Have a picture of John Fowler, Ilfracombe Holiday Park?, please send it to us.
Picture courtesy of Richard Steer..
| Value for Money | 4.8/10  |
|---|---|
| Reviewer Rating | 4.8/10 |
| Overall Rating | 4.9/10  |
By admah on 17th Aug 2008
| Value for money | 0/10 |
|---|---|
| Overall value | 1/10 |
 admah's recommendation | |
Clean accommodation. Evening entertainment for the 4 to 10 year olds
Everything else. Don't feel it is a holiday camp, more a housing estate.
We went to John Fowler, Illfracombe holiday park during August 2008 and paid over £850 for a week in their 'Royal Gold Bungalow'accommodation. We booked after looking at their holiday brochure, what an absolute waste of our money was this and I would not recommend this park to anyone, I came away feeling rotten for parting with £850 to stay on this holiday park.
1. When you book a holiday for your family and you are paying for the 'top' accommodation available on the holiday park, you have certain expectations about the type of holiday you can expect and the JFH brochure makes a good job of confirming those expectation, until you get to the holiday park and the reality of the situation very quickly kicks in and we found ourselves on the in my opinion worst, most child unfriendly holiday park we've ever been to.
I feel JFH Illfracombe is not a holiday park but feels more like it is a housing estate with a basic swimming pool and entertainment room attached to it.
A lot of the accommodation blocks are recent additions. There are single storey and three storey accommodation blocks. A lot of the accommodation blocks are recent additions, and the majority of the single storey blocks are from the 1960's and I don't like the look from the outside.
The accommodation blocks are so tightly packed onto this park the only way you can get around the park is by using the concrete walk ways and stairs between the blocks.
Our accommodation block was a newish single storey block at the back of the park. Our scenic view was of the doors and windows of a three storey accommodation block not more than 5 metres from our front door, which was separated by a steep embankment on the other side of the concrete pathway that ran directly outside our front door.
Not being impressed with the location of our so called top of the range accommodation I went to the reception to see if there was something they could do as I assumed we must be in the wrong accommodation. Unfortunately we were not - the lady on reception stated that the park is 'built up'-no kidding! Well it was nothing like the brochure which stated:
'Wonderful sea views' - only the sea gulls can vouch for this statement as our view was of a three storey accommodation block not more than 5 metres from our front door.
'Big and Lively'- this meant nothing to us.
On our arrival we were given the welcome pack for the park, this consisted of a piece of paper with a list of the do's and dont's on the park and lots of brochures for off-site activities.
No ball games are allowed on the park. This was not difficult rule to adhere to as there was nowhere on the 'park' to play any ball games.
The swimming pool facilities leave a lot to be desired. There are no changing rooms, just public changing area's for women and men, the changing areas are so small only two adults or 3/4 children can get changed at any one time.
In the swimming pool area there are another list of does and dont's, but it is not a child orientated environment, there are no slides or anything to make the experience fun for the children -after an hour in the pool our children were bored and were not really interested in doing it again during the holiday.
For security you can place your belongings in a locker pool side, unfortunately the locker keys are not suitable for swimming pool use and rust, so you have to place the key on a board and collect a rubber band with a faint number on it.
I could go on with more issues with this park, but i think you have the picture by now. What are the good points of this park.
1. Inside the accommodation was modern and clean, but the kitchen was lacking in space to prepare food and storage space.
2. The evening entertainment for the 4 to 10 year olds was fine. The only blot on this was the entertainers pushing of charity tickets, to the point when it became rather tasteless as they tried to embarrass people into buying the tickets. The price was a holiday in Disney, Paris - not a JFH holiday.
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