Lakes Leisure Ltd, a subsidiary of the Queenstown Lakes District Council, expected 123,000 patrons to use the community asset in its first year. However, monthly patronage is about 15,000.
There were 15,157 visits by swimmers and spectators last month.
In July, 15,113 used the facility.
August saw a slight drop-off at 14,034 due to the closure of the hydro-slide for alterations.
Lakes Leisure aquatics general manager Cam Sheppard said the overall performance has been "really good", with a steady school holiday turnout that spiked during poor weather.
Aqualand Swim School had 310 children and adults enrolled for the new term. Water Discovery has 116 under-5-year-olds enrolled in partnership with the centre.
The primary schools programme has 120 children set for next term and has a strong water safety component sponsored by New World Wakatipu. Lakes Leisure hired pool space to the Wakatipu Swim School, which was a separate entity.
"There's a fair amount of school and Queenstown swim school use," Mr Sheppard said.
"We have an aqua fitness programme, which in its first month has seen 166 participants. We've had Toddler Time running since June and that's been around the 300 mark a month.
"We've also got another session called Active Age, which is a discounted social swimming time for seniors aged 65 plus, and 47 people came in September.
"We're about to launch Alpine Masters on October 15 as an informal kick-off until we get the right time for people to come. It's socially based group squad swimming with a competitive flavour."
Rehabilitation programmes for residents recovering from injury were being developed. More use of the pool was being sought - the Push Play Business House relay was booked for October 22 and the Splash and Dash duathlon series was scheduled for four days to be confirmed in the summer.
A Speedo retail store opened six weeks ago and was a permanent fixture. Mr Sheppard said weekdays from 4pm to 6pm were the peak periods. Weekend patronage was often weather-dependent.
However, more and more residents were adding pool time to their daily and weekly routines and Aqualand staff were keen to "grow participation and keep that momentum up", he said.
Issues remained with attaining a consistent 32degC in the leisure pool and the temperature had been hovering around the 30degC mark. Mr Sheppard put it down to the "balancing and tuning of a complex new system". While 30degC was still within operating parameters, staff were working on the heating exchange and heating flow water rate.
A severe frost was blamed for damaging a large copper heating coil and circulation pump in mid-August. Mr Sheppard said a custom-made replacement system was due be shipped to Christchurch on Thursday.
"Once installed, that will give us the ability to retain our energy savings we were achieving prior to it bursting."
