Mt Warning Rainforest Park — Hotel in Mount Warning

My family and I stayed for a few nights at the Mt Warning Rainforest Park (MWRP) during the most recent Qld school holidays along with a group of 17 family friends. Whilst the park ablutions and camp kitchen were a little dated, they were clean and all in working order and our stay mostly enjoyable despite the continuous rainfall at the time.

One incident however that had occurred at the end of our stay after we had left, has resulted in the decision that NONE of us will EVER stay there again.

Upon arriving at the MWRP, I noted that the staff member that had met us upon arrival, whom I later learned was the manager and owner named ‘Mark’, seemed quite distant and had a surly and even somewhat miserable attitude and this was reinforced with the one or two further interactions I had with him during our stay.

Fast forward to my family and I returning home from our camping trip, I had realised that I had inadvertently left some camping lights at our campsite and I immediately called the MWRP around 7pm and spoke directly with Mark about it. He suggested I call the following day given that it was by then, well after hours.

The following day, I sent an email to MWRP outlining the situation and providing my contact details also stating my preparedness to pay for all associated postage costs. I later also called that same day and spoke to Mark who confirmed that he had seen my earlier email. He assured me that he would try and retrieve the camp lights from our campsite and call me back to confirm. Not hearing back from Mark, I called a couple of days later and spoke to another staff member named ‘Brian’ who said he knew nothing of my email or my missing lights but that he would talk to Mark about it. I asked for a call back whether the lights were successfully retrieved or not which Brian agreed to.

Not having received any communication whatsoever from MWRP the following week (one week after our departure), I called again and once again spoke to Mark about the issue. He again assured me that he would go to our campsite to try and retrieve the lights and mentioned that he had been quite busy lately … obviously too busy to spend 5mins within the period of a week to get my lights. I requested Mark to call me back in 10mins to which he agreed.

An hour later not having received the call back, I called MWRP again this time on my spouse’s phone since I suspected that Mark was screening my calls. My call went to message bank; however, I did not leave a message. About 15mins later, Mark called my spouse’s phone before she handed the phone to me and I spoke once again to Mark but once he realised who it was, he immediately hung up. From there, it was very clear to me that Mark never had any intention of even attempting to retrieve my camping lights nor had he ever intended to return any of my calls as continually promised.

For someone that is dismissive, rude, indifferent, disinterested, unhelpful, untrustworthy and deliberately misleading (putting it lightly), I’d suggest that as a service provider, Mark is in the wrong line of business. As a result of my appalling experience with MWRP, my family and I (and our 17 other friends) will definitely NEVER EVER return nor will I recommend it to anyone else.

If a score of zero was possible in my review for the customer service element, I would give a score of...

Beautiful part of the country is the Caldera of this ancient volcano with Mount Warning the inspirational "plug". And that is the main drawcard for many visitors to this area.

We tow a campervan for our accommodation, so for us the Mount Warning Tourist Park is the logical place to stay while visiting this Tweed Valley region. We made our booking by phone from our North Queensland home a month earlier and when we arrived here at the Park's reception to make our accommodation payment, we were told that we could essentially set-up in any vacant powered site that was unoccupied... This was the quiet time of their tourist year....So we chose site 6 and established what we thought would be our "home" for the next 4 days.

All seemed well and our stay to be going quite smoothly until today: After a day's touring the region, we arrived back at camp late afternoon to find that there was a newly arrived van beside our site. No problem really as we would expect to have neighbouring sites occupied during our stay. However after meeting our new neighbours, they explained that 12 months earlier they had made a bulk booking for a huge family gathering for a 70th birthday party. They had booked powered camp sites 1 through to site 10, as well as all the available cabins for this grand occasion. The remainder of the party were to be arriving in the morning and the following day. This was when we realised we were definitely in the wrong place and definitely at the wrong time. We felt like we were to be surrounded and engulfed like plankton in the mouth of a basking shark.

We were definitely unimpressed about the unacceptable situation in which we now found ourselves.

We made a beeline to Park Reception to make a formal complaint. We found a different person was in attendance. After this person referred to the booking records, it was found that we should have been initially directed to site 23...? Being so late in the afternoon by this time though, we really had no option but to pack up and move to another powered site. We honestly felt SO PUT OUT, that we would have really liked to have moved out of this Park completely to ANY other place in the Tweed Valley region. But because of the late time of the afternoon (near dark) and the fact that we had already made tourism commitments for tomorrow, we had no alternative really than to pack up and move about 100 metres to another available site.

When we leave on Friday, this current visit to the Mount Warning Rainforest Park will definitely be...

After reading the reviews, I had a few hesitations in regards to my booking, however........ After 3 nights there last weekend, I was pretty impressed with my stay. The lady who booked me in, was super friendly and so lovely. There where quite a few groups of us staying ( some camping, some in cabins ) And we all enjoyed our time, even though it rained non stop :-) .

I stayed in a Riverside Cabin, the heater was on when I arrived which was very welcoming. It was small, but what I expected for a cabin. I read some reviews regarding bugs in the cabins..... I didn't see much evidence of this, then again I was vigilant in keeping the screens closed, perhaps other reviewers weren't so careful? But you are out in the bush/rainforest... of course you are going to experience some creatures, what do people expect ( shakes head ). The campers were happy too, lots of fire pits set up, and the BBQ amenity area was clean. The fridges are a great and welcome idea too!!!

I love this platform to review, and there are always 2 sides to every story, don't always take them too literally, as so many people are so quick to whinge about the bad, or just have super high expectations. You can't please everyone, lol.

Overall I was happy with my stay, and we are already talking about planning our next camping adventure...