Geraldine TOP 10 Holiday Park — Hotel in South Island

We googled public toilet and it directed us peoplehere for not sure what reason, we’ve been charged $84 to use the camp site’s toilet for 1 min … the gentleman aggressively said “you are not using the toilet free”. It is reasonable that if we were gently asked to pay to use the toilet for a certain fee due to Google’s mistake, but he asked us to pay for 2 nights fee to use the women’s toilet and asked us to call police if we are not happy with it. As a tourist from Australia, this is the worst experience ever in NZ. I hope no one else would experienced anything like this in their life…..

I don’t know how to reply to your reply directly, but what I can confirm is me and my husband didn’t see you in the office at all, otherwise we would definitely asked for permission before we use the facilities. Why would we challenged ourselves for a place which is not allowed to use the toilet and ruined our honeymoon holiday for this? We are the kind of people which would never want anything like this happen and it never happened in my whole life ever! If we are very unreasonable people, we would not pay for the $84. We don’t like to cause trouble to anyone. I understand it is the fault of Google and I believe my husband has explained it to you but you are still aggressive to him not sure why, is it because you think we were ignoring you which we didn’t? Or is it because we are Asian faces? He didn’t tell me anything until we drove out our the place. I am also feel very uncomfortable on the word you typed on the receipt of “Stolen toilet and rubbish” . My hands are still shaking when tying this words and I still cannot believe this happen to us on our last...

Had a very unpleasant experience with the owner, Howard.

I was charged $55 for checking out the premises for less than 3 mins as my son had pooped his diapers and we were looking for a toilet near the PDS.

After I had taken a quick look and left the premises, Howard came to our campervan parked outside, opened our campervan's door, and aggressively demanded we return to the office to be billed. As overseas tourists with a 1 year old child who did not want trouble, we obliged as we simply wanted to continue with our trip. Howard then demanded for us to leave the campsite on threat of calling the police, without use of the campsite's facilities.

On hindsight, it is probably illegal for a business to be charging fines then denying service. $55 for "stolen toilet" then denying its use is simply ridiculous as well.

I note that this business has had multiple similar complaints on Google reviews and Tripadvisor over the years. I would advise caution in dealing with this business, especially if you are a tourist. ——— Response to owner’s feedback

To us, threatening to call the police (which multiple other reviews have noted) is hardly “respectfully asking for payment”. The owners seem to have a habit and low threshold to threaten to call the police, even on tourists, as shown by multiple reviews.

Perhaps we should have taken up the threat as your business does not have the right to issue a fine. You cannot be judge, jury and executor....

We found ourselves having to stop in Geraldine and chose to spend the night here in our motorhome. With its tall trees and green lawn, this place has a peaceful park-like setting. As we arrived after night fall, we'd only wanted to cook and shower before getting to bed.

There weren't many tourists this time of year, so we had the large and well equipped kitchen to ourselves. Most holiday park kitchens we had been to were not heated. So it was a pleasant surprise to find a wall mounted radiant heater. It wasn't quite warm enough, though it's better than none at all.

However the next surprise wasn't a pleasant one. My wife had discovered that the shower was on a 6mins timer. We can understand the need if occupancy is high since shower rooms are limited. But not when occupancy is low. She did eventually have a rather uncomfortable shower.

That aside, we didn't find any other issues affecting our stay. In fact the park and facility (kitchen & shower) cleanliness was quite good. So if long hot showers aren't a necessity for you, I think you'd...