Seahorse Swim School, Inc.

About

Seahorse Swim School, Inc. in Aptos, CA, is a dedicated facility offering comprehensive swimming lessons for all ages, from infants and young children to adults. The school emphasizes water safety, confidence-building, and the development of proper swimming techniques in a supportive and engaging environment.

The swim school is known for its comfortably warm water, with pools typically heated to 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, creating an ideal and comfortable learning environment for swimmers of all ages, especially infants and young children.

What are people saying (AI review summary)? Seahorse Swim School receives mixed reviews, with strong praise for its overall quality and specific instructors, alongside significant criticism regarding consistency and customer service. Many parents highly recommend Seahorse, particularly when comparing it to public pools, citing experienced, caring, and knowledgeable instructors who effectively teach children and provide good value for money. Teacher Tiffany is consistently lauded as an exceptional instructor, praised for her patience, ability to make nervous children enthusiastic about swimming, and effective teaching techniques. However, some families report disappointing experiences. One review highlighted issues stemming from junior pool maintenance, leading to cancelled classes, uncomfortable cold water conditions, inflexible make-up options, and a feeling of being short-changed. Another family experienced high instructor turnover, confusing and inconsistent instruction, lack of motivation for their child, and minimal progress over multiple sessions, leading them to switch schools and find immediate success elsewhere. These negative experiences suggest potential inconsistencies in instructor quality and challenges in customer service responsiveness when issues arise.

Location

Gallery

Amenities

• Accepts Credit Cards
• Accessible Entrance
• Accessible Restroom

Reviews

Listing Reviews

August 27th, 2025

pat thomas

I highly recommend seahorse. I’ve taken my child for swimming lessons at the public pool and also at Seahorse. I sat there and watched at the public pool and most of the time was wasted very few minutes of actual instruction by an inexperienced instructor (perhaps a high school student). All that effort to get ready, drive to the public pool, dry off, drive home, take a shower-- for a few minutes of marginal instruction. Seahorse Swim School provides excellence swimming instruction with experienced instructors who care about teaching and care about delivering value for the money. They’re trying not to waste time and trying to make sure the kids are actually learning how to swim. In my experience over the past several years, we’ve had several instructors, and they all seem excellent. Even my child would agree that they do teach you, although she doesn’t like swimming lessons. She even admitted that they are in fact, making her work hard and learn how to swim and to me as a parent that’s very valuable. We’ve taken group lessons at seahorse as well as private. Both are excellent and the private lessons really provide an opportunity to get some concentrated one-on-one attention to actually learn swimming in the short amount of time that kids have to learn it (that short time is basically summer vacation for us). I highly recommend SeaHorse Swim School, and even if I try to be overly critical I honestly can’t find anything to criticize (only qualification, bear in mind, that here on earth nothing is absolutely perfect). We have experiences with several instructors, and I’ve always found them to be caring, safe, and knowledgeable about swimming and dedicated to the objective of teaching kids how to swim. I’m sure it’s complicated managing a lot of schedules and a lot of kids in the pool, but as a business, it seems to be very well run.

July 26th, 2025

Brian Anders

Teacher Tiffany is the best swim teacher! My kids had no experience in the pool (2 and 4 year olds) and were always nervous to be going near the pool up until this summer when they started to swim with teacher Tiffany and now they ask me all week about going to swim lessons. She's so patient with them and goes at a pace they are comfortable with while giving them the gentle nudges to learn the safe swimming techniques they need.

May 29th, 2024

Jessica Carrillo

My son just finished his 4 swimming sessions, but it only felt like 2. Midway through, the Jr pool underwent maintenance. This meant that we could either join a cold pool at our designated timeslot (mine being 9:30 am) or come in later so it wasn't “as” cold. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the later class because I specifically signed up for early classes due to our family's schedule. Due to the weather and pool circumstances, we couldn't make it to the 3rd class. I thought we would at least be able to make his last class, but a day before at 4 pm, we received a notification that the Jr pool was still closed. At this point, the message sent to the parents included 3 options, one of them being an option to attend a class in the summer in warmer weather to make up for the Jr pool closure. I chose to ask to attend a future class and was told, "Not sure if I'll have the space.." This left me with no option but to attend a cold pool I did not sign up for or make a later time, which again does not work for my family. Due to the very limited options, I felt forced to attend the class, and it was exactly as I thought it would be. The weather and pool were cold, and my 2-year-old son was super uncomfortable with the temperature of the water, which ruined the whole mood for swimming. And just like that, it felt like I was scammed for half the classes. I was truly upset with my experience and was ready to sign him up for the summer session, especially because the instructor was the kindest and sweetest person. But unfortunately, that will not be happening, and I wish there could have been a better way of helping each parent. I understand there are multiple parents and children, but knowing this was an issue, we should have been offered a refund for 2 classes or an option to attend 2 classes in the summer.

August 8th, 2014

DeDe Morton

My daughter (8) took swim lessons at Seahorse Swim School, and her experience was disappointing. We liked Tiffany's teaching style, but unfortunately she does not teach all the classes herself. The school has a high turnover rate for instructors, so finding the right instructor (who will stay around for awhile) is difficult. My daughter struggled in the class because the instructions that she was given were confusing, and there was no continuity in the teaching. The instructor was not very good at encouraging or motivating her students. My daughter was unhappy and not excited about going to class. We enrolled her in two back-to-back sessions, and she made very little progress during those weeks. (The classes are 30 minutes long, but it seemed like the instructor always started late and ended early.) It was, quite frankly, a complete waste of our money. Recently, we enrolled our daughter in a different swim school. The instructors are phenomenal, and even after the first lesson, we saw a results. At Seahorse, our daughter struggled to perform basic strokes; now, after only a week of instruction at the new school, she is the strongest swimmer in the class and is ready to move on to the next level. I regret wasting our time and money at Seahorse, but luckily, our daughter seems to have recovered from the experience.

August 17th, 2017

Mark Snyder

Tiffany has done an amazing job with our two very enthusiastic and energetic children. She has incredible knowledge and patience, and I would highly recommend her to anyone. My kids now love to go swimming!