Union Lido Mare — Hotel in Cavallino-Treporti

We were really looking forward to our time at Union Lido but sadly it did not live up to our expectations. We have previously said at other 4 star camping locations in Europe which were excellent and were expecting this to be a similar if not better experience. Sadly it was not. ||First of all, having to drive to a different location to check in (and given incorrect directions to get there) it did not start well! When we did find the location, they took our passports and gave us a sticker then we could go back to the main entrance - bizarre! ||So you are warned, the number of people at the place in the summer is around 10,000-11,000 people. Some events were dangerously overcrowded (especially the ones run in the main street) and had little if any security. After our first experience I complained and things did seem to improve but it had already put us and our kids off going to some other events. Loud music went on until 11pm most evenings and even though they alternate the location you can hear it across most of the site. The Amphitheatre is not suitable in size for the number of guests it hosts in the summer. ||Entertainment that we went to was generally ok - nothing special and with only 1 concert/event a night they were busy. They should have 3 or 4 different popular events every evening for the number of guests they are trying to entertain. ||Mosquitos are a real problem there - most people were covered in bites. They did come and spray a couple of times whilst we were there but this did not make much difference. It is too hot to cover up but make sure you have plenty of repellent. ||Location is OK - there are lots of other campsites up and down the coast and we tried several beaches in the area. They are all the same looking and most very busy (though it was August). However, once you have been there a week, you have been to Venice, done some beaches, been to pools etc there is little more to do in the area. Would recommend getting offsite and going to Jesolo in the evening - has a nice vibe and some nice restaurants. Yes it is close to Venice (still takes an hour or so to get into the city) but is expensive. Use the public bus rather than the one that comes onsite as it is cheaper!||Best activity was the pirate ship trip (external company) which collects from the shore at the campsite. The staff on the boat were excellent and it was a good fun experience. The site run archery was free and good fun too, staff were friendly and spoke good English.||Shower rooms always very clean, pitch sizes are good - wish we had not paid the extra for a larger pitch as standard pitch would have been adequate. If you are going to book, Lido Suite 13 has a large tree in it making the space awkward to use. Generally the site was clean, there were times bins were over flowing in the pool area but this was not all the time.||The hedges around pitches must be 5ft high - this makes turning the 90 degree corners very hard and we had several near misses with bikes and scooters zooming around the site. There are no pavements anywhere onsite and most of the roads/tracks are only just wide enough for 2 cars. Either the hedges need to be lowered so you can see when pulling out or they need to have pavements and reduce the number of pitches to make this a safe place to let kids walk around on their own. ||The normal swimming pool could be improved a adult swim time earlier in the morning and/or in the evening. During the 10am - 7pm it was generally busy and hard to be able to swim despite having a swim only lane. However the kids found it enjoyable. ||There is a vehicle ban between 1pm and 3pm - however, it seems it is fine for you to arrive onsite during this time! To us, it seemed like a way of trying to keep you onsite so you had to purchase lunch onsite! ||Prices onsite are 30-60% more than the supermarket down the road but are more convenient. There are lots of things to spend money on and it is generally expensive. ||Overall - we would not go back, there are much better sites for us which charge far...

Were my expectations too high?

Beach toilets:

There are no toilets directly at the beach.

the 2 toilets at the nearby Blubar are clean, good stuff team Blubar!!

The toilets at the larger restaurant near the beach are underground, hard to find, dirty and lack airflow. I feel sorry for the restaurant guests that pay good money for a nice meal, and then are greeted with such a disgusting toilet. Fail.

How great would it be to have decent toilets when you're at the beach!! That'd make your holiday that bit better right?

Toilets at the sand Lagoon pool:

Like the toilets at the larger restaurant near the beach. Disgusting.

Not enough for the number of guests, in a cellar, not clean, no airflow.. avoid if you can!!

Prices for non-Italians:

If you go to the bakery in Italy, they normally do prices or kilo. Not at the bakery here.

The price is shown as a kilo price like all Italian bakeries. But if you pay, you pay a fixed price for each bread roll.

After asking why, the explanation is that foreigners (Germans) prefer a reliable price per roll. If you insist on the kilo price forget it: denied!!

So the local Italians get one price, and everyone else another? Discrimination?? Be careful UL...

Midday and evening quiet time

There are rules made to be broken.. and UL staff encourage it.

Cars are allowed to drive in and out of the camping grounds during the midday quiet time.

Security staff ride around at night and do nothing, even when discussions are so loud that you wake up at 00:30.

Having politely spoken to our neighbours once, as second 'non-polite' discussion let the entire camp ground get back to sleep.

Why have a quiet time, if it's not enforced, or encouraged? Having that little time off peace in the midday is wonderful when it works. And if I have to be the social police because your staff ride past and don't say a word. You're not really helping me relax anymore.

Supermarket:

We ran out of water in the evening (just before 9pm), our own fault! Run to to the supermarket: closed.. thanks for the support U. Was a tough evening.

Kids want to have hotdogs at lunch time!! No worries my darlings, I'll run up to the supermarket and cook some up. No wait.. the supermarket closes from 12:30 to 16:00!!

I'm sure no-one thinks of buying food at lunch time right?

You've got to be kidding! The supermarket literally closes during the quiet time when you also shouldn't be able to drive out to an open supermarket and buy food!?

There positive:

The rollercoasters, the sand pool, the wave pool, the slides!! Heaps of wow moments that UL has to offer, that others find hard to match.

Summary:

None of these things are big on their own. But it's 'death by a thousand cuts' at UL.

Heaps of small wins that can make a holiday enjoyable, or not.

Please consider taking action on some of these topics, and not go into a defensive explanatory mode. Please listen, and act.

If not, then you've only lost one family, not a great loss.

But if changes don't happen, then slowly your customers will make similar decisions, and you'll have to lower your prices and find more roller coaster style attractions (quick fixes) instead of fixing systematic qualitative issues in your approach.

Alternatively, guests can go to a camping ground that had already acted in all of the above, and REALLY relax as we did: Marina de Venizia.

Sorry.. but today the better choice is...

We are just back from a week in Union Lido. We’re a family of 5, three children ranging from 3-9 in ages. So I’m just giving the kind of info that I always look for when I search reviews on a new place with kids!! ||Honestly the place is great for all ages. A larger and smaller water park with lots of restaurants and snack bars. We preferred the smaller water park because there were slides to satisfy all kids and we were able to keep together more than in the larger one. My 3 year old really gained water confidence and the lifeguards kept a great eye on things. A nice spread out playground that’s beside the beach. And we were lucky enough to enjoy the Beach on Fire display of fireworks which was class. |There’s also an inflatable play zone €10 in but kids can come and go from 5:30pm-11pm I think. Ours had great fun here. Near here there’s a sort of VR type cinema €5 for about 4 minutes of a rollercoaster type thing. It was a bit of fun and all the kids could do it. ||Lots of choice for eating out or getting a takeaway, and we never had a bad meal. Might be a bit of a limited menu for kids but I find this is always the case. Honestly it was great to have so many options of places to eat. And the cocktails were lovely! ||We stayed with Roan for the first time. The reps were so welcoming and helpful and a pleasure to deal with. ||We have stayed with Eurocamp previously in Domaine des Ormes, France (somewhere I would also definitely recommend, a really cool site) so I don’t know it was a Roan/Eurocamp or an Italy/France difference but the accommodation was much smaller this time. We booked a Premium Relax 3 bedroom mobile. There was quite a small terrace and no outside garden space but this seems to be the case with all accommodations in Union Lido. It all just felt a bit cramped. One toilet room which was very very small. ||We paid extra for linen which was left in packs on the bed. Again not sure if it was Roan thing or Italian thing but in France the beds would be made up on arrival once you paid for linen. Not a big deal but just something I didn’t realise. |Also, no extra towels for the kitchen/bathroom so we had to use two of the four towels we got there which left us with only two shower towels. Not great. I ended up buying a towel and tea cloth for the kitchen because we were always short towels for showering after swimming. |Also, a small thing, but there was no toaster! We didn’t realise how much we use a toaster until we didn’t have one 😂 No oven either. ||The TV was a bit of a disaster. For the first few days there were no channels at all but this may be due to the fact that there were nightly thunderstorms. We found a few English speaking news channels a few days in but that’s it. We had brought a Fire stick which needed WiFi but the log in page was a disaster so we never got to use it. This didn’t matter too much as we were out so much but it may be important to others. ||We took a boat trip to Venice, which is very busy and overpriced, but we did the touristy gondola with the kids and had some lunch so we enjoyed it. ||Overall we liked it and the kids loved it. They definitely want to return. If we did, I think we’d have to look into larger accommodation and hope the reps were as...