Vertical Endeavors - Bloomington

The orientation procedure is a bit of a pain and not very helpful for a new climber such as myself. I thankfully had my boyfriend along who is an experienced climber. It did take a long time to complete orientation with the video and actually waiting for an employee to be present to complete the orientation.Once the employee finally arrived who was giving the orientation, the first thing she said to me was "you look grumpy". She is the older woman employee with short pink hair. I simply had my mask on and my arms crossed and was in a great mood actually. I have had these things said to me when I was a child and a teenager so felt it was extremely disrespectful to have this said to me as an adult again. So off the bat there was an odd hostile environment created for no reason.The woman then had three employees shadowing me throughout the rest of the orientation. I was the only person completing the orientation so this was quite uncomfortable as I felt so many eyes on me the whole time.Overall the rest of the staff was kind, it was just the one older woman with shorter pink hair. I was then in a sour mood due to her for about half of the time I was there. Probably won't be returning to this location in the future because of her.

A message to the owners; please sell VE. The employees do the absolute best they can for the $12/hour you pay them. You are doing the entire Mn climbing community a disservice by continuing to run your facilities as “ma and pa” shops. At the very least pay a living wage and adopt standard commercial climbing gym hours; I cannot begin comprehend why you limit your hours so much. Not even open 12 hours on a Saturday?! By far and away the worst climbing organization in the country. The moment a competitor opens their doors they will go out of business.Edit- Start front desk/instructors at $15/hour and I bet my WHOLE rack that your staffing issues will resolve :)

The staff at this location are so friendly and helpful! One of them, I believe her name was Alix (with an “i”) was incredibly delightful to be around. The orientation was straight forward and the staff member who helped us was amazing. Overall I would definitely recommend the Bloomington location.

Such a cool place for all ages. Very reasonable on pricing (we have done multiple one time visits with equipment rental but they have other options available) considering how much equipment and maintaining it costs. Staff is always friendly and helpful. Other climbers are usually willing to lend a hand or give advice. Really cool community of people.

Let me just say that I really wanted to like VE (since they're the only top rope facility in the twin cities...). They have tall walls and a huge amount of square-footage to work with and yet - they just throw it all away on sub-par route setting. It's extremely disappointing and feels like they take advantage of being the only option to charge $$$ and not improve.To elaborate, the setting is incredibly monotonous. It literally does not matter which route I climb within a particular grade range because they all feel similar. Even the hold types are similar! Until you start climbing in the 5.11 range or above, 90% of the holds used are jugs with the occasional pinch thrown in. No crimps, no slopers. The movement sequences flow, but again, there's so much similarity, it gets boring.As others have mentioned, the grading is soft. This is not an issue though in a gym where if one route is too easy...just move to a harder one.Also, if visiting for the first time, make sure you allocate ~1 hr to watch a video about how climbing is dangerous and to get belay tested. Don't expect to walk in and take 10 min to do your belay test. It WILL take an hour for the orientation and your test.

I probably wouldn’t choose this gym for bouldering, but the staff was friendly and the facility seemed nice. If you are climbing ropes it might very well be 5 stars, they seemed to have a lot of routes. This gym just happened to be on my route passing through town, so I didn’t get the full experience. The bouldering set was a little stout or inconsistent with difficulty within climbs and there wasn’t a lot of flow. Many of the holds are outdated and/or uncomfortable, and most of the climbs over V3 seemed man sized. Bouldering is often dynamic, but that doesn’t mean it always needs to be reachy. Don’t forget to set some for the shorties, please! The bouldering area seems more like an afterthought, but it is nice that they have the option! They had a ton of problems for beginners even though it is a small area, which is nice for people just starting out. Overall a good facility. I am psyched the Midwest is getting more climbing gyms!(It is difficult to give a good review off one visit. Take this with a grain of salt. Thank you for a good session!)

The facility is great, but what really sets it apart is the staff! Everyone there has been so kind, helpful and informative. Always look forward to climbing here.

Very easy experience for the novice. Auto belay for 40 & 60 foot walls. Fun, affordable & challenging to your level.

COVID restrictions a touch unreasonable.I have always struggled with the way VE manages their gyms. It doesn’t foster a very healthy climbing community and focuses on birthday parties.I have put up with with the banning of climbing equipment that actually makes climbing safer (i.e. Edelrid Ohm).Most recently, they have introduced all of their COVID restrictions. I am in full support of adding new safety precautions, however it’s at the expense of basic human needs. Today, my girlfriend and I were wrapping up our climbing at the tail end of our 2 hour reservation. We were rushing to leave due to our reservation ending. Both of us had to use the restroom and wash our hands. In total, that put us about 15 mins after the end of our reservation. We were harshly criticized by the staff for this infraction.We learned yesterday that they are actually recording these infractions, and monitoring you more heavily at the gym! I find this to be quite draconian and unacceptable.👎

VE is a fun place to climb, even if you don’t have experience in climbing. Currently I’m giving it a 3 star review bc of its operating procedures. We went last week, signing up for our 2 hour time slot. The guy working at the front desk made it a point to check us in painfully slow. He sat on his computer, and pretended not to see us standing there when we needed to switch of shoe sizes. It took 45 minutes to get the ok to start climbing. With only a 2 hour time slot I found this frustrating and his attitude very rude. They were not busy, he chose to make it a difficult experience for us. It felt like a power grab.Moving on, we started climbing and had a nice time trying out the different routes. There is a good variety of options and safety is important and thorough.The biggest problem with their new covid protocols is that they require you to sanitize your hands after each climb. This is a great idea, but a joke in implementation. They have one random mostly empty spray bottle per climbing area. Not even a wall mount hand sanitizing dispenser, a spray bottle that you would use to clean gym equipment. So you have to find it, wherever it may be randomly located then spray clean your hands like a mirror. In reality with this system I did not see anyone use it, bc everyone wants to keep the chalk on their hands.I’d love to see a faster friendly check in process for non members and a more efficient way to clean your hands with designated sanitizer stations & paper towels in the bathrooms.