Pool waitlist for 9 years.

Anonymous wrote:11 years?! I've never lived anywhere that long.

It’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere ever! DH and I joke that we should move out and back in just to purge our stuff.

Our pool waitlist is boundaried and addresses are checked annually. It’s probably one of the subconscious reasons we haven’t moved to a different neighborhood! Minors can be added to the list, too, so when I check it online I can see that people who don’t currently belong add their 15-16 year olds in the hopes that if they settle down back in the neighborhood when they’re in their 20s, they’ll come off the waitlist at about the same time. Insanity!

11 years for a spot at a pool with a summer swim team. So fun to start as a 13-14 with all the other kids who had years of swim.

11 years?! I've never lived anywhere that long.

Daycare. We got a call from our first choice, a waiting list we got one once the pregnancy was confirmed, when DD was in kindergarten. I just laughed and hung up

you people live in a different world than me - have never been on any wait list, other than the local pizza place

Anonymous wrote:I feel like daycare waiting lists were the worst and several I never got in to.

Daycare/preschool was worse than swim. We never got in and some required a fee every year to remain on the list. It was a complete money grab and took advantage of desperate parents. We never got into many. Technically I’m still waiting and some of my kids are old enough to work there now.

I think our swim club was 8 years but we didn’t have to pay yearly and at least got updates on our position.

Anonymous wrote:I feel like daycare waiting lists were the worst and several I never got in to.

I finally got into part-time 3s preschool and gave up. We got off a daycare waitlist when my child was 4 and in pre-k and going to kindergarten in 4 months. And then all of the other waitlists began. Her cohort exhausts me.

I feel like daycare waiting lists were the worst and several I never got in to.

The barn waitlist post had me thinking: what’s the worst sports-related waitlist you’ve been on? We live out of the area now and I’m curious if we have it better or worse than DC/VA.

For us it was:

-swim club (11 years and still waiting for at least another 2 years. We joined another one and drive 25 mins-1 hour depending on traffic)

-gymnastics pre-team (DD qualified for the pre-comp program but there wasn’t room to move up so she was waitlisted… for 13 months. By the time they called us with a pre-team spot, she had already moved to another gym, gone through pre-team, and was training for her first meet season)

Sibling and returnee preference policies seem to make access to things like sessioned lessons or camps so much worse. My friends here have also struggled with swim lessons, riding lesson access, dance classs, mountain bike classes and camps, and outdoor adventure camps.

In a lot of cases it seems like if you didn’t have a sibling who started the activity 5 years ago, you’ll never get off a waitlist because you keep getting bumped by younger siblings.