The Orokawa Y in Towson (YMCA)

★★★★★Courtney Gover

The YMCA Towson is a great gym. It is clean and the people are friendly. The classes are great. We like body pump, cycle, and my favorites are Zumba dance and WERQ dance classes. Super fun and high cardio! Love it!

★T

leaving this review for YMCA Towson after recently canceling our family membership. As a family of 4, it just wasn’t worth it. The biggest issue was overcrowding and constant waitlists. It wasn’t just trying to sign our kids 5 and 7 up for sports everything had a waitlist. Programs, parents’ night out, even Stay & Play. There were times we showed up as paying members and still had to wait because it was already full. The facility is consistently overpacked. The pool is always crowded, with the kiddie pool partially blocked off and the lap pool often unavailable due to swim lessons. The family locker rooms are nasty.. bathrooms have pee all over the floor and hair. It looks like they don’t ever take time to clean the locker rooms and we had to bring our own towels to stand on that’s how bad it was. The gym & sauna are always full, & even classes like yoga look maxed out every time. If you don’t get there early you’re basically out of luck. Scheduling was also frustrating. Open gym times were not consistent they would sometimes end earlier than posted, which made it hard to plan around. For kids there really aren’t many options. Stay & Play felt more like a daycare for much younger children and was often run by very young staff. Our kids always seemed like the oldest ones there and didn’t really enjoy it. Programs like Parents Night Out filled up instantly within hours there were already long waitlists, which makes it nearly impossible to participate. We also looked into summer camp, and at nearly $400/week, it didn’t feel like a good value. Meals weren’t included, and there wasn’t clear information about what was actually provided like field trips. Overall feels like this location is overbooked and not equipped to handle the number of families it serves

★T

Let me be very clear: my family and I were targeted and embarrassed today at the Towson YMCA for absolutely no reason. When we arrived, we scanned our membership card like every other member. Immediately after we scanned in, a man who repeatedly made sure to announce that he was the “Executive Director” rushed over to the computer and specifically checked our account. He did not do this to anyone else. Then he pulled my family aside in front of other people and told us we had a “past due balance” and asked if we wanted to pay it right then and there — as if we were trying to sneak into the building. Mind you, we were told we had until February 28th before anything would even happen to our membership. Today is February 14th. So the urgency, the attitude, and the public confrontation were completely unnecessary. What made this even worse is that he did not approach a single other family the way he approached us. Plenty of other members walked in, scanned in, smiled, and kept moving — but he made it his personal mission to stop us. We were one of the only Black families there, and it honestly felt like we were being treated like we didn’t belong. To avoid any further issues, we paid the balance online immediately while we were still in the building. Then later, when we went to pick up our children from the daycare area, this same “Executive Director” approached me AGAIN asking if I had time to talk about our past due balance — even after we already handled it. At that point, it crossed the line into harassment. The way he handled this was rude, unprofessional, and disrespectful. Nobody should be confronted multiple times and publicly singled out like that, especially when they are paying members and their account isn’t even past the cancellation deadline. The YMCA is supposed to be a welcoming environment. Today, it was not. This needs to be addressed immediately.

★Jeremy Tellier

My experience started out great, an older gentleman i believe his name was henry. We signed up for the try the Y membership. We travel in our converted skoolie with dogs. Day 2 of going to the Y we received a very rude call about our dogs in the bus.so I returned to the bus with my dogs That had fans in the front, ice water, and AC in the rear of the bus. 15 minutes later, we received another call this time from a YMCA employee. ( Zayvon ) was also very rude and side we had to leave because it was the busy time and parking is for valued customers and made it clear we are not wanted here. From my bus window, I counted over 40 open parking spots.

★★★★Dime W

Great clean facility. Minus one star because they do not have the daily activities and programs listed anywhere other than the website. Other centers show the daily schedule as you walk in. You don’t know when open climb is or what classes are taking place.