Park Holidays, Waterside

Waterside Holiday Park, operated by Park Holidays UK Ltd, is in a beautiful location near Goodrington, Devon, and the staff, apart from one, were generally helpful and cheerful, resulting in quite a pleasant break.

Unfortunately though, our 8-berth "Gold Plus" caravan suffered from a few minor but annoying problems, e.g. (1) No bathroom cabinet, just a tiny shelf. (2) Nowhere to hang clothes in the bathroom while washing or showering. (3) Only a small ring for the toilet-room towel, mounted so low that the towel touches the floor. A proper rail is essential here in order to give the towel any chance of drying. (4) No hooks on the insides of the bedroom doors, so dressing gowns had to be put in the already-crowded small wardrobes. (6) Only three coat hooks in the hallway, not even sufficient for the four of us, let alone eight!

We were able to solve these "hanging" problems by buying some plastic over-the-door hooks, but I would hesitate to stay there with a party of eight.

All plates, dishes, cups, glasses and cutlery had to be washed on our arrival. Not necessarily the fault of the site management, but do the cleaners not check this?

We found the parking facilities rather inadequate, even in September. This was quite a problem with heavy cases on arrival and departure, and would be totally unacceptable in wet weather.

Despite this, we would like to return if we receive confirmation that these issues have been given attention, as they are all, apart perhaps from the parking, quite easily solved.

Not a stranger to park holidays we stayed at dawlish sands last year & had a great time. Holidaying with a 3 year old good night time entertainment is essential! Absolutely rubbish for the kids here! The little they did was rushed & things like the disco was cut out! My 3 year old was bored stiff! I want to say how nice it was to meet one of the staff members who was clearly rushed of her feet every night, working by herself. The first night we arrived we asked her for directions to the beach & she stood & explained it to us, she was very friendly & went out her way to help us. Another lady on the other hand working in the same restaurant was very rude, when asked about a glass!! It's amazing how two people doing exactly the same job can be so different to one another! Clearly won't be going back!!!

My family and I stayed for a weekend in a caravan at the, Waterside camp site in Paignton, part of the Park Holidays group. I am afraid we had several problems with the caravan we stayed in. When we arrived I noticed that the caravan windows were open, which I thought was strange as it was raining heavily. However we soon found out why, the caravan smelt very badly. It was so unpleasant we had to open the windows whenever we were in there, which made the caravan rather cold at night. After returning home we found all our clothes smelt really badly of the caravan, and all of them, even the ones that were not worn had to be washed. Our suitcases had to be sprayed to try and remove the smell.

One of the light bulbs in the caravan was no longer working, and the lock on the bathroom door was broken. I reported the broken lock on the first morning we were there, but nothing was done about it. 2 days later when we were leaving I reported it again, and pointed out that this was the second time I was reporting it. I waited for some kind of reply from the receptionist but she just bent over the counter and did not look at me again and did not make any comment at all, not even to say she would ensure it would be mended for the next people, there was just an awkward silence so in the end I left.

My family and I take a lot of caravan holiday (this is the third one this year), so I am familiar with the standard set by caravan sites, and I am afraid that The Waterside Caravan site fails to live up to the standard we have grown to expect from caravan sites. In particular, in other places , when reporting a problem with the caravan it is normal for the fault to be sorted out within a few hours, so I feel this site is very poor on the score.

I did e-mail a complaint to the caravan site but they were unhelpful there too.