A lot goes on behind the scenes at the Castle – there’s more to it than re-setting the routes every now and again. We’re constantly looking at ways to improve the quality of your service.

Every 1-2 years we release a new survey to see whether we're living up to your expectations. In between each survey we feedback to different departments, review suggestions and start making changes.  Thanks to everyone that took part in the 2015 survey; based on your recommendations we have made lots of changes to the Castle. Read on if you’d like to know what we’ve been up to…

Staffing

• Key Issues: Visibility, approachability, queue times
• Each department has added extra staff on weekdays and weekends to reduce queue time and help you get served faster! We’ve kitted out the route setter’s and duty manager’s with new uniform to improve their visibility. All departments have also been given additional training to ensure service is top notch. 

Opening Hours

• Key Issues: Longer Opening Times 
• Our member lock-ins now run most Sunday’s throughout the year to give regular’s quieter time on the wall. We have also been trialling earlier opening hours during school holidays...

The Session

• Key Issues: Quantity, Information
• By popular demand we’re adding more Sessions in 2018, including Bank Holidays! We’re also creating better posters to inform you about the Session & WWA. 

Training Equipment

• Key Issues: Better facilities – stretching area & equipment
• Enjoying the new Olympic rings? That's just one of the changes we've made since the last survey! There's also more space and new matting in the stretching area. A completely new training area is on the cards… watch this space. 

Route Setting

• Key Issues: Grade Distribution, Route Navigation, Wall Angles
• A lot of climbers found our old lead wall steep, intimidating and hard – yikes. Following redesign in 2017 the area is open with more continues angles and the grade distribution includes a good number of easier grades on the steep part of the wall. Happy days! The Panels has also been rebuilt with a different design (by popular request). 
• Keen on traversing? These walls are now re-set at the same frequency the bouldering walls! 
• To help you navigate our routes we’ve added rubber tags marking starts on the outdoor boulders, similar tags will soon be appearing in our bouldering areas! 
• Some of you felt the grading was a little off... We ran a comparison for the grade distribution that Castle goer’s climb vs. our actual grade distribution. Based on the findings we altered the grade distribution to mirror demand.  

Shop

• Key Issues: Knowledge, ‘What is a boot demo’?
• Over the past few years we’ve hired the best range of staff around from varied climbing backgrounds with experience in Scottish winter, competition climbing, bouldering, sport climbing, trad climbing, indoor/outdoor destinations (in the UK and abroad), alpinism, route setting etc. In addition the Shop has regular training days, meetings with brand reps and visits to tradeshows discussing the latest gear on the market. 
• Boot Demos aka. Rock Shoe Testing Events have been renamed. We even created a blog to tell you more!

Café 

• Key Issues: Speed of service & time spent queueing, seating, food high in protein
• You've probably noticed by now that we renovated the Cafe last year! The new Café is designed with additional seating, space for queuing and a larger food preparation area to speed up service. In addition, we trialled opening a coffee bar next to Reception to reduce queue times.
• There are new higher protein foods on the menu and we're planning on developing this further for 2018. If you have any suggestions (sorry folks no meat) drop us an email. 

Reception

• Key Issues: Consistent communication, knowledge 
• There are now Senior roles within the team – these staff get extra training to help deal with more complex queries so questions get answered faster! Reception also now have more shared responsibilities to improve general knowledge and enable the team to be more pro-active dealing with your queries.

The quest for a bigger and better Centre continues! We’re aware the Centre can get very busy - last year we purchased the Castle and some adjacent buildings. Over the next few years we expect some huge changes that will improve service (and space!) for you.  Keep an eye out for updates.

If you want to help us continue making changes please fill in our 2018 survey here.