My daughter and I love going to the Pettit for a bit of Olympic athlete spotting and a few spins around the oval. We have usually had a great experience there -- we have found the other skaters to be courteous and the general mood to be light and it's fun to watch the activities on the other rinks -- the other skaters there are pretty nice and they've had some fun events like a recent skate with the Mascots day which my daughter loved.
But, as we found out over the holidays this year, the Pettit can get very crowded and didn't do a particularly good job with ice maintenance -- their open skate hours are pretty long so perhaps they just prep the ice before and after the session -- the upshot was rough ice that a couple of learn-to-skaters like us found a bit more difficult to navigate. (My 3-year-old fell more then usual and I had to just glide through it all and forget the cross overs I was learning) I can't imagine that they let their serious athletes skate on that so they have to repair it daily and get it up to par and we'd never had ice troubles before. But after running into the issue a couple of times we now steer clear during high traffic times like holidays and school breaks and go on nothing-happening weekends and weekdays.
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