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Picture courtesy of nt500.
| Value for Money | 6.1/10  |
|---|---|
| Reviewer Rating | 7/10 |
| Overall Rating | 7.2/10  |
By Boozo on 1st Feb 2008
| Value for money | 3/10 |
|---|---|
| Overall value | 3/10 |
 Boozo's recommendation | |
Beautiful setting, good way to start your fitness regime, interestingly spread out, makes you see the whole park, Good Aqua Sana.
Dirty accommodation, low moral between staff, park maintenance, small pool in Aqua Sana, disappointing management team.
We've been to Centre Parcs Elveden many times and Longleat once before. My husband and I go with a friend in her late 40's and her daughter. We fell in love with Longleats beautiful forest and the amazing Red Woods. Our last trip to Longleat was really disappointing, especially as we were taking someone who'd not been to cp's before.
On arrival they have only 2 ladies loo's in the main restaurant complex, between all the new arrivals! Next stop was to book our beauty and hair appointments, the staff were rude and abrupt, no pleasantries, not even a please or thank you. Shocking when your booking '£450 of mixed treatments. It would do their staff well to remember where their wages come from. Then when we reached our Executive villa it was extremely grubby. places like the towel rail, window cills, etc looked like they'd only get cleaned once a year as they had a thick film of dust and dirt on them, it made me feel ill because I wondered where else they'd cut corners. I must add this is very unusual too. Cycling round at night was dangerous because of the numberof park lights not working, coupled with the nearly always faulty lights on the bikes, out of four of us only one of us had a working rear light, not good when it's pitch black and your at the bottom of a hill! The land trains useless because it's always full.
One of the reasons we came back was to see the new Aqua Sana which had been extended and refitted. On first appearance it's lovely but let down by stupid things. After all that investment they did nothing with the pathetic pool (pathetic in comarisn to Elveden which has many sensory jets and bubbles). Also things like a broken drinking water tap which had a very sharp edge you'd easily cut yourself on. Strangely there are no sinks in the changing rooms, you have to go to the seperate toilets to rinse your costume. Plus if your on the generous side size wise you'd best take your own robe as even after asking they only seemed to have one size, it was embarrassing and I'm only a size 22!
Most importantly, at the time the company was going through a change of ownership and as a result the whole place felt a bit in limbo, and moral between staff was very poor probably due to an uncertain future. I consider it to be poorly managed, a point which was emphasized when we tried to give them the opportunity to deal with the issues regarding the rude staff at the beginning of our stay and the dirty villa. They said they' get back to us, but didn't, and only did something on a second attempt to get the place cleaned. As compensation we had a meal in the pizza restaurant, good food but really slow and confused service.
We took the above trip in October of 2007, and now I'm booking for April 2008. I normally only book 6 weeks in advance, but having checked in mid Jan it became apparant the prices were rocketing, they went up '£75 in 4 days, so I booked quickly. Having now checked again they've gone up another '£160! I don't like this, the prices are already more than we've paid before, the new owners seem to be money grabbing greedy people. In my book their reputations sinking fast, they'd better have pulled all the stops out at the park when we get there! Or we'll be going abroad next time and it'll probably be cheaper!
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