For People Too Posh To Go Camping (Center Parcs)

Member Name: thebluehippo

Product:	Center Parcs
Date:	27/06/07 (1392 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plenty of Activities to Do

Disadvantages: Costs can get easily out of hand if you don't budget

Center Parcs has a number of resorts through the UK – Whinfell, Sherwood, Elveden and Longleat Forest. In this review I refer to Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest, Nottingham.

I have been a number of times to Center Parcs resorts however the last time I went I was a teenager, I enjoyed myself in previous times and with nostalgic thoughts felt that it was time to go back again. So three good friends and me went.
There are two choices of bookings either 5 days (Mon – Fri) or a weekend however you can book both together to give yourself a full week however I personally feel five days is more than enough.

There are number of choices in accommodation to suit your budget and number of party members. At the bottom of the price range is the standard ‘comfort all the way to the most expensive ‘executive’ and ‘exclusive’ lodges. Increase in cost pay for other slight noticeable benefits such as having a DVD in the cabin, with expensive villas having their own private parking and hot tub.
We paid for the bare minimum which cost us about £480 which when split between four I felt was not too bad.

The appeal of Centre Parcs is that it is in the ‘wild’ except unlike a camping holiday you’re not roughing it and is far more comfortable than going to a caravan park.
You also guaranteed pretty much an almost car free week as cars are only allowed on days of coming and going. Cars are only allowed for villa services and guests who have a disability however I imagine this would be quite difficult to get the benefit of the place fully as there is not appropriate parking facilities round the park.

The villas are not the most attractive things being basically planks of wood put together however inside it is quite relaxing and quite homely.

On arrival one of the first things I recommend is getting down to the Parc Market to pick up supplies of what you thin you will need for the week, unless your rich enough to eat out everyday which is great. It is a reasonably priced well-stocked shop that sells fresh baked goods to DVDs and games that you’re likely to find in small supermarkets.

One of the main problems with Center Parcs apart from the owners not knowing how to spell centre is that it can get quite expensive depending upon what you want to do. If you’re just happy going to the pool and walking round the parc and eating in then it will be a relatively cheap week. However if you want to get as much as possible out of your holiday there are plenty of activities to do at a cost obviously and at a much more costly price than say if you found similar activities in your locality.
For example a golf lesson at the Parc is £30 for an hour and massages are £30 for 30 minutes.

Out of the activities that are available I prefer to mainly focus on things that I would not have the opportunity to do at home so activities such as using the cinema (which shows outdated films) and bowling are only last resorts if I find there is nothing else for me to do (which in all my visits has not happened).
Activities I highly recommend are the private horse riding lesson (do it with a friend to make it a bit cheaper), archery and falconry (though I would recommend any activities with the birds of prey).

Activities range from sporting (football, badminton), creative (art classes), fun (Adventure Golf), nature (various activities looking at wildlife and conservation), relaxing (massages) and other activities suitable for children or family bonding.
You can also get bikes out the week or just for a day which I feel are not too bad value at £21 for a midweek plus you get to keep your bike lock, the only trouble with this is that you do miss out some of the busy scenery in the Parc because you just ride past quickly. Also all the bikes are similar so try and remember were you parked because one day I spent half an hour looking round trying locks to find my bike!

When booking activities there are many that need booking in advance and there are those you can pay for and in less than an hour or straight away. Being able to get on activities depends upon demand as some have limited places while some have a lot (a guide on how many other people do an activity can probably be judge on the price as if it’s under £10 it will probably have about 30 people the more it costs the less there are).
Although there are a great number of activities you can book some require you to travel off site.

A gripe for me with Centre Parcs is that it is constantly under construction, building things and closing bits off I imagine this is kept to a minimum in peak price season however as a visitor going in the cheap season I found various inconveniences such as roads in the parc closed off, part of the pool shut down and also seeming to be understaffed in certain places.

There are various restaurants to suit a number of tastes at quite an expensive price in Sherwood Forest has Italian, French, Indian, for less exotic food you can go to the country club if you fancy your scampi and chips, have a fast food restaurant or you can have a pancake either savoury or sweet.
The country club has decent quality food however this was the place that seemed to be under staffed and so service was a bit slow.
The Italian has delicious meals offering various numbers of pasta and pizza dishes amongst other things and with a mixture of the ambiance and friendly service is one of the better places to eat in the parc.
The restaurants all have wide varied menus, vegetarian options, children’s meals and also the restaurants seem to be into offering healthy and organic food.

There are a small amount of shops available in the Parc including a toyshop, a sweet shop (which has some really nice chocolates that remind me of ones I could get when I was very young), a shop that sells all relaxing, mystical and smelly stuff and a really good sport shop that beats JJB any day in the Centre Parcs sport centre called ‘Jardine de Sport’. It sells nice quality clothes which I have not really seen in the high street and small numbers of sports equipment that can be used in the Jardine such as badminton racquets.

The size of Sherwood Forest Centre Parcs is pretty nice size, so you don’t have to travel too far walking or on bikes. We where on the furthest part away yet it only took us 10 minutes to walk to the village centre and even less on bikes.

For spend I would recommend about £200 (per person) to do a few to half a dozen activities, pay for food you need to buy and have a couple of meals out, however this is only a guide as a friend of mine managed to last the week on £50 however he did not really do much except archery and lounge about the house watching the Jetix channel everyday till the early afternoon.

So is the free stuff worth it? Well if you love swimming and hanging about a pool I suppose it is pretty good, I found after going the second day it was pretty tedious you cannot even get a decent swim done with all the people in the way and the wave machine going off every 20 or 30 minutes or so (and the wave machine is inconsistent sometimes it lasts for about a minute other times and particularly when I am at the furthest point of the deep end it decided to go on for over ten minutes. It was not fun holding onto ropes for most of that time (because the current was too strong for me to keep swimming) and as such had sore arms for the rest of the holiday. And the freezing cold plunge pool is no fun once you have been dared to jump in once only proving useful to recover from rope burns, sore arms for holding on and sore legs from being thrown into the sides from the wave machine.
Round the park is nice except for all the villas and all the noisy people which doesn’t quite match the tranquil image presented in the Center Parcs brochure.

Center Parcs is a family-orientated holiday hence stuff at night is quite lacking, there is a disco at the place they do the bowling and jazz nights so not the best place to go on a drinking holiday.

Overall I was disappointed with my most recent visit I feel this was a combination of the service, expense, tediousness of the free activities, not meeting expectations of my childhood nostalgia and one of the people I went with generally being miserable.

Probably worth going if you have never been, have children and are willing to pay to do things.

Summary: More fun when I was younger even though most time was spent went walking and exploring