Center Parcs Reviews

We have booked a break in late July and have booked various activities for the 4 children we are taking with us. Unfortunately my grandson has just severed his Achilles heel and in plaster so longer can participate in 4 activities with his cousins. So….. we proceed to cancel his activities ( all within the terms and conditions …..or so we thought) which are group ones with his cousins, and apparently we cannot …..because we have to speak to someone at center parcs. HOW CAN WE AS THEY NEVER ANSWER THE PHONE…..SO IT IS CATCh 22!, is this how they make more money. !!!! We have held the line awaiting to be answered but they don’t even tell you where you in the queue !! Anyone got any ideas what we can do? He was involved in 3 activities so it is quite expensive if we lose this money. SO, SO ANGRY!,

Great family time at Woburn. I took my husband, 18 yr-old son & 83 yr-old Mum who has poor mobility. Adapted 3-room Lodge 306 was ideal for our needs & a great location. My personal highlight was Segway, brilliantly led by Andrew, thank you, & amazing raspberry ripple ice cream. Mum enjoyed spa treatments, my son enjoyed the waterslides & indoor climbing, with a great challenge & coaching by Jake. Hubby was really impressed by friendly staff & setting, plus outdoor tennis. 2 little gripes were: 1. age restricted wi-fi which unreasonably and needlessly wiped the majority of previously downloaded music from my son's music app which completely limited the music he could listen to and they needed redownloading after leaving, and he's 18 ? 2. Cabanas at the pool were not really accessible as advertised & no help given. We will be wiser next time - all voted to return next year!!

So so disappointed. We’ve booked a new style woodland lodge and from the floor plan it looks like it has a main bathroom and a shower room but it’s not labelled so this is not clear. After I booked I had a horrid thought about the bathrooms and so I did a live chat to clarify where I’m directed to look at the floor plan and that it has a main bathroom and a separate WC. When I queried the floor plan with the adviser they said that it only states in the itinerary that there is a main bathroom. I questioned but it does not mention the separate WC in the itinerary/features list ??? Their communications are so misleading on one hand I’m directed to go by an unlabelled floor plan and when I question it I’m being directed to the features list, absolute nonsense and unnecessary confusion! How on earth am I meant to know what I’ve booked, really poor and as we’ve booked 2 lodges as we’re going with our children and grandchildren it’s even more disappointing! Not good enough in this day and age I’m afraid.

First time I’ve had a bad experience with Centerparcs- sadly it’s enough to make me rethink visiting again.

Staff on the ground are always amazing. Helpful, polite and willing to go an extra mile. We’ve been coming for nearly 30 years and there have been niggles but always sorted quickly.

This year we’re at Elveden and not long before our holiday, which was booked during our last trip in February, we received an email saying some swimming activities were cancelled because of upgrades to the area. I’m sure this was planned before we booked but there you go. I called Centerparcs reservations who confirmed the work and said if I wanted to discuss a discount I’d have to call Guest Services. They also said that I could cancel and rebook but seeing the work will be ongoing until next year I didn’t see a point. I called Guest Services but couldn’t get through so I emailed. No response.

Fast forward to the holiday - we arrived, got our disabled permit to park outside. Confirmed the mobility scooter we had booked. It’s all good.

My daughter got to the cycle park, no scooter. They could only offer a wheelchair or bike with a cart thing at the back. So no independence for my son and he feels guilty because one of us now has to push him.

If this had been a cheap holiday the above would be minor irritations but Centerparcs you can’t have your cake and eat it. If you can’t offer the Customer Service of the luxury experience that you promise then you have to lower your prices.

Be warned no showers, disrupted changing facilities and fewer lockers at Elvedon swimming pool over the Summer. They only tell you after booking and then say they will charge you to cancel ?!

After trying to modify for 2 months a stay for august, at SUNPARKS, contacting the parcs and meddling between them and BOOKING.COM, we finally were able to speak to a customer service person from CENTER PARCS, and this person was so rude, so extremely unpolite to me and specially to my wife, that she had an anxiety attack. We are still trying to either cancel or change the accomodation, but I am already giving up, and getting all the information I can gather to sue both parcs.

We are staying in a two bedroom executive Lodge in Woburn forest though its beyond fantastic looking nothing electrical comes with instructions luckily can search the web and find out ps if you intend to purchase the logs for the fire before arrival make sure you bring something to light them as they obviously think its funny not to provide matches with the logs so first morning could not have the fire on so upset with that as paid for a log for each morning

Cannot recommend this holiday enough!! We went to the whinfell parc and the location was beautiful. Lots of wild animals roaming around the site and lodges situated right in the heart of the Forrest. Booked all activities we wanted to and more as there are so many to chose from. It was expensive I’m not going to lie but making the memories we have as a family are priceless to me.

I go to center parcs a few times a year to Woburn and i book a mobility scooter to be delivered to my lodge prior to arrival and we sometimes get courtesy early check in. Yesterday I rang and i was past from pilar to post by guest services managers who 1 minute said yes we will give you a courtesy early check in, then no, then yes and then i was put through to a lady called Vicki in the medical team who asked me intrusive questions about my disability only to be told no we cant then yes we can said a lady in pre-Arrivals who gave me the wrong name or cp are denying a person with the name Niki works there. A man called Owen rang me today was hostile, abrupt but he said we can give you a curtesy early check in then i requested a email confirmation then he says no. Omg goodness are these people bipolar or are they taking the pi.s i asked to cancel then they said we wont offer you a refund. Awful money grabbers who have zero interest in making customers happy. If they said from the start that early check in is £40 i wouldve said ok. Even this only checkin fee is a scam because they charge different prices each time you call. Someone i know paid £60 for 3 lodges early check in and others are being told to pay £40-60 for 1 lodge. I asked owen if we can have a coffee machine and we are happy to pay but he was full of unnecessary attidude. I really dont know why staff are so hostile to me but i will never return. I feel its because i have ethnic name and these village people are racist

First the negatives. We booked an Executive Lodge for 3 of us and the room wasn't clean on arrival. There were sweet wrappers and bits of sweets in the bedrooms and one of the ensuites. The shelf by the fireplace was so dusty you could write in it and the mattresses were poor quality and we didn't sleep well. The most annoying thing was the Sports Plaza, which for reasons I cannot fathom, have decided to use a QR system, whereby you have to input your card details and order through your phone. This led to us inadvertently clicking a big OK button which we have since discovered was a scam. We then spent nearly 2 hours of our short break on the phone to the bank to cancel our card. Why they can't just use contactless is anyone's guess? Even the staff agreed and said they preferred more customer interaction. After all that is part of the hospitality experience. Other issues were:
No information pack in room.
No instructions for coffee machine. Took ages to work out how to do it and had to go online in the end to look up instructions.
Table tennis - No net to stop ball going into people playing on the arcade games or balls getting trapped under arcade games.

Positives:
Staff responded brilliantly to complaint about dirty room and gave us a small refund. They were friendly and courteous, hence we would not be put off coming again.
Great Tropical swim space.
Grounds well maintained.
Escape room (Parallax) was excellent and would highly recommend. Wished we'd booked the other escape room too.

My daughter booked this break as a treat for us, and her husband + 2 young children and herself. We stayed from Easter Monday until the Friday. The major complaint was the Changing Places toilet facilites. My rising 8 y.o. grandson is mentally handicapped, in a wheelchair, and in nappies. *They weren't allowed to take him to use the facility as we weren't in an adapted lodge* - we didn't need to be as he doesn't need lowered worktops, an electric bed etc. APPALLING !!!! The other comments are small by comparison: in an Executive Lodge, you'd expect soft-closing kitchen cupboards, especially as they are so near the bedrooms; the sofa was not comfortable; the sign-posting on the site is often inadequate and misleading eg we found a shorter route from the shop to our (Oaks) lodge than the signposted one we had followed on our first evening whilst carrying bags of shopping. I also think they need to look at the arrival procedure: we were directed to a car park and were told that the gate would be open to let us through to our lodges at 4 pm. At about 4.20 I rang the C.S. to ask why nothing had happened

Dont go it expensive and there are alot of other places to book make it last on tour list.

I’ll start by saying that overall we had a great time at Centerparcs Sherwood Forest. We were a large group staying in 2 adjacent lodges and thoroughly enjoying all the activities, the pool, the cycling, the environment. The staff were all lovely, especially on the activities, they were brilliant with the kids. We tried a number of activities including aqua jetting, laser tag, fencing, badminton, kids segways and street karts and enjoyed them all. We booked the street karts for an hour for our group and had the best time racing round the track, we all had a good leg workout. We also took part in the Big Quiz on the first night which was really good fun.
The main thing that has resulted in the 4 rather than 5 star review is the comfort of the beds and the bedding. We were really active for our 3 night stay and needed a good nights sleep but our party of 11 all felt the beds were really uncomfortable and slept poorly over the weekend. They were very hard and the duvets and pillows the same and poor quality. The other item which was poor quality was the TV, which had dreadful sound quality, this is a minor point but not what you expect from Center parcs. Like others have commented we had a very poor takeaway curry which we found out is not made in the Center parcs Indian restaurant and is delivered by an external company who are clearly ripping off Center parcs customers, definitely avoid!! I’ve seen a number of reviews commenting on how uncomfortable the beds are. Such a shame as we had a brilliant time and would like to go back but not sure I can manage another sleepless weekend!!

Well done again Carole and Emily at Centerparcs Woburn.

We visited in October 2021 and visited the Aquasana spa. We were very concerned about COVID but Carole and the staff made us so very welcome.

We had absolutely no hesitation to book again and were delighted to meet Carole again. She welcomed us like old friends and even remembered our son by name. Absolutely stunning memory Carole and thank you so much for making today’s stay at the spa so perfect.

Centerparcs still delivers great value and a safe and homely welcome for all. The staff are wonderful and the lodges are excellent.

Very well done.

Ed

We had a blast ,we didn't stop laughing the whole weekend,all the staff we spoke to were friendly and helpful expecially Sharon Day at the Grill restaurant she went out of her way to help us with the app that you now need to use for ordering all food and drink at cp which is OK for the young of today that don't like the personal touch.She was professional and lovely and needs a shout out. I found the sauna lovely (would like a pair of slippers or flip flops to use) lots to do and prices were good for lunch in the restaurant there. We didn't know cp was a cash free site ,they lost out on a lot of spending from us 4 ladies as we had cash. The indoor pool and rapids were really good clean and warm Accommodation was really good ,and the land train was a blessing.