Butlins Resort - Skegness, Skegness

...which led me to choose Butlins in Skegness for our holiday, but to cut a very long story a little shorter I will just mention that these circumstances meant that I had £420 worth of Butlins vouchers with which to book my holiday.

I went to their site first to try and book our accommodation and after initially getting lost a little bit I was able to figure out what I was doing. I went through the motions of booking and found it quite ...
.../> Before the holiday started, Butlins sent us a brochure telling us how to get there and what sort of events would be on during our break. The directions were very easy to follow and as they said the Skyline Pavilion was the first thing you saw as you made your approach. At the gates we showed the friendly attendant our booking confirmation and he told us which coloured line to follow to reach our destination. Checking was very straight forward; ... more

Booking

It was a variety of circumstances which led me to choose Butlins in Skegness for our holiday, but to cut a very long story a little shorter I will just mention that these circumstances meant that I had £420 worth of Butlins vouchers with which to book my holiday.

I went to their site first to try and book our accommodation and after initially getting lost a little bit I was able to figure out what I was doing. I went through the motions of booking and found it quite easy. There are quite good discounts available if you do book on-line. Unfortunately, when I got to the payment section I discovered that you have to pay up front by either credit or debit card. For this reason I ended up having to book my accommodation by phone. This I found very easy as the lady on the other end was incredibly helpful and friendly. I explained that I wanted accommodation for two adults and two children with Dinner, Bed and Breakfast, told her which nights I wanted and what my voucher budget was. She came up with two options for Silver accommodation, one at about £470 which included a kitchen and one at £410 without a kitchen. As we were having our meals provided I chose the under budget one.

I should probably point out that unlike a regular hotel, you can not pick and choose your nights. Holidays here are arranged by themed breaks and run for a certain amount of days from a selected day. For example, we chose a Family Entertainment break which ran from a Monday night for either 4 or 7 nights. You can also get Spa breaks which run for 2 nights. Each break includes certain events and entry to various entertainment venues in the price.

Arrival and Check in

Before the holiday started, Butlins sent us a brochure telling us how to get there and what sort of events would be on during our break. The directions were very easy to follow and as they said the Skyline Pavilion was the first thing you saw as you made your approach. At the gates we showed the friendly attendant our booking confirmation and he told us which coloured line to follow to reach our destination. Checking was very straight forward; however we must have been the last of a large influx of arrivals as there were two huge queues. Luckily we only had about a ten minute wait and our check in and directions to our apartment were dealt with very quickly. We got a lot of brochures on check in, the most useful of which were the events timetable and the site map.

The Rooms

Our previous experience with a holiday park was far from good, so I was pleased to see that these rooms were clean and well maintained. The apartment had two rooms, a double and a twin, with a shower room. The rooms were not particularly big, but they were ample. The shower room was admittedly on the small side, but it did its purpose.

Both rooms came with a wardrobe and a television with tea and coffee facilities in the double room only. There were electric radiators in all rooms which were easy to use and warmed the room up quite quickly. The beds were a bit on the small side, slightly shorter and narrower than is standard. We found that our feet were right at the end of the mattress and we are only of average height.

There was no bath in the apartment and I think that this is the standard for all the accommodation in the Skegness Butlins. The shower had either high water pressure or was a power shower, because it was quite powerful. This was fine for the adults, but my young children found it a bit much and didn’t like getting their heads under it.

My only criticisms were that the décor wasn’t really to my taste; the head boards looked like they were straight out of the seventies. In each of the bedrooms there was a fire door which connected to the apartment on the other side of the building and there was obviously a smoker in that apartment because we would often smell the smoke coming through the door. Also the fact that we were on the ground floor meant that we got to be woken bright and early by the family above us who sounded like they had size 16 feet! This family were also late in every night and tended to wake us on their return to their rooms as well.

The view from the rooms was mainly of the other apartment blocks, although there were some reasonably well maintained gardens between them and I have to admit that the apartments were fairly pleasant to look at from the outside. The Silver package holiday includes linen, which I presume you have to hire or bring yourself if you book standard. It also includes house keeping, although that, as it turned out, only amounted to making the beds, emptying the bins and restocking things that had been used, such as toilet paper.

The Site

The site is quite large, but everything is in walking distance. The overall cleanliness was fairly good and we did see staff picking up litter, but for some reason they didn’t pick up the cigarette ends. This was one thing that seemed to decorate the ground permanently and by the look of it some had been around for a good few years.

The centrepiece was certainly the Skyline Pavilion. This was not in my opinion the most attractive of buildings; in fact from a certain angle it looked like one of Madonna’s old cone bras. All the other buildings were generally very square and functional in shape with various décor to add some interest. Sometimes the décor worked, but mostly it was just gaudy.

Restaurants

As our package included dinner and breakfast, we had to go to the allocated “restaurant” for our meals. Ours was called Coral Beach and was a couple of minutes walk away from our rooms. Opening hours were 8am – 10am for breakfast and 4pm – 6pm for dinner. However, they did open for an hour later on check days for the late arrivals. On check in we got cards for the restaurant which were clipped for each meal by an attendant at the door. The “restaurant” itself would, in my opinion, be better described as a canteen. My husband called it a prison camp, but I felt that was a bit harsh! I never saw canteens as a problem before now as usually you just have to get yourself seated with your meal. However, things change when you have a family of four to seat with their meals. The tables were set out in rows seating up to twelve people and when it was busy, which was most of the time, it was hard work trying to find four spaces together. We soon worked out a routine whereby we located our seats, cleaned and often also cleared the table, and then I went off to get the food and drinks. The food is served at a row of counters and you just choose what you want. Most of the time you are served by the staff, although at some of the counters you help yourself. The drinks are all self service and there was a good range. Things like the various coffees and hot chocolate are often the most expensive drinks in a café or restaurant and here you could help yourself to as much as you liked.

Each meal time had a reasonable variety of food, meaning that there was always something that could be found to your taste. The meals weren’t exactly gourmet (you need to pay for Gold accommodation if you want that), they were the sort of thing you might cook every day at home. Having said this, the overall quality was quite good, with just the odd items falling below par; like the fried eggs you could bounce a fork off and the dry chips. One thing that I thought was odd was the fact that they switched off the juice dispensers at dinner time and the fizzy pop dispensers at breakfast. Admittedly the loss of the fizzy pop in the morning didn’t bother me as it’s not something I fancy at breakfast, but I missed my juice at dinner and really I don’t see why we shouldn’t have been given the choice.

Overall it wasn’t the best of dining experiences. I didn’t enjoy have to weave my way through, often ignorant, people to get trays of food to the table. Although the staff regularly cleared the tables they rarely cleaned them until the end of the session. Most times we would have to clean the table when we arrived. On a couple of occasions we even had to clean a mess off the chairs and floor when the previous occupants couldn’t be bothered to clean up after themselves. The canteen was gaudily decorated and not unexpectedly noisy. It was not the most relaxing of dining environments.

It was then a lovely experience to visit Papa John’s Restaurant. We arrived quite late in the lunch time session, so it was fairly quiet and clean. The food was lovely and fresh pizza was served on the buffet for us. Price wise it was only about 50p more for the buffet than you would be charged in a Pizza Hut and the service was naturally more personal than at Coral Beach.

There are three restaurants allocated to the Dinner, Bed and Breakfast (DBB) guests. The Yacht Club is the Gold members DBB restaurant, but it accepts other paying customers and it looked like Ocean Drive did meals to the public at a price too. Coral Beach seemed to be the only DBB restaurant that did not do this.

The other bars and restaurants are Bar Rosso, Burger King, Finnigans, Jaks, Papa John’s, The Front Room, The Skyline Café and Sun & Moon. Some of the bars are child friendly and others are adult only. At all of these establishments you can expect to pay more than you would outside of Butlins. At some it is just a little more than average, but at others there is a big difference. Burger King was surprisingly expensive.

Daytime Entertainment

When it comes to entertainment there is a lot. No matter what the weather there is always something to do and most of it is included at no extra fee.

Splash Waterworld is a popular attraction. It has several pools and flumes suiting different age groups. My 4 year was unfortunately too small to go on any of the flumes, but my 6 year old was able to go on the standard ones. The Master Blaster and Space Bowl flumes required riders to be a bit older. There was a little water adventure playground area for the toddlers, with slides, sprays and little waterfalls which my youngest particularly enjoyed. Turtle Beach was also a good pool for toddlers and the disabled as it sloped down from shallow to slightly deeper, rather like a beach. The rapids were something the whole family enjoyed and we let ourselves get swept around that regularly. Some of the things we didn’t get to try because for some reason they periodically shut things. The bubble spa pool was shut the first day we visited, then the next day there was a big queue a pool was shut off instead. They also never switched the wave machine on while we were there. One thing that annoyed us was that when my husband took our older daughter on the flumes they would not let him slide down with her, despite the fact that there were two separate flumes side by side and when he waited for her at the bottom they blew a whistle at him and tried to tell him he couldn’t. Naturally he wasn’t about to abandon a 6 year old who would have easily gotten lost. The overall cleanliness was fair. There were a few places where some algae had started growing and the toilets smelled rather ripe with slimy floors.

The fair was open throughout the day, weather permitting, with late night opening on Tuesday. The rides here were mainly for older children and adults, so there weren’t many that our children could go on and those that they could needed adult accompaniment. These rides were admittedly not in the best maintained state either, as my husband pointed out. For younger children Bob’s Builders Yard was probably more suitable as there were four different small rides that they could go on unaccompanied. Another free attraction which was popular with my children was the Old Fruit Mine. This is the largest adventure playground I have yet encountered.

Throughout the day various Kids Clubs are held to suit various ages. Here they do different creative activities. Unfortunately it was something we had to miss out on as they are divided into age categories (0-4s, 5-8s, and 9-12s) and our children fitted in different ones. As they prefer to do things together we had to stick to activities that we could do with both.

For adults wanting to get away from it all, there is the Spa. This offers a good range of treatments starting at quite low prices.

Evening Entertainment

The evening entertainment was mainly done in the bars, although there were also events on in the Skyline Pavilion. The Reds bar was the most popular family destination, but Centre Stage also allowed children in. Some of the other bars were adult only at night, so they were just the place to escape to if you’d had enough of children for a bit. The Reds is where you will see the famous Redcoats and they have regular character shows with Billy Bear and Bob the Builder characters.

As you would expect, drink prices are a bit above average pub prices here, but not as high as we first expected. In fact they are probably less than you would pay in a nightclub and they seemed to be the same in all the bars.

Location and Surroundings

At Butlins you are a bus ride away from Skegness and Ingoldmells and some busses can be caught on-site. For more regular busses you just step off site to the main road. You can take a car into the towns, but at peak holiday season the parking situation is not ideal. The Butlins site location is actually fairly remote and quiet, apart from the main road passing by it. However, it is not a quiet place to stay in due to all the other guests staying there.

On the opposite side to the road there is a gate which leads to the beach. The cleanliness of the beach was good, but water quality is what you’d expect of the East England coast. Probably not exactly polluted, but it is of course brown because it is essentially a channel. It is a large beach, but I imagine it may still get a little crowded when the weather gets hot.

Shopping can be done on-site or in the nearby towns. The shops on-site are of course the more convenient and there is a reasonable selection of them, including a supermarket and a shop with some clothing. You do pay more in them than you would off-site though. Off-site Skegness is probably the best choice for a wider range.

Staff

Most of the members of staff were very friendly and helpful. They made you feel welcome and treated any requests as if they were important, whether they were or not. We visited guest services twice for information and once we mentioned the smell of smoke coming through the door. The lady apologised and said that although guests are requested not to smoke in the accommodation, there was nothing they could do if they chose to. However, she did say she would send someone over to spray the room to help with the smell and when we got back to our accommodation less than an hour later this had already been done. The only staff members that weren’t always quite as friendly and ready with a smile were the serving staff at the food counters. Most of them were foreign, so they didn’t always understand you, but at no time were they ever impolite.

Disabled Facilities

I was surprised at how disabled friendly Butlins was. Most places have a few alterations which make disabled access possible, but Butlins positively caters for them. When we were at Splash Waterworld we saw a woman in the Turtle Beach pool with a severely handicapped lady in a specialised life vest which supported her head and when they came to get her out they had a purpose built chair that they could wheel in and out of the water. I have never seen this anywhere else before and the beach like pool was really what made it possible to use. This disabled lady was obviously really enjoying the water and I suspect it’s something she wouldn’t often get to experience.

Final Thoughts

Butlins is a wonderful concept which has been well organized. The place was generally clean, tidy and well maintained and the entertainment was of a good standard. I could hardly believe how much there was to do there. What let it down for us were the other guests. People from all walks of life go there and unfortunately that means you get the bad with the good. Too many people had little or no consideration for other the other guests, so we had to endure their noise levels, them pushing into queues and these were adults (okay, and one teenager singing at the top of her lungs at about 1am)! I didn’t enjoy dining in the crowded canteen conditions either and whenever we stepped outside there was an almost constant smell of smoke from the sheer amount of people smoking there.

Frankly I would be unlikely to return there unless we went self catering or in Gold DBB. However, if I had the money to spend on that, then I would be more likely to choose a holiday abroad. 

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