Des Moines Parks and Recreation

"Today a stray pitbull came into the park while we were playing. 10 young kids 3 adults and 1 dog... we went into the fenced tennis court to safely eat our picnic lunch. The gate to the tennis court was broken. We ended up calling ARL twice and after 45min to come get the pitbull. Then we called parks and rec to get us out of the tennis court since the knob was broke and we had locked everyone in there as precaution. Parks and rec took our call serious and in a matter of 10min came to our rescue. He then went above and beyond and kept on eye on the pitbull as we shuffled all the kids to the cars."

"I was looking for volunteer work picking up litter around town. I've been working with Rachel on this and she has been very prompt in getting back to me. So far in volunteering with the parks department I've had nothing but a good experience."

"Recreation department is the absolute worst. Kelsey and I believe his name is Mike especially. Pay a large amount of money for several years for slow pitch and it doesn’t matter. They will make terrible scheduling decisions that benefit no one but the city I suppose and tell you too bad for you if you protest. I strongly recommend looking into alternatives such as Altoona, or West Des Moines City leagues. They will take the fun out of it if they can."

"Edit. They answered the phone quickly today. Thank you. family bought a season pass for northwest aquatic center. 140 bucks The slide has been operational one day because of understaffing. I bring the kids today and the whole place is closed due to understaffing. I call the aquatic center to find out when they will be open. That number is just an automated message. It directs me to the des Moines parks and rec. I called the number and was sitting on hold for at least an hour before i finally gave up. When will the pool be open?"

"Horrible customer service. We were supposed to play a scheduled league game at 8:40pm on Sunday night. We showed up at that time and had players from both teams ready to play, but they had closed and locked the building. This was shocking because we know other games from the same league were played earlier in the day. Ultimately DMP&R apologized but they offered nothing in the way of solving the problem. We discussed with the director of the league and came up with a plan to makeup the game the following week in a way that was easiest for everyone. (we were going to come early and do a double header). The director then changed the schedule midweek before we had a chance to make up the game. I called and spoke with Mike Dayton and him and I came to another agreement on how we would make this game up. Mike's midweek schedule had not accounted for the makeup game so we were just going to lose that game without any changes. Mike and I agreed on a way that we could solve this while only changing the time of 2 games, we both said on the phone that this solution made sense and shouldn't be an issue. Only 1 day later, Mike had retracted that agreement. Instead of making up the game in an easy way, we had to play our regularly scheduled game at 6:50, in the middle of the league's games, and then come back and play the make up game 2 hours later at 8:40. So this was their issue that they couldn't even make up in a way that was at all convenient, and they discarded 2 easy solutions along the way. This whole experience feels like a slap in the face from the league and I will never recommend DMP&R to anyone in the future."