NRMA Darlington Beach Holiday Resort (Coffs Harbour) — Hotel in Arrawarra

I would actually rate this park as more of a 3.5 to maybe 4 stars but Google reviews doesn't make that possible. Arrival was good. The place is very easy to find and while the turn into the park may jump out at a weary driver there are large signs that make that less of a problem. Check-in was painless and fast and the staff are very friendly and helpful. We stayed in a Gumnut Villa which, from the reviews here, seems to be the norm unless you camp in or van in. On arrival the park has a great ambience, lots of palm trees and wildlife roaming around. Its quiet even with hordes of children also roaming around terrorising the wildlife :) The villa is a 2 bedroom with en suite to the master bedroom. Its comfortable and "fairly" roomy, more so than many other cabins, with a good sized veranda and outdoor setting. There is many activities for the kids to loose themselves in. Pool, jumping pillows, lawn bowls, go-karts and an activities room to name a few. Some of these activities come with a fee and I can see where the park in geared toward the NRMA member with sizeable discounts offered.

Personal negatives: Its good that there are BBQ's scattered throughout the Gumnut Villas because the lack of ventilation prevents you from cooking in the cabin without the smoke alarm making life a misery. The cabins are very dark with little natural light. Our cabin had clearly not been serviced well as there was a broken blind piece that fell apart once touched, there were stains on the donna cover in the master bedroom, The TV in the master bedroom did not work and the dust build up above the cupboards showed where cleaners where only cleaning what they could see and neglecting areas where people were less likely to look. (From an Allergy and Asthma standpoint this could become an issue very quickly).

Overall for a family of 5 we enjoyed our stay and would recommend the park as a nice place to relax. Not sure if it would make my regular rotation and I feel like I'd be looking for that little extra from future holidays that this ON PAR park just missed out on providing.

For the haters out there please stop and think for a moment, I write my reviews to inform not make friends and gush. When the average family is spending upwards of $1500 to $2000 on a weeks accommodation at these places they don't need little miss prim BSing how great something is. They need an honest assessment and I just provided that...

Just finished up a week long stay at Darlington Beach Holiday Resort with 2A and 3C in a caravan.

We absolutely loved this park.

Sites - the caravan sites are huge. You are miles away from your neighbours with plenty of room for the kids to wander, ride bikes, play games etc without feeling like you are in other people's space. Our site was astro turf but some sites were concrete. Basically level and kept very clean. Water and power nice and close.

Amenities - large toilet and shower block right in the middle of the van sites, with other toilets scattered around the park near the shared buildings. All clean and modern. No complaints at all. Laundry facilities standard $5 a load for wash and dry. Enough machines that we rarely had to wait and plenty of lines for air drying.

Water activities - the water park was a big hit for our kids with the splash zone but plenty of older kids using the bigger water slides. Plenty of shaded seating for parents. The heated pool has a small children's pool attached which was good for the little ones. The other pool is cold and has 2 water slides. The hot tub was awesome, very hot, surrounded by greenery. Loved it.

Dry activities - one of the only things lacking (albeit kind of a big one for us) is there is no playground here for kids. There is a toddler playground which our 1yo loved but our 3yo rapidly became bored with. Given the amount of space, would love to see a playground for older kids added. Otherwise there were plenty of activities; jumping pillow, bmx track, pump track, tennis court, lawn bowls, gokarts etc. The school holiday activities were really good with assorted crafts, games and movies.

Other - at first glance the kangaroos scattered around the park with the parrots and bush turkeys looks idealic but honestly the kangaroos were a huge nuisance, and the main reason we are giving 4 stars, not 5. There are signs everywhere saying don't approach the roos, they can be aggressive etc, except the roos are so used to people feeding them that they come right up under the awning of the caravan and help themselves to your food. Anything edible left outside your van will be rapidly taken by birds or roos. Our smaller kids in particular were terrified by kangaroos coming right up to them and we spent a lot of time shooing them away from the kids.

Overall a great park and we...

Stayed 5 nights on a new, powered en-suite site. This NRMA park ticks all the boxes.. the amazing staff, wildlife, location, spacious sites, deals etc. A very relaxing and pleasant place to stay. Regrettably, I've deducted one star for the following reason for the managers to take note of. We kept running out of hot water so had to shower in the main amenities. The reason being.. the NRMA/park owners in their wisdom installed a small ECO, 'heat pump' style hot water system, to service a block of four new ensuite sites. It was just not up to the task, continually ran out of hot water & took 4 hours to reheat back to the 60 degrees setting. Four full en-suite sites generally equates to about 8 adults, plus kids. The campers next to us with kids, had a small camper with no onboard HWS so also had to take hot water to wash up etc. But that's not their fault. The older en-suite sites have instant gas hot water systems so you never run out. The NRMA park owners in their quest to go 'green' with the new en-suites, have forbidden gas hot water & this is the predictable result. Not so great in winter. To be honest, I don't even know what the plumbing company who installed it was thinking? It was never going to meet that expectation. If they're going to persist with the ECO heat pump models, then they need to install more units to the en-suite sites.. a fact the very pleasant & knowledgeable ground manager stated when he came to investigate the issue. We appreciate there was nothing staff could do to rectify the situation during our stay, however, they were very understanding and made up for it in other ways for which we were very appreciative off. This should be a logical, owner/managerial issue. We want to come back here with extended family and we will.. but I would be extremely disappointed if this situation remains...