Marlie Holiday Park — Hotel in Folkestone and Hythe District

I stayed here for three nights over the Coronation weekend, friday to Monday. We were lucky to get a caravan in a good location near the Clubhouse, and with it's own parking space. A lot of the caravans don't have their own parking space so you might have to find a space in the communal car park. We only ate in the Clubhouse/restuarant once, we had breakfast and it was ok, not great but not terrible, just ok. We spent some time in the Clubhouse each evening having a drink and enjoyed our time there, we also had a few drinks sat outside and this was nice and chilled. There is a children's playground right outside the clubhouse. The one problem with the clubhouse is that big queues can form at the bar, you can find yourself standing there for ten minutes if you're unlucky. The arcade area is terrible, the machines are rubbish and many of them don't even work. We liked the location of the Marlie site. There's a big Sainsburys ten minutes walk away which is ideal if you wanna cook inside the caravan. There are also two very good pubs within five minutes walk. The Warren Inn has a lovely garden with some stuff for children to play on, and The Plough a bit further down does some lovely food. There are numerous others pubs/restaurants if you walk a bit further into New Romney high street, this'll be only a twenty minute walk away. We stayed in a gold plus three bedroom caravan. We found the caravan very homely, with everything you need to get by. The one problem we did have with the accommodation is that the bed sheets seem too small for the beds and are constantly comimg off the bed. We were due to be staying at New Beach holiday park in Dymchurch for a week next month, but we have moved the holiday over to Marlie, mainly due to the location and it's proximity to outside pubs and restuarants, New Beach is much more remote. We had no problems with the staff and all of them seemed friendly enough. Thanks for a good holiday, see you again next month

UPDATED REVIEW: I have stayed at Marlie holiday park a further two times since my first review so I just wanted to leave a few comments about my most recent experience. I have now stayed at Marlie three times this year, the most recent visit was a three night stay starting on Friday the fourth of August. Being August the park was a lot busier than the previous stay which was in June. The main downside to this place is that the staff in the bar simply can't cope with the number of customers. I'm sure at times people were standing in the queue to be served for up to fifteen minutes. On numerous occasions the only person behind the bar would have to leave the bar to go to the kitchen and deliver food to tables. I also heard customers complaining that they'd been waiting 90 minutes for their food. I even heard people who were queueing to get drinks/food get fed up with waiting and leave the Clubhouse to go back to their caravans. I blame none of this on the staff, they work hard and I actually felt sorry for them. The people to blame for this are the management who'll control budgets etc. They really do need to employ more people. If service improved I'm sure more people would eat and drink here and overall they'd make more money, management are being very short sighted by trying to operate on the bare minimum number of staff. The food situation doesn't bother me as we eat either in the caravan or at local establishments, we're happy to go off site but many people don't seem to be. On our most recent visit we stayed in a three bedroom platinum lodge and it was excellent with dishwasher, washing machine, full size beds and a full size bath in one of the bathrooms. We have booked a lodge for our next holiday here in September and also for a week in June next year. I think after staying in the lodge, we would feel a bit claustrophobic in a normal caravan again, I really do recommend the lodges. We choose to stay here mainly because we like the New Romney area, it's got good pubs and restaurants nearby, so we don't feel the need to eat in the Clubhouse. We also like that the...

There are good things and negative things.

My partner and I stayed recently with our kids. We had initially booked a bronze level caravan as we wanted to spend less on accommodation and more on days out and about. When we arrived we headed to reception, only to hear someone complaining about the standard of their Gold Plus caravan. This made my stomach sink, but I had hope it was just one that had been overlooked. We were sent to check in which was situated in a lovely caravan, once checked in we set off to look at our caravan and unpack.

We walked in and my heart sank. It smelt dusty and of mildew. One of my kids found rubbish all over the place, the sofas were ripped and sunken in, there was mould behind the door curtain, the kitchen window was jammed open, and my middle child started getting hives (he has asthma) so we headed back to check in to ask to either pay to be upgraded or moved caravan.

Once we got there the (who I assume was) manager came only to tell us she had nothing left, I was about to ask if their sister park had anything when the check in lady said someone had just cancelled, but it was gold plus. I asked how much we owed as it was a substantial upgrade and the manager said nothing, if she has it we can have it. She was wonderful to us as she could have just sent us packing with a refund.

After we unpacked in our new caravan, we headed to the "restaurant" for some food. We spent £50 to wait 45 mins for our mains and a further 45 mins for 2 bowls of ice cream. When I gently asked one of the servers where the ice cream was he snapped back that he was "working on it" and once he brought them he didnt give us spoons and walked away very quickly. I asked another server and she grabbed them for us. The food was sub par for what you pay. I had a lasagne that barely had any filling, was very sweet, with cheese that seemingly had been melted on using a microwave, and bechemel that must have been an after thought as it was all on one side. Apparently the burgers were okay.

After that meal we decided to eat out.

The caravan doesn't come with oven gloves or tea towels so we used a hand towel we had brought, and bought washing up liquid and sponges in the little shop. The website does state towels are not provided, but we thought there would be oven gloves.

The Gold plus caravan had a few issues of it's own, the bathroom door was missing a latch and so we were unable to lock it. We reported it and were told it was down to be fixed but no one ever came to fix it. The following day we reported that the latch to keep the front door open had been smashed as the wind took the door out of our hand, the manager was very understanding and said she would get it fixed for us. That was repaired.

The doors in the caravan had weird orange bits on them, which we cleaned.

The entertainment for the kids was excellent as their entertainer Chloe was always trying to get the kids excited and seemed to genuinely love kids. She also made a point of making anyone she spoke to feel like an old friend who was visiting, exactly what you want from an entertainer. We stayed one evening for the comedy night, we saw Steve Hewlett, who was fantastic and a magician who was great with the kids.

The swimming pool was quite small for a holiday park, however we did enjoy having a good old swim. We were told New Beach had a bigger pool and we could use our park passes there if we wanted to.

It was quite noisy some nights, which is to be expected when their are kids about, but I wanted to note that for anyone hoping for a peaceful get away.

Overall Marlie seems like a nice place to have a residential spot, and not much of a holiday makers place. I've heard new beach (their sister park) is more catered to holiday makers. It did feel a little like we were intruding when our pitch was among residential caravans.

We did enjoy ourselves overall, and would probably stay again, especially for the entertainment...

I rebooked a visit here with reservations from a previous visit but my father wanted to come back to the area. I so wish now that I had stuck to my principles.

Please don't misunderstand, the caravan was perfectly adequate for the price having double glazing, central heating and reasonably good fittings.

However, the site management is SHOCKING! We had an email and a telephone conversation confirming check in time was 3pm. With this in mind we made other arrangements to plan a tee-off time at a local golf course after this. We arrived at 2.55pm only to be told that check in time was 4pm and no movement was made by the staff even though we had a printed email stating 3pm.

So we travelled to the local course with a car full of luggage, dug the golf clubs out from under it all and played our round of golf. We returned to the site at around 7.30 pm and collected the keys (I add not at the place we were told earlier but another building located on the site). We finally got in and unloaded the car but we could not park anywhere near as all the spaces were now taken (had to park some 100 yards from the caravan).

After we had unloaded it was the noticed that there were no toilet rolls in the caravan. With hindsight I accept that I was sent an email reminder the day before travel that they were not supplied an I accept that i missed this. But by now it was 8pm, past the closing time of the local supermarket, Sainsburys. If we had got in at 3pm and realised this all this could have been prevented. An awful first night!

To make matters worse we tried to visit the on-site bar on three occasions (we did not even try on the 4th night). We enjoyed going into the town try the local pubs and on Monday to Wednesday night, returned at around 10.30pm to catch last orders and use ONE voucher supplied as a complimentary gift. Every single night the bar was closed despite literature supplied stating that the last act (on-site entertainment) started at 10.15pm. Whilst I had no interest in this, the entertainer must be on a good thing doing a maximum of 15 minutes a night! Added to this we now have the opinion that the "complementary" vouchers supplied are useless as we did not get the opportunity to use them.

We did notice that the opening hours of the bar were quite clever, stating a closing time of "Close" rather than an actual hour. This is completely useless if you wish to plan an evening as most people would expect a bar to be open until the stated time or, as I believe, 11pm is the expected norm.

This very much strikes me as a site that is set up for profiteering. It most certainly is not set up for the convenience and enjoyment of the holiday makers who seem to be expected to fit around the site owners. From my previous experience Park Holidays are better run than some, Park Dean are the worst run sites I have experienced, but still fall a long way short of operators such as Haven.

As a final note I would also like people to be aware of the road nearby. Through New Romney there is a speed limit of 30mph rising to 40mph on the outskirts and national speed limit outside the park. Road noise was horrendous during our stay, and this is bearing in mind that there were road works and a major diversion was in place. Whilst the national speed limit is in place on the road the site is located, I cannot believe that the operators have not appealed to get the speed limit restrictions extended to beyond the park entrance (40mph) and this feeling is amplified when a great deal of motorists ignore the speed limit through New Romney...