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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

NEARBY ATTRACTIONS
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Also nearby is Weston Super Mare, Bath and Cribbs Causeway at Bristol is not too far away either.

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).

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.

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!