Reviews of Delaware Rock Gym Inc (Gym)

Dave Dougherty

Just started this week. Great experience, great routes, great environment!

Douglas Young

My favorite place. Excellent staff, quality route setting, safe and Fun!!

Ashon Ross

It's a fun place to be

Hunter kearns

I went there and felt judged. It was my first time and and I feel like I did not belong. Everyone judged like you were some peasent. I do not recommend if you are trying to have fun.

Sara Sanders

Awesome Gym! I dropped in today to the 6:30 pm class. The staff was friendly and inviting, the gym has a lot of equipment. Looking forward to coming regularly!!

Kingsley Ezeanaka

Excellent place for first timers and adventurers like myself. The guy that handled my group there is very cool person. 5 Stars plus!

Ryan Keating

Awesome rock gym! I'd been going there for over a year before quiting to go back to school. Both the staff and other members are very friendly and helpful. If you're looking for a gym that involves more than just picking stuff up and putting it down then this is the place for you.

Whitney Hengst

My friend, who has a member ship here, took me last night and I absolutely loved it! The staff taught me how to put on my harness and talked to me about the way things worked and the different types of walls. It was a lot of fun. A 44 min drive for me, but I'm definitely going to go again!

Katy Appelhans

Excellent job with our 5-yr-old! We first visited Delaware Rock Gym when our daughter was 3 1/2. She was kind of scared and they didn't charge us anything even though they helped her for at least 30 minutes. C started talking about going back again recently (now 5 1/2) so we went for it. Nikki was so sweet with her. She always encouraged her to get a little higher, but respected when she said she wanted to come down. Nikki spent more time with our daughter than technically should have been included with the 3 times up for $20, and they even let my husband sign a release and climb beside her once. Because of their kind patience, C was able to get all the way to the top! The gym itself is clean and spacious. It's cool (temperature) for the climbers working hard so if you aren't climbing bring a sweatshirt. We fully recommend this gym and hope to return soon! I could see it being a really cool family activity even with my teens.

Holly Bowers

My friend & I were looking for something fun to do. It was my friend's first time rock climbing so she was nervous. We were paired up with Emily and she made the experience comfortable and fun! The price and fair, clean environment and friendly staff. Would definitely go back and recommend to my friends & family. Thank you Delaware Rock Gym!

Steve Hart

My son loved it. Nice facility and helpful staff.

Dan Shapiro

I've been to several indoor rock climbing gyms - this is by far the largest, with the most options of size/difficulty walls. Highly recommend the intro class for beginners as you need to learn to belay/tie ropes etc before you can use the walls with a buddy. The do NOT have automatic repelling/belaying systems so you have to have a buddy or pay for someone there to belay you. This is the only reason I can't go as often as I'd like.. Phenomenal place though. I would highly recommend for kids or even very experienced climbers (they do have several very very hard walls - up to 10m ish)

Tim W

This was my home gym for about a year until I moved out of the area. Overall, this is an excellent gym that I would recommend to anyone in northern Delaware. The staff is all very friendly and helpful. They are an approachable group and are always courteous to the climbers, including guests, parties, and first-timers. If you pick their brains, you'll find they're also pretty experienced and can give a few good pointers. The overall quality of the facility is excellent. The felt padding throughout all climbing areas and the additional padding for the bouldering area is all in great condition and very comfortable. While some of the holds can collect chalk, I almost never saw a truly dirty hold. The ropes are also in great condition, especially since they switched out for new ropes in early 2018. The lead climbing ropes, which can be borrowed for free, are also in good condition. While the place can get a little hot during the summer, they can open the large warehouse doors for a good breeze and tan. The overall quantity of climbs is very good, especially for top-rope, and they rotate out climbs frequently enough to keep the regulars satisfied. Praise aside, I do have a short wishlist of things that could make this place even better: * The strength & conditioning area has no dumbbells. This is useful for climbers to train antagonist muscles (push muscles like chest and triceps) and avoid injuries. * The "lounge" area has uncomfortable plastic folding chairs and tables that probably deserve an upgrade. * While they do offer private instruction (if you ask for it), it would be useful if they offered occasional group technique lessons. * The shelves for personal belongings fill up very quickly during busy hours, so an additional shelf (or lockers) would be nice to have.

James Mayfield

Young route setters with no concept of grades or quality movement. This gym has excellent terrain and nice clean holds, but they need some new route setters. They take pride in some of their grade "stiffness." Their test-piece grade is V5 which can range between a V4 to V7. It's a crap shoot for their lower grades which can be some of the easiest V4s on the planet to the V0 waiting to injure the new-to-climbing climber as they close their hands down on holds that are too small for their tendons. Speaking of injury, they love to place a junk hold right before the "lip" of the boulder - a classic after-thought ending to their jug-hall V5 with one V6 crux move. This gym has potential - they just need trained setters with actual outdoor experience. They need to focus on making climbs more consistently difficult with much more fluid movement and, more importantly, making them difficult for enjoyable reasons. After all, this is a gym, and their routes are the product that they sell.

Cassidy Landry

I went there to have some fun and see if I liked rock climbing. The stuff they are so so so nice. If you are looking for some were to rock clime check out this place!

Laura DeFrain

Visited this gym from out-of-state and had a pretty decent time. Highlights are the wall features and sheer volume of routes. Detailed review below: Pros: -large space, plenty of room -nice variety of wall features -boulder, TR, lead (free lead ropes) -nice boulder pads -fun bouldering problems -staff was nice -spacious bathrooms, relatively clean -met a nice crusher dude, indicating community has some cool people -variety of smaller handholds -can make holds in-house -got the summer camp bus full of kids in and out before open hours, smart gym! We flinched when we saw the bus but they know what's up :) Areas for Improvement: -Tape. You can make any holds you want in-house and you still use tape?! This is extremely wasteful of not only the tape itself but also time: staff's time putting up & maintaining the tape and guest's time figuring out where the heck they're going and what's on, especially when a piece inevitably falls off. Not to mention the noise... (see next) Please do yourselves and everyone else a favor and switch to monochromatic setting. This really put a damper on our visit because we're used to being able to focus on the climbing itself, not searching for tiny pieces of tape that may or may not be there. I know, we're spoiled, but when you have the capability to do this and yet choose not to... you're only hurting yourselves. -Noise: Because of the ridiculous amount of tape on the wall & how easily it falls off, there were a few staff members going around replacing/reinforcing w/rubber mallets and even using drills to remove/replace holds. We were lead climbing at the time and missed some important commands due to this. Loud maintenance noises during open hours is unsafe, especially when people are lead climbing. -No volumes or large feature holds: this place had zero volumes or lg feature holds, which means your poor setters have their work cut out for them in terms of creativity. Thankfully the amount of holds & wall features make this bearable but I can imagine things start to get a bit repetitive in certain areas w/out things to add dimension. Might be insurance companies fault but if it isn't a liability thing, get some volumes and features at least in the bouldering area! -Old, slippery holds: speaks for itself -Old, slippery routes: it must be challenging to set so much real estate regularly. Some lead routes had been up for at least a few months. Not a problem with new holds but really challenging with old, slippery ones! -Rope: the rope we were provided was fine though showing signs of wear (namely, softened core & some fraying). They asked us to coil it ourselves when we were done. Nope, sorry, we're here on limited time and we don't work here. Protocol at many commercial facilities is to check each rope upon being turned in for signs of wear while you're flaking & coiling it. Made me wonder how often the rope is actually being inspected if not after each use. -Training area had tons of space and surprisingly little equipment given the area. Maybe a systems/Moon/Tension board or better fitness equipment like weights or rack, would be cool to see. -Seating around the bouldering area: would be nice All-in-all, we had a good time (in spite of the tape

Phillip Chaffee

Friendly people and staff. Great facility. Reasonable price.

John Smith

Love this gym. Friendly and professional staff!!! Excellent equipment. New routes every week.

Shridhar Dighe

Awesome place for adults as well as kids. I take my 3 year old there and she gets entertained by climbing on the walls. The crew is really helpful and supportive. Great place to spend some quality time.

Joshua Olney Zide

Very good as climbing gyms go....

Matt Wufsus

I went here for a few months in the winter, but switched over to a place closer to me to save gas money. Staff is friendly, helpful, and most if not all of the climbers here are also friendly and provide constructive feedback. Reasonably priced when compared to gyms of similar size. I loved the bouldering wall, didn't do much top roping.

Chandra Sherman

Tried the DRG as a family outing today and had a great time. The facility is very well run and the staff was great. Eric, specifically, was encouraging (but not pushy) and my usually very anxious 6 year old had a fabulous time. We will definitely be back! :)

Ben R

Well up kept and regularly updated gym. Equipment and walls are in great condition. Staff are friendly and helpful. Prices are reasonable and hours expansive. Over all an excellent place to go.

Zach Burris

10/10 would recommend.

Samuel Malusa

Great staff, extremely friendly members

Cate M

I love you, Delaware Rock Gym. This is where I first learned to climb and now the place I take all my friends to learn. They treat you like family.

Mitchell Gurwicz

My son (9 yrs old) and I stopped in to see the gym this weekend. We had never been to this gym before and we wanted to check it out. I was impressed. The gym is clean and even though it was hot outside, it was nice and cool and breezy inside. The sign in process was swift and the belay check was complete and painless. If you've climbed before and have your own gear as we do, it's 10-15 minutes from walking in the door to climbing your first run. There were so many ropes and routes to choose from. The pictures don't do the place justice. The ropes were all in good condition and the routes were well marked and I felt true to their rating. I liked that you have to use your own belay device and you rope/tie in each and every time. I have to say the staff was excellent. They were friendly, polite and a pleasure to deal with. They treated us very well and were great about belaying me. They have lots of options for people who need to be belayed and it worked out great for us. Pricing seemed very reasonable to me for everything they offer. If we didn't live about 1.5 hours away, we would have joined as members right on the spot. Hopefully we'll be making the trip back soon because so far, out of all the rock gyms we've visited, this one is our favorite.

Dan Leipold

Really enjoy the DRG. The staff is very friendly and knowledgeable, they have good bouldering, top roping, and lead climbing, and the routes change often enough that you won't get bored. They have a good number of beginner-friendly routes, along with many more challenging routes as well.