Centerparcs En-gb Omdömen 41

Visited Longleat. Gone downhill. Time slots in swimming pool still remain despite pandemic over. Long queues for Cyclone and Typhoon due to punctures not being repaired and lacklustre attitude of staff and management, Also a clump of grime/hair on swimming pool area steps was there all 4 days of stay, not one of the cleaners or lifeguards removed it and shows they do not clean the swimming areas regularly which is disgusting and puts me off returning. Customer service has declined. Still expensive to stay here and eat in restaurants, compared to going abroad for example. Seems the whole place is short staffed or cutting corners/costs, a different place to a few years ago which is a shame as I won't be returning now.

We have visited the various Centre Parc resorts around the UK - we always book off-peak, the standard of the accommodation doesn't substantiate the peak period prices.

Staff have always been friendly and as helpful as they can be.

Activities & food/drinks are sold at premium prices.

We have had mixed experiences with regards the quality of the food. Recommend the Curry Houses.

We have had mixed experiences with the onsite EV charging facilitates, Penrith site is excellent, Longleat is terrible.

Activity pool and slides are excellent.

Update: 10.07.22: lost property posted my hoodie back to me. Thanks guys.

Firstly every member of staff we have come into contact with has been wonderful, helpful, friendly and gone above and beyond to help. The problem with Centerparcs is the 'is that it?' feeling you get with the place for what amounts to the extortionate prices charged for anything. Close to £500 a night for a bog-standard Lodge (you get far more space and room in a Travelodge double room for example), eye watering prices for activities, having to book a takeaway/food delivery in the morning if you want food delivered before 9 at night and a fun-pool meaning normal swimming is out of the question really make you scratch your head wondering what you're actually getting for your money. Unless you enjoy bike rides through fellow tourists along public paths in a self contained village then for a fraction of the price you could have a few days away with your family in almost any UK destination with all the activities but at a fraction of the price. A massively underwhelming and overpriced experience. I'm just relieved it wasn't me paying!

Worst customer experience. Terrible website. We booked what we thought was a dog friendly lodge, travelled over 90 miles to get there taking the day off work to do so with our dog. Spent over £460 in accommodation and activities and then £100 at local Tesco buying food for our disposable bbq we'd ordered. Got there and they said it was a hotel booking, take your dog to a kennel, and told us they'd search the car once we had taken her to the kennel suggesting we're criminals and would sneak her in. Were told there's no fridge so we'd lose all the food, no availability any other CP locations and nothing they could do, and we can't have a refund, we'd have to phone head office. We did and security told us to get off the site mid phone call! Were told we wouldn't be able to get a refund on the bbq, but we shouldn't have been able to buy a bbq if we were in a hotel room! We were given no choice but to travel all the way back, to then get texts the next few days about checking out and info about our welcome hamper.. salt in the wound!! Absolutely disgusted, thought it was a reputable company. Their final word is basically sorry not sorry they're not giving us anything, even after we directly contacted Martin Dalby the CEO with a reasonable, rational complaint. Won't ever go again.

I have had many good stays in CP (various sites) but my current booking experience is unacceptable. I have been trying, for 2 weeks, through various means to add 'Flex Your Stay' to my booking but I only get generic, irrelevant email responses, chat seems to always be down and your waiting time on the phone is >1hr. It won't let me amend this online myself. Why do not have this functionality and then make it so difficult for me to use other means to update my booking? This is ridiculous and a real stain on my view of CP. I am trying to book on behalf of another family which makes this even more frustrating. I am still sat on the phone... : (

I don't know what was in the curry we bought when eating at Center Parcs during a 3 day stay at Penrith, Cumbria but it certainly wasn't lamb. It was the colour of chicken but not the consistency of chicken/ As we had ordered a lamb curry this ended up in the bin. I couldn't discern what on earth the meat was. Bizarre. Would never go back over-priced and the large mould stain on a wall was the final thing that made me wonder why we were paying such a high price for an extremely sub-standard experience.

Over the past 7 months we have stayed at CenterParcs Woburn Forest twice!!
Will definitely be going back again!
Loved everything there
So good with small children - lots of activities for them.
Great restaurants like Huck’s, Amalfi, Las Iguanas, Sports Cafe (our favourite)
Love the Swimming paradise which has two very good pirate sections for small kids and loved the Lazy River and Wave Pool. And there is a Starbucks inside the swimming place which is great. Great changing facilities and lockers and pram parking.

Loved Kelly’s icecream outside the swimming place.

The Lodge both times was very good - all modern with both rooms having en-suite with tv and well equipped kitchen.

We hired bikes and also took scooters.

We had an issue with one of the sinks leaking which was immediately dealt with and fixed.

The only negative:
One of the activities we had booked was cancelled but then we had to chase them for a refund so we were not impressed by that and they refused to give us extra coffee pods in the room when we asked which we thought was a bit mean given how they had not offered us anything for cancelling our activity and having had to chase a refund

But we’ve still given them a 5/5 stars as will definitely go back again as we love it as a family holiday there.

Today I had a lovely experience at Aquasana Woburn. The massage I had by Emily was perfect, the staff in the cafe were particularly good and as usual the spa was warm and welcoming. So I would have given 5 stars.

Normally my sister in law comes with me but unfortunately tested positive for COVID this morning, so stayed home. She spent 40 minutes trying to phone Woburn and had not got through by the time I checked in, so I explained. I was told she needed to call a different number to get a refund, this was the customer service number. She waited over another hour for an answer. Not good enough. We had also tried phoning earlier in the week to book a treatment, but never got an answer. Disappointing! Probably not enough to stop us going to our favourite spa, but why not gear up the call centre to cope?

We visited Centerparcs Sherwood from 4th to 7th June, one month later 3 members of our party have had varying amounts totalling over £200 for transactions made on 6th June, no explanation and clearly we dont still have our receipts.
Also we had to clean our "Executive Lodge" when we arrived as there were various stains around the place so it clearly hadn't been cleaned properly in line with Covid precautions.

Like a lot of people have said, everything is great until something goes wrong.

Had a holiday book for May but when coronavirus struck, they asked us to re-book for a different date.

This was actually our honeymoon, so as our wedding had also been rescheduled, we asked for the Friday after our new wedding date, which to our shock was going to cost us an extra £1200, taking our 4 night break from just £850, to over £2000.

When I questioned this, they said it was because my daughter, who would have been 19 months, would now need her own room as she would be over 2 years old, meaning we would need to book a 2 bed apartment instead of the 1 bed apartment we originally needed.

I argued that was wasn't our fault and surely, considering the stress we've been through with rescheduling what is supposed to be the happiest day of our lives, they could have some empathy and wave the extra fee for a two bed apartment, or at least offer some discount and have some understanding of our situation because we couldn't possibly afford the new prices.

They ignored all this and simply threatened that if we tried to 'sneak' her in as a 1 year old, we would be turned away at the gate with no refund due.

I was obviously shocked to receive this threat as nothing I had done or said would suggest I was planning to do this and had been very open and honest with them in the hope of a resolution.

I unfortunately was left with no options, as they weren't listening to me, and took the refund, however I'm being told that could take weeks to be received due to a large number of people also cancelling their holidays.

I am very shocked that center parcs have not supported the 8 year old child whose bottom was groped recently at its Parc in Bedfordshire. The CCTV footage of the attack near the bottom of the water slide confirms the child’s account and as of today 7th March 2020 the police have not arrested the paedophile. If this happens to your child you appear to be on your own - be warned.

SOURCH BBC NEWS

Man jailed for pool sex assault
A man who sexually assaulted a young girl in the swimming pool of a holiday village has been jailed for six months.

Hamid Hazzazi, 35, squeezed the 12-year-old's bottom while chatting to her and her 13-year-old friend at Center Parcs, near Penrith, Cumbria in August.

He was found guilty of sexual assault, but cleared of another charge of assault on the older girl.

Hazzazi, of Smethwick, West Midlands, said he spoke to the girls because he was practising his English.

Hazzazi, who is originally from Morocco, was also ordered to register as a sex offender for seven years after his trial at Carlisle Crown Court.

Just seen the news about Tommy Robinson's daughter encountering an alleged paedophile at Center Parcs and a separate news item about another alleged paedophile making a booking. Places like this are ripe for paedophiles to go to. I would consider going there with the utmost caution.

Great weekend break at Elveden Forest. Staff were very friendly and welcoming.

Last September, after our annual trip to CP, we rebooked for next September as we do every year. However we now need to cancel our holiday. Even though our weekend break is still 10 months away we cannot cancel because you can only cancel, apparently, if there’s a death in the family, on medical advice or several other conditions which do not apply to us.
This is ridiculous, in my opinion. Paying £549 for a weekend break is ridiculously expensive and not being able to cancel when your circumstances change is completely unreasonable.

The swift reply from Karen (with regards to below) very blasé under the unusual circumstances we found ourselves in - I bet 100% no management look into this....it would appear you have set rules(T & C's) & do not take into consideration any other material facts....all I can say is BEWARE anyone whom books with them - if things go wrong you will be out of pocket! - Same old - Company get to the top & don't care anymore!
We will go elsewhere after the way we have been treated! Shame on you!
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We have stayed in the spa suites approximately 4 times now and never really had anything to complain about until our most recent stay!! We stayed in one of the ground floor suites and got woken up at 4am to water dripping on us, upon investigation we noticed the floor to our room was flooded and water running down the walls and during out the ceiling. We had to collect our stuff and leave the room, we got taken to a lodge in Centre Parcs which was cold and smelt damp, needless to say we couldn't sleep especially after all the drama. We couldn't have our breakfast in bed which should have been included in the £600 we paid, didn't get to use the beautiful bath (my usual highlight of the stay), hadn't had a good night sleep. Thought we would get some rest in the spa the following day but how wrong were we! Like another person said it was packed, people talking and laughing very loudly and like a cattle market so absolutely no chance of relaxing!! Now the part which made us really angry. We complained to the manager who offered us half our money back!!! I mean really!! This was supposed to be a break away from the kids, a chance to relax and catch up on some uninterrupted sleep and to enjoy some very rare peace and quiet and time together. We had none of this so why they think giving us half our money back is acceptable is beyond me. We will never return again after the way we were treated, their customer service is shocking. Would have been more relaxing to have stayed at home.

Great set-up and idea - ideal for families. But avoid the security Nazi's who are unable to think outside the box.

We have a profoundly disabled child who finds it difficult to walk to their car parks and also needs 2 people to organise his care needs and feeding on a morning.

We asked if we could a) bring our car back to Lodge late on Sunday night (in readiness for following morning) OR b) Leave lodge a little later on the Monday morning so his needs could be dealt with first.

Neither were acceptable to CP... and, what's more, we had a cleaner stood outside our lodge from 0930-1000 as if to prove the point that we HAD to be out by 10am, come what may.

Will never go back - sorry. Great concept but I cannot accept being dealt with like that. I expect MUCH, MUCH better.

Expensive but had a great holidays at centerparcs Wooburn....

I have just recently stayed at centre parcs Woburn Forest and I have to say the family enjoyed.
It was clean, accessible and a lovely atmosphere with everybody being friendly.
The only thing I can say is that it is rather expensive doing the activities but swimming is free and the facilities there are fab so make sure you take your swimming outfits and do your own food shopping and take it with you in the car if you have space too as that can be rather expensive also.
Otherwise would recommend and would defo go again

I recently visited Center Parcs Woburn Forest with the family and I have to say that I had a fantastic time. The facilities and activities there are exciting and entertaining and the Subtropical Swimming Paradise is just amazing. The accommodation is modern and up to date and the environment/forest is beautiful. There are plenty of restaurants available to eat at, each specialising in food from extravagant regions all over the world. Definitely value for money. Absolute Perfection.