Haven Holidays, Caister Review

Overall Rating

Safe
Close Beach
Evening entertainment
Cosy caravan

The cooking facilities in the van
Pool/Club too small for purpose
On-site chippy poor quality
"Pay per use playground"

2007 was our first holiday here & it exceeded our expectations. There were 6 people in our party, with the 4 children ranging from 7-13. The caravan was Silver 3 bedroomed and adequate for the numbers. If we had wanted hotel-standard acccomodation then we would have booked a hotel.
They did leave us an extra set of double bedding - but this was easily swapped for the single set of bedding they failed to provide us with.
We KNEW the on-site shop was the sort of standard you'd expect from a petrol station..... so we hunted down the local TESCO which was pretty much everyone else's idea! Unfortunatley the cooking facilites were inadequate - it took 2 and a half hours to partially cook a pizza and garlic bread so we were really only left with eating out options or cold evening meals. The on site chip shop was VERY busy and the quality was way below par. A journey out of camp over the road to the local chippy was also a let down as it closed at 9pm. What we found really useful was how close the beach was. It was pretty much inhabited by campers and local dog walkers, you felt safe there and there was the awesome view of an offshore windfarm which you were pretty much in awe of.
The mini Golf and such on site was fun, if a little over priced, but so long as you say "no" to the kids or "we did that yesterday so maybe later in the week" then you don't end up spending a fortune. As has already been said, you might struggle to stay amused on the site if its raining, but there are ample things to do on a short trip to Gt Yarmouth etc and the small swimming pool when it's not being used by groups on courses or private swimmers and isn't too full.
The breakfast, which we paid for as we were fully self catering, was sadly inadequate and stopped serving WAY too early given the volume of people (same could be said of the Chippy, Neptunes Place, the pool) we did however manage to find the chinese take-away which we actually made use of twice (even though one of the kids doesn't like chinese) and we were well fed for a good price both times we used it.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. Decor and presentation, staff friendliness and locating FunStars certainly didn't spoil the holiday. You can't always expect the camp to amuse you with no initiative, and if you're prepared to think a bit about how to amuse yourselves during the day and are prepared to explore the surrounding area then this is an ideal place to base yourself and use in the evenings.

We are going back in 2008, but in a slightly bigger caravan, and with the knowledge of what to expect!!