Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
close to beach and amusements |
| Disadvantages: |
everything else, cheap, shabby, poor |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
no |
We stayed at Pontins Brean Sands near Burnham on Sea in Somerset in October 2007. We booked this through The Sun Newspaper holiday scheme, so it cost us £38 for 3 nights and a further £12 for entertainment passes. We decided to take our own bed linen to save another £6. Electricity was thrown in free as part of the deal. This would have cost us around £70 by booking direct with Pontins through the internet, for a weekend in October.
We have stayed on these Sun weekends several times and we expect a basic chalet, but there is basic and then there is Pontins idea of basic!
This review is my opinion of the Brean Sands holiday park based on the 2 nights that we stayed there. (We went home early as we could not stand it any longer!). The review feels like a bit of a moan at times, but I really can't think of anything else nice to say about the place!
LOCATION
++++++++++
The location is actually very good, the park is across the road from Berrow beach and next door to Brean Sands leisure park. There are arcades galore and plenty of eating places, so there is plenty to see and do while you are there. The park is several miles off the motorway, but on main roads, so very easy to get to.
CHECKIN
+++++++++
Upon arrival we were met at the gate and advised to go to Car Park 1, park up and 1 person only to walk back to reception, as they were expecting over 2000 guests on that Friday. My husband duly followed these instructions. I expected him to be ages, but he was back in around 20 minutes. We were given a welcome pack with our key, our electricity cards, a map, entertainment booklet, and money off vouchers for various things around the site.
We then drove to the location of our chalet, started looking for it on the ground floor, only to be told by a cleaner that it was upstairs. I said typical, we booked a ground floor room and the cleaner went mad, saying its not my fault, I'm only paid to clean them, blah blah blah. You would think I had had a personal go at her, rather than just make a passing comment!! Looks like she is used to abuse from customers though, which is rather sad.
I had specifically requested a ground floor chalet as I have a pregnancy condition called SPD that means I am not meant to go up and down stairs.
So back to reception my husband went and we got allocated a different chalet. This was done very quickly as when my husband mentioned the word complaint to a bluecoat, he got plucked out of the queue and dealt with quickly.
Unfortunately, we got allocated a completely different type of chalet, one of the ones that we had been thinking "thank god we are not staying there"
.
THE CHALET
The chalet was one of their basic models, it basically consisted of 2 rooms and a bathroom. The bedroom was the length of 2 single beds with a wardrobe in between and the lounge consisted of a sofa bed, tiny television (no remote control), a table and 2 chairs (in a 4 person chalet) and a tiny kitchenette in the corner of the same room, which was directly outside the bathroom. The bathroom was a kind of half bath with a seat at one end. The shower was nice and powerful but it worked on a button system, like leisure centres, so you had to keep pushing it to get the hot water coming out!
We were provided with free electricity, however you could buy cards at the shop for £1 or £5. We were given £6 worth of credit for a 3 night stay, which might have just about been enough. The chalet did seem to eat electric, and when we left early, we still had £3 left, so it ate £3 in about 36 hours.
There was a convector heater in each room, which did heat the room very well. We decided to sleep on the sofabed in the lounge rather than the twin beds in the bedroom and we decided to leave the bed down and made up rather than keep putting it away and getting it out again. This meant that there was just enough room to walk round the end of the bed to get out of the chalet. The sofabed was also very uncomfortable and sagged in the middle as they usually do.
We were right opposite the car park on a main route. The whole wall of the chalet in the main room was glass, so we had to either be goldfish or keep the curtains closed the whole time! I can't believe that people are so nosy, but they were literally craning their heads to look into our chalet as they walked past. If there had been a lamppost there they would have walked straight into it! We just got fed up with it very quickly and pulled the curtains over which meant that we felt shut away the whole time that we were there. At night the curtains were useless as they let all of the light in and there was a light right over our patio door! They were just too thin and should have had a thicker darker lining.
The soundproofing was terrible. It was so bad in fact, that when the couple in the chalet backing on to ours came in drunk at midnight and fell out, that we could hear every single (swear) word that they were saying. It got so bad that I was trying to find a number for security as they were shouting at each
other for 2 hours and there was a lot of banging, crashing and screaming going on. It sounded like he was killing her and by 2am we really hoped he had, just so we could get some sleep!! By the time I found a number for security in the entertainment booklet, they had shut up. I just hope that they didn't have children in there with them.
FACILITIES
++++++++++
There are plenty of facilities on site, swimming pool, games room, bar, restaurant, shop, but we found that they were all very crowded and not the sort of place that we wanted to go to. To be honest we found it all a bit shabby and tacky. We usually go swimming when we are away, but there were so many children in there, there was no room for anybody else. We also heard other people complaining about the food in the main restaurant, so we decided to give that a miss.
The shop was great though, it sold loads of different things which was great if you forgot anything.
We got fish and chips the first night from the chippy just up the road - can recommend them, the portions were huge. We always cook our own breakfast when we are away, and the kitchen facilities were just about adequate for that, although a toaster would have been useful.
There were loads of families around with kids, it was the tail end of half term week and no doubt for a lot of people the holiday from The Sun is their main holiday of the year, so hopefully they got a lot more out of it than we did.
NEARBY
ATTRACTIONS++++++++++++++++++++
We went to Cheddar, Wells and Street Shopping Village while we were there. Our original point in staying there was to go to Longleat, but when I discovered I was pregnant, and then diagnosed with SPD which makes it difficult to get around, we decided to postpone that and go there in a few years time when our child is old enough to enjoy it. Cricket St Thomas is also nearby, as are Glastonbury and Minehead is just down the road.
Also nearby is Weston Super Mare, Bath and Cribbs Causeway at Bristol is not too far away either.
FINAL OPINION
++++++++++++++
Would I go there again? Not in a million years! Don't get me wrong, we have stayed in chalet accommodation several times and intend to again, but if we were going back to that area, we would choose John Fowler, as their chalets always have a double bed (the sofa bed is the additional bed if required, not the main bed).
I don't think that even the top grade of chalet here was up to much and the parking was just a nightmare. You are parking on a huge netball court basically, so no car parking spaces are marked at all and of course people take advantage of this and park stupidly, leaving huge gaps and wasting spaces.
The security at the park was very good, they give you a badge to hang from your rear view mirror and people on foot have to show their keys when they go in and out. This obviously helps to keep the children safe from any weirdos out there. There is always a security guard on the gate.
I can't complain about the service from the reception staff as they were very helpful.
The location is great for kids, plenty to do, but again we found it very noisy, due to the leisure park being open late on the Saturday night, all we could hear was music until late at night. This is the sort of place we will not doubt end up going to in a few years time when our child is old enough!
So it looks like this was my first and last visit to Pontins, certainly the Brean Sands one, unless any of their other sites are any better!
very helpful
