Skegness X-Site SkatePark Tourist Information

X-Site Skate Park review updated Feb 2010 to take into account price changes.

All users must sign a consent form before using X-Site Skatepark.

X-Site SkatePark membership £24 per person, per year.

X-Site Skate Park Prices
Session – member: £5 non-member: £7
Day – member: £8 non-member: £12

X-Site Skate Park Hire Prices
Skateboard: £2 a session
Inline Skates: £2 a session
Helmets: £2 a session

X-Site Skate Park School Holiday Opening Hours
Monday: 12:30pm-4:00pm 4:00pm-8:45pm
Tuesday: 12:30pm-4:00pm 4:00pm-8:45pm
Wednesday: 12:30pm-4:00pm 4:00pm-8:45pm
Thursday: 12:30pm-4:00pm 4:00pm-8:45pm
Friday: 12:30pm-4:00pm 4:00pm-8:45pm
Saturday: 11:00pm-3:00pm 3:00pm-6:45pm
Sunday: 11:00pm-2:30pm 2:30pm-6:00pm

X-Site Skate Park Term Time Opening Hours
Monday: Closed
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: 3:00pm-8:45pm
Thursday: 3:00pm-8:45pm
Friday: 3:00pm-8:45pm
Saturday: 11:00pm-3:00pm 3:00pm-6:45pm
Sunday: 11:00pm-2:30pm 2:30pm-6:00pm

New X-Site Member Prices

Under 12’s Saturday morning “fun session”
9.00am – 10.45am, £3.00 including hire equipment.

After school session.
3.00pm – 6.00 pm on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. £3.50 including equipment hire.

Friday members session.

3:00pm – 8:45pm for £3.00 (I gave them a call to confirm the times as not clear on their website, just says night).

Check X-Sites website for latest tourist information www.xsiteskatepark.co.uk

SkatePark

Skegness X-Site SkatePark Review

Definitely not a Skegness family attraction, there are no facilities to keep accompanying adults entertained except to sit in there cafe. Think along the lines of a what it was like when your kids where younger at soft play area. There getting plenty of exercise and you just sit still cooped up trying to make that cup of expensive coffee last as long as possible hoping they get bored soon.

X-Site Skate Park is for kids, but I would say it’s mainly aimed at teenagers/early twenties, we’ve seen kids as young as 5 years old accompanied by an adult in the ramp room. Adults can go in the ramp room with just shoes on for £2.00, but be warned swearing is flown around by the teenagers freely and it does get rough with an every man for himself attitude on the skate ramps, there’s a lot of jostling and arguing as well as hazards like skate boards flying across your path.

My kids used to go early in the morning on a Saturday to avoid the boisterous teens who came in later in the day, but X-Site has changed opening times so you can not avoid the masses anymore. There is not a constant staff presence in the ramp room, staff just stick their heads in occasionally. If there is a problem my kids found the staff will sort it out, but you have to go to the reception at the front desk to tell staff members you need help. It also depends on which member of staff is on at the time, some are more pro active than others. There really should be a member of staff in the ramp room at all times in our opinion, you wouldn’t go to a swimming pool and find the pool isn’t supervised!

The X-Site toilets were clean, but the locker room was small and my kids found older kids smoking in them, again no staff presence. The no staff present is a big issue for me. When my oldest son 15 at the time went to X-Site for the first time, (the 1st time he had ever been to a skate park) there was no one to show him how to use the equipment in the entire building let alone in the ramp room. He came home with huge bruises on his thighs and couldn’t go skating for over a month because of the pain to his legs. I phoned X-Site to ask if they had lessons and was told they don’t give lessons because they didn’t have any qualified staff. I don’t know if this still is the case but that concerned me immensely.

Then the prices went up and my children could no longer afford to go on a regular basis. The price shot up from £4.50 to £7.00 a session which is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for your kids to go up a few plywood ramps or skate around a concrete block outside in the plaza.

I can only give X-Site a review from a parents perspective and my opinion is it’s a rip-off at a ridiculous price of £7.OO for a session. OK so sessions last a possible 4 hours, but my experience is your kids will only do a third of that time actually skating, the rest of the time they will spend it on the X-box 360 or get fed up and leave after an 1-2 hours.

I have 3 boys all teenagers so for me being a resident of Skegness that’s a possible £21.00 a week. “Well” I hear you say “become a member, then you can get in for just £5.00 a session”.

X-Site membership costs are expensive, except on Friday

Since writing the Skegness X-Site Skate Park Review there’s been a few additional prices added (originally I considered them discounts, but truth is two of them are far from discounts!).

New prices at X-Site.

Under 12’s Saturday morning “fun session”: 9.00am – 10.45am, £3.00 including hire equipment.
After school session: 3.00pm – 6.00 pm on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. £3.50 including equipment hire.
Friday night members session 3:00pm – 8:45pm for £3.00.

Xsite costs based on taking advantage of NO “discounts” beyond the normal discount

It cost £24.00 per person per year to become a member and that entitles you to get into XSite for £5.00 instead of £7.00 a session, that’s a cost of £72.00 up front for my three children to go skating.

This would mean my children would have to go to XSite 12 times each just to pay off the membership (that’s break even point) and that’s not including the £5.00 I’ve been paying to get my kids through the door.

So that means in the 12 sessions paying off the membership I’ve also payed £60.00 each kid, with three children that’s a whopping £180.00 plus the £72.00 for the three memberships, that’s an astonishing £252.00 for just 12 sessions I’ve had to pay just so my kids can go skating for £5.00 a session in the equivalent of an empty factory building with concrete floors and plywood ramps!

And that’s just to break even, to make a membership worthwhile you really need to go more than once a month. If one child went weekly (52 sessions) the cost would be:

Membership: £24
Sessions: 52 x £5 = £260
Total: £284 a year for one child for a single session once a week.

In comparison Skegness Cadets that run every Thursday evening 6:30pm to 9:00pm costs 50p a week and for regular attendance a free uniform. Skegness LaserQuest costs £8 a year membership and there’s a members only night for £5 (6pm to 10pm) which is filled with fun activities run by the staff (they enjoy their jobs :)), you also get cheaper games for being a member (you make a saving almost from day one, as it should be).

I don’t know who the people are who came up with this stupid so called membership scheme, but who ever they are they don’t have a Maths GCSE between them.

Even the new prices don’t all make sense, the person who wrote the quote below really needs to buy a calculator.

“Members get discount entrance to the park and a £3 session every Friday night. If you are local or plan to skate the park more than once per year becoming a member SAVES YOU MONEY!”

“More than once per year becoming a member SAVES YOU MONEY!” means if you go twice a year being a member should save money.

Cheapest non-member price is £7 per session, so two sessions = £14.
It costs £24 membership (one session effectively free), cheapest session as a member is £3, 2 sessions plus membership = £27.

Even if you take a full day non member fee of £12 it’s still not cheaper to go twice as a non member than a member over all.
It costs £24 membership (one £12 session effectively free), cheapest session as a member is £3, 2 sessions plus membership = £27 which is still more expensive than £19 (£12 + £7) as a non-member.

Most people learn before they even go to school that 30 is bigger than 14 and 27 is bigger than 19.

If you work out the very best price as a member it’s a minimum 6 sessions to break even using the £3 Friday sessions (see later).

Seriously Xsite owners sort that out, it makes you look stupid.

Xsite costs based on taking FULL advantage of new prices

Lets first show how poorly thought out some of these new prices are:

“After school session: 3.00pm – 6.00pm on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. £3.50 including equipment hire.”

Sounds good yes?
Erm, no, whoever thought this up seriously needs to do a remedial Maths class! X-Site is open 3:00pm-8:45pm those days, so why limit the time to 6pm when the vast majority of kids are going to want to head home, change their school clothes, get a bite to eat (do homework :-)) etc… before heading out to skate?

St Clements School for example ends it’s day at 3:10pm, it’s a tad unrealistic to expect kids to rush straight to Xsite from school, but lets imagine they did and could get to Xsite by 3:30pm (maybe they took a change of clothes and their skates to school to save time).

For their £3:50 they realistically get 2 and half hours skating or £1.40 per hour (or £1.17 per hour if kids skip school and use the full 3 hours).
This is more expensive per hour than paying £5 for the full 5 hours 45 minute session at 87p per hour or as a non member paying £7 per session at £1.22 per hour!

The above prices do not take into account the £24 annual membership fee.

BTW there’s a better deal on Friday’s so the above offer is only for two days a week, since no one who can count to 10 is going to pay £3.50 on a Friday for 3 hours when you can cover the same time period plus 2 hours and 45 minutes MORE for 50p less!

The “Under 12’s Saturday morning “fun session”: 9.00am – 10.45am for £3.00″ is even worse at £2.07p per hour.

Some offer/discounts they are.

That just leaves the Friday night members session 3:00pm – 8:45pm for £3.00 to examine.

Now this price is much more like it, if you use the full 5 hours and 45 minute session it works out at around 55p an hour (before taking into account the £24 membership costs).

Lets take a single membership where the person wants to use Xsite once a week only on Friday (the other ‘lower’ prices are a rip off and shouldn’t be used).

Membership: £24
Sessions: 52 x £3 = £156
Total: £180 a year for one person for a 5 hour 45 minute session once a week.
Taking into account the year membership your cost per session is £3.46 compared to £7 for non-members.

That’s good value for a person who uses Xsite on a weekly basis and is happy only going on a Friday (for lowest cost). I would check if Friday’s are now busy?

Break even point (when a person should/shouldn’t buy a membership) is 6 sessions at £3 a session (£42 overall including membership at £24). If you don’t plan to do more than 6 Friday sessions a year, don’t buy a membership.

When we first reviewed X-Site the break even point was 12 sessions as there was no reasonable cost Friday session.

If X-Site had this price when we wrote the review we might have seriously considered a yearly membership for our kids, we’d have first checked how busy X-Site is on Fridays (they didn’t enjoy X-Site when really busy).

If they had a £3 a session multiple times through the week (you can’t guarantee they can go every Friday and the busy issue) for members it would have almost certainly been a yes to a membership for our kids and they’d have probably all gone once a fortnight.

So X-Site has lost out on around £300 from our family per year because of greed when we first wrote the review.

IF YOU DO NOT USE THE FRIDAY SESSION X_SITE’S NOT VALUE FOR MONEY

A decent membership would be you get in for £5.00 a session plus every 3rd visit was free (that works out at £3.33 per session, similar to the new Friday session price). Also a discount should be available for big families, those of us who have more than 1 child.

Unfortunately X-Site has been set up yet again for the one off visitor and this is not a Skegness attraction for all children (unless limited to Friday sessions), it’s only for kids who can afford it and not fair on families who can’t.

The whole point of a skate park in Skegness is meant to be for young people to let of some steam, get some exercise and expel all that built up energy and aggression on something constructive. Skate parks are always deemed as one of the answer to anti-social behaviour, give the teenagers something to do and they wont cause any trouble.

I don’t see how that’s the case for Skegness’s youngsters, due to the high cost associated with using X-Site on a regular basis. As a Skegness family with three teenage boys and modest income, we could not afford X-Site’s fees to keep our children ‘off the streets’. This makes XSite realistically a one off attraction for tourists, not very charitable thing to do to Skegness families from a charity.

I assume the charity statue for X-Site was just put in place to get funding still if your going to call your self a charity you should at least act a little like one. It must have been terrible for the children and teenagers of Skegness when they there told there’s going to get a shiny new state of the art skate park to give them something to do and get them off the streets. They must have been so looking forward to it, skateparks are one of those attractions that’s usually on every kids wish list.

After it was built they got the rug pulled from under there feet and were told it’s not for you, it’s only for professionals and people who can afford it, then to add insult to injury the council builds a free out door skate park for the kids in Mablethorpe :-(

X-Site is poorly supervised!, which in a child dominated sports attraction is dangerous, X-Site should have qualified staff in the ramp room to assist and maintain order, if your paying £7.00 for your children to go to X-Site at the very least you expect a member of staff in the ramp room to show the kids how to use the equipment.

It’s a rip off! and we as a family have Boycotted X-Site skatepark.