Hafan Y Mor Holiday Park ( Haven Holidays), Gwynedd

In May we booked a short 5 day break in this Haven park as a kind of honeymoon.
Hafan y Mor is located in north Wales in Gwynedd.
We choose Hafan y Mor as it is only about 80 miles from our homes and we had never been to the area before.
On booking we also decided to go for the diner’s choice vouchers aswel as booking a high chair microwave and cot bed. It cost us around £400 for 4 children and 4 adults, staying in 3 bedroom apartment in mid may.

The park according to the website boasts karaoke

‘One of Haven’s best flagship Parks just gets better! The superb Adventure Golf and thrilling large indoor pool complex means Hafan y Môr is ideal for active, outdoor loving families, with everything from boating to the high RopeWorks challenge. While the stunning setting begs to be explored with direct access to the beach and superb complex and evening entertainment.’

The park also has a spar, star bucks, burger king, and papa johns and a chippy.

If only we had experienced this…..

We arrived on the Monday at 2.30 and went to book in-this process was all very easy and the staff were competent and very helpful. We were given a site map and information pack, we were told all of our pre book items were in the apartment and to collect the meal vouchers from the main restaurant later that day.

We were based beside the seafront in the apartment complex over a bridge from the main park-although this part did have a child’s park, a spar and the restaurant the mash and barrel Lakeside, you could also order family bikes and have a swan boat ride on the lake although I cannot comment on these as we used none apart from the spar.

As we were on the seafront we went to check out the beach only to discover that to get there you walk past a sewerage plant! We sadly didn’t decide to go back to the beach, as we couldn’t really see a safe way of getting down the hill to it, although the views of Snowdon were amazing.

Our apartment was based on the ground floor, and was generally clean and tidy there was a working TV, gas fire (on the floor so couldn’t use it due to having two under 2’s with us) table chairs etc. The bedrooms were great we had 1 set of bunks a double room and a twin all were tidy, the bathroom was also cleaned well. This is when we realised that the microwave was missing and the cooker not working , so off for my first visit to customer services, only to be told they had run out of microwaves but would deliver one when it became available and someone would come a fix the cooker-no apologies given.

I decided it was time for dinner so off we trot on the hike to the main restaurant-my first impression was good and the woman on the front desk was very help and gave us all the info we needed. It was terribly busy and it seemed like there was not enough tables for all the guests, after waiting we did eventually get a table and were off to find food!! Unfortunately it didn’t look that appetising but as we were hungry we decided just to eat anyway-we all had a basic fish and chips with the kids having sausage and chips, on the whole it was really nice and we were surprised although we decided to miss pud and the fridge area had broken down but they were still serving it and we didn’t want to chance it. We also noticed that no staff cleaned the tables in-between diners.The food had been good for the first 2/3 days even if it didn’t look it with breakfast consisting of a full fry up for all or fruit etc. The 4th night however the adults food was at best bad they food was either burnt or looked very under done but being hungry we didn’t really have a choice-although the next day we wished that we did as 4 of us came down with awful sickness and had to stay in for two days until we could do anything, these members of the group did not eat at the restaurant again deciding on Burger King etc instead, although the rest of us chanced it with no illness although we were a bit iffy about it but really didn’t want to spend a lot on takeaways.

That evening as with all we went to see the entertainment which we all found fab!! All the staff were helpful and the kids loved the characters when they came round overall we found all the shows great and these were a great part of our holiday. Admittedly the bar there was more expensive than average costing us around £1.50 for a coke, but this was expected.

The day after arriving we all decided to throw ourselves into the park activities and we decided to start with the swimming pool, getting to the pool was easy as it is opposite the customer services. It is clean and tidy and well maintained although we discovered the changing rooms were unisex. The pool has a beach style main pool, a deeper pool with rapids, a Childs pool, Jacuzzi and a plunge pool connected to the flumes. There is also a 4 lane water slide although this was not working throughout our hoilday,we stayed for around an hour and the kids loved it and although they all had red eyes from the chlorine they had fun. With the older ones enjoying the flumes. We consequently went back everyday for some water fun!

Most of the other activities were closed so we didn’t really have a lot to do only the swimming was actually open for our entire stay so I cannot comment on these activities.

Overall apart from the sickness, the food and lack of things to do we did have fun and the kids really enjoyed themselves, but as it was a flagship park I am very upset no one ever delivered us a microwave although we were refunded and also the cooker was never fixed. The only people we saw were from the sales team asking if we wanted to buy a caravan.