpful staff - softplay area seems to be unsupervised - parental supervision required

Positive experience: Nice to have a new building. Shame the swimming pool was delayed. Gym could have been bigger and why no squash courts? Staff are friendly, overall a good addition to North Reading/Caversham.

Positive experience: 1st time to the new Rivermead. Nice, modern & clean which is what you'd expect. Unfortunately the pool isn't open yet.

Positive experience: Soft play a bit small, but my little boy loved it. The coffee was not good and very expensive

Negative experience: The old building location shown on maps was demolished last week and moved east to a new building. Google is wrong and hasn't updated its location despite requests.

Negative experience: You have to give them a month's notice to cancel your membership but yet they can tell you they're closed for 6 days due to Reading festival in the same month with no partial refund to monthly memberships. Nice new facilities, gym no bigger than old centre though.

Positive experience: Used the soft play, nice enough and the kids loved it. My only gripe (and there maybe a good reason or just a one off) there was no staff clearing the tables. And I'm not so sure about the layout but that might just be me being fussy. Kids were happy and that's all that matters really.

Negative experience: The softplay equipment itself is great. My child (22 months) and I attended last week and I noticed that hardly any parents were actually monitoring children’s behaviour…parents are ‘supposed’ to be doing this at all times and the Rivermead manager I spoke to (Brad) and staff were unable or unwilling to supervise. At first it explained that this was due to understaffing but also that supervision is ‘not our responsibility as it’s run by an outside company’. Even staff popping in and reminding parents that they must be actively supervising their children each session/as they arrive, would be helpful. In the area that is designed to be for under 2s, much older children are in this area constantly and are incredibly rough. Whilst I was there this time I witnessed older children pushing younger children out of the way/down slides to speed them up, stepping on them like they are stairs, running at full speed and crashing into others, throwing the ball pit balls hard at other children’s heads, etc. I don’t expect total regard from other children for the safety of my child in the main softplay areas but in the area designed for under twos, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect it to be safe. Two other parents/grandparents left at a similar time to me for the same reasons. Staff refunded me the cost of the softplay and apologised for the experience which I appreciate but from the response it is clear they won’t be adding any staff supervision (I would argue this is a must during holiday periods) or reducing numbers further than they already have (they told me they have capacity for 90 per session but have already reduced to 68 - perhaps due to safety complaints?) I was told there will be clearer signage going up to differentiate the ‘under 2’ area more clearly but this won’t help with the lack of supervision. I wouldn’t recommend attending during holiday or weekend periods with children aged 4 or below.

Negative experience: Incompetent ‘not my problem’ management once again showing a total lack of responsibility for the amount of public spending that has gone into this place.

Fantastic experience: This new building is fantastic, everything so clear, nice staff, nice equipments. Bring your kids to play in a big softplay :)

Negative experience: New gym made me to cancel membership The new gym is horrible. Small, no space for warm-up, all training facilities are too close to each other, no smith machine (are you kidding?), in the first 2 weeks after opening two facilities got broken (nice quality I suppose). Overwhelmingly disappointing experience. I can't believe it was planned and design when social distancing was a thing still

Negative experience: Although new center is nice and clean, the new gym area is much worse than it was. Too little for its capacity. Equipment is placed too close, which is not safe. Some equipment is already broken though it’s brand new. There is no enough space for exercises and in general area isn’t well designed for people. Hopefully they will address the issue, but I’d rather cancel my membership for now.

Fantastic experience: What I saw of the new leisure centre it looks good. We went to the soft play. And it definitely entertained my boys although I think they should be able to have longer in there, not just an hour.

Negative experience: Pro: The soft play area itself is good. Small but tall so great for the kids and clean/ well looked after. Lots of different things to do to tire the children out and not packed full with too many children which was nice. The cafe was nice and fair priced too. Neutral: The “baby” area was over run with big kids tho so perhaps needs an “under x years” sign as it meant there was no where “safe” for the baby to play. Cons: The reduction of stars comes from the horrific parking situation. Have to walk through a flood to get out of the car park once you eventually find a space. Then have to walk along the main road as there’s no pathway which with children isn’t ideal or particularly safe! Then another star reduced for the terrible baby change. One change cubicle which is so tiny you can’t fit a buggy in and the change table goes over the top of the toilet which is pretty grim! For a relatively new area where there are going to be hundreds of children the changing facilities needed to be much more thought through. Hopefully if the car parks renovated they’ll be some parent and child or more accessible spaces added. If it was based on just the soft play we’d go again but taking it all into account theres much better, kids friendly places to go.

Positive experience: A real shame, unfortunately like a few other reviews submitted recently, I’ve found that the new gym space has become a lot smaller and as a result a lot more compact. The previous gym had a large Astro section that was amazing for warmups/box jumps/free weight activities, but the new gym has really really small floor space that means doing anything that isn’t stationary is impossible (even at 6:30am). That being said, the jungle gym for the kids and cafe area is huge and I’m sure will be great for those using it. But I’ve cancelled my membership and am looking elsewhere, purely based on the gym not working for me anymore. Hopefully they address this in the future and can reallocate more space. For those looking for new weights and machines and are confident around others (and don’t require floor space), it’s still a good option.

Negative experience: Gutted. The old gym space was huge with lots of equipment. The new gym space is much smaller and cramped. The weights area is very tightly packed with equipment and pretty intimidating to enter. You have to be very confident in taking up space for yourself. All the equipment is new and modern hence I’ve rated it more highly, but I don’t think this new gym space is for me and will probably cancel my membership now.