Psychotomy

So, Wednesday evening we went to the Lifetime Fitness near us, to look around and see if we wanted to go with that or the Columbia Association. We’d been members of CA before, but didn’t use it much after the first year and had been stuck in a 3-yr term.

So, Lifetime is month-to-month, which is nice. So we went for a tour. Place looks nice, big pool (indoor and outdoor) as well as water slides during free swim !! Kid Center for DK to play in while we work out. Huge equipment room with a ridiculous number of elipticals, bikes and treadmills. Resistance machines in dozens of varieties.

Since our major impetus was for DK to get someplace to swim, the pools are EXCELLENT. The kidspace looked interesting, but we didn’t get to look too closely (kids were in there, so it makes sense). All-in-all it looked great.

CA is an older facility (Lifetime was built after we moved in, so it’s only 5 or so years old). And it looks it even after renovations and such. Maybe two dozen bikes/etc. A dozen, maybe 18, resistance machines. If we pay the extra for Plus membership again, it’s about 50% more stuff in a “private” room … with all the other people who payed extra for the private equipment … But OK. Kid area DK would be confined to the non-toilet-trained area with a couple tables and a play kitchen and some trains. Nothing to climb on, not much space to run around …

Prices however, WOW! Lifetime is ~450$ just to sign up. THEN it’s 130$ a month for the three of us !!! CA is 90$ a month, no signup, minimum 1-yr commitment. Plus is 110$. Frankly we’ve agreed that to compare we should compare Lifetime to Plus, at which point we’d definitely go with Lifetime. But since with CA we wouldn’t ACTUALLY get plus, because the features aren’t worth it to us, the extra 20$/mo is kindof … the hangup.

the member advisor showing us around at Lifetime suggested that they have a 30-day moneyback garauntee, so we could try it for a month and if by the end of that we didn’t like it we could get the money back and basically a month free trial. Probably minus some portion of the signup fee. And they seem to regularly run specials (possibly to compete with CA) wherein the signup fee is reduced to 75 or 100$ (75$ of the signup is the ‘administration fee’ which, frankly, I don’t see why that’s not just included in the membership fee). But the guy was a complete tool. Tractionless shiny loafers, nice pressed pants and a shirt with collar points. And dude pushed harder than the last car salesman we talked to. I kindof wonder if that 75$ fee is the commission that he’d've gotten if we signed up.

So we decided to think about it, but we’re kindof thinking we’re going to go with Lifetime. Gonna see if we can go back and get a better look at the kids area, since the tool kindof glossed over it. Walked through the door, said “This is the kid center” and then started to leave again. He just didn’t seem to get that the family who said their main impetus was a pool for the toddler, who dad was wearing in a carrier, had some interest in the kid area.

Posted in: fitness by attriel /