Story Of Utah Man Locked In 24 Hour Fitness Goes Viral

SANDY, Utah – A Utah man has gone viral after learning that his 24 Hour Fitness location changed its hours the hard way.

“There’s the irony on one hand. It’s 24 Hour Fitness,” said Dan Hill, who was locked in the gym by himself Sunday morning.

He wasn’t surprised that no one was around when he got out of the pool after midnight. He’s used to seeing the gym fairly empty when he visits around those hours. But he never expected to find no one.

When Hill isn’t at his day job at Paper Plane Learning helping others find their way, you can often find him at the gym, sometimes late at night.

“The music was still blaring and that’s why I thought there’s gotta be someone still here,” Hill said. “I went through every square inch of that place looking for someone.”

Hill realized he missed notices on the gym’s door showing the Sandy and other select locations were now closing at midnight because of low usage among other factors, according to a statement from 24 Hour Fitness.

“It was a little bit of a cross between being a mischievous teenager feeling like I can do anything I want in here,” Hill said. “Or, these guys, they really opened themselves up to liability. I mean, can you imagine suffering or having a heart attack in the bike room?”

Just a bit of Dan Hill’s adventure on Saturday after he got out of the pool and realized he was all by himself. Can you imagine? pic.twitter.com/f6ymXu2PR1

— Matt Rascon (@MattRasconNews) January 15, 2020

Days later, the surprising part of the story for Hill wasn’t just the fact that employees left without him or that his 24-hour gym changed to 20 hours. The surprising part for him was the amount of attention his post and his story has received.

“I don’t know why everybody likes it,” Hill said.

With well over 23,000 reactions and thousands of comments on his post, not to mention several media interviews from both local and national outlets, Hill had his suspicions on why his story seemed to be resonating with so many.

“Everybody kind of has that inner desire to have that happen to them,” he said. “There’s actually shows about this. Night at the Museum. Home Alone.”

About an hour and a half after closing time, Hill’s call to dispatch finally paid off. And you might say his night at the gym did too.

“It was fun,” Hill said. “It was my three seconds of fame.”

24 Hour Fitness released the following statement in response to what happened:

“On behalf of 24 Hour Fitness, we apologize to Mr. Hill and the unfortunate experience he had in the 24 Hour Fitness Sandy club, 10365 South 1300 East, when it closed Saturday evening. We made the decision recently to close select clubs in the overnight hours of 12:00 to 4:00 a.m. based upon low usage, among other factors. In doing so, we have been helping members locate to nearby clubs that are open during the overnight hours. We clearly did not do a good job of our closing procedures for this club on Saturday night and will reinforce our club procedures so that this incident doesn’t occur in the future. We continue to be committed to providing our members and guests with the best possible fitness experience at a great value.”