Parkdean Resorts Breydon Water Holiday Park, Great Yarmouth — Hotel in Great Yarmouth

We love this site!

Historically, we've gone for a field with a loo at the end of it, making our own entertainment for the week. The main reason for this has been cost, so it was a total surprise to see a static caravan on offer for the bank holiday weekend. Being an 8-berth, we teamed up with friends to fill it up, making it £100 per family. With all entertainment, swimming pools etc included, other than food there was no need to spend any more cash. Priority #1 achieved! Onto the rest of the review...

The static was very spacious, with an en-suite to boot. Filling it to capacity meant two had to sleep on the fold-out sofa bed; perfectly comfortable but it obviously meant there was no living space until the bed was put away each morning - we're early birds, so not an issue.

The heating system was ingenious, with three quick-select temperature options. The kitchen was open plan and amply big enough to cook family meals for us all, while the loos were clean, bright and warm. The sofas were very comfortable and far more substantial than we expected. The bedrooms were very poky in order to make the living room a decent size; if you all get on, this is the way round you want it!

We noticed at our last holiday park that there was often parking for just one vehicle so this was a pleasant surprise to be able to park both cars right outside the static. This was especially helpful for our friends whose child is still a baby.

So, the caravan had no negative points from us and there would be nothing to change as far as I'm concerned. Onto the park itself...

The park is spread over two 'villages': one has the indoor pool and gym, while the other had all the other facilities. We had the option of choosing the village to stay on at further cost, so we declined. As it happens, we ended up on the latter which suited us, and we chose the short walk every day to go swimming. There was ample parking at either village which we took advantage of on the last day when we had packed up from the static but wanted one more session in the pool.

For us, the bar/restaurant, amusements, play park, football pitch and theatre were all less than 2 minutes' walk from our static. The entire park is logically laid out though, so the furthest away would only have needed to walk another couple of minutes. Staff were always, without fail, very helpful and polite, which for us went a long way.

The bar/restaurant is ridiculously cheap and the food is superb. We managed to feed a roast dinner to our family of five with a round of drinks for £50! The drinks were reasonably priced, considering there are few pubs locally as competition, so we had no qualms going there each evening. Bingo was great fun and I gather the evening entertainment was fun and varied although we didn't partake (had we been holidaying alone, we definitely would have!).

The Saturday, due to poor weather, had a load of entertainment on offer to kids indoors which was a super touch. Inflatables, nerf gun battles, paints and other activities were on offer, meaning my kids (10-14) were very happy! For us though, we spent most of the weekend in the pool - which is the warmest pool we have EVER been in! This made the wife particularly happy!! The outdoor pool wasn't open due to it being off-season until the end of the month, but it looked great and with super proximity to the outdoor bar area for parents to monitor kids without getting (too) wet.

The bar also had pool and darts which kept us entertained for hours - on many occasions, we were the only ones in the bar, which we found odd but very nice. As it happens, the pool table was out of order but the manager allowed me to take it apart and fix it, meaning we were awarded free games for the afternoon!

I'm running out of characters, but if you want to take the family to an all-under-one-roof holiday that won't break the bank, this ticks all the boxes for us. And, as a smaller park with a lot of caravan owners making up the numbers, it never felt crowded. A real 'family feel' holiday - we'll be...

Liked: The bins were emptied regularly. Yes, that's about all I could think of that was positive.

Disliked: Bizarrely, the site insists on proof of identity. If you question this policy you are told in a rude way that you just have to show them your ID or your booking will be cancelled. They can't or won't explain why they need you to do this, when no other campsite in the country does, nor do hotels. I have a suspicion that it's to make sure they don't have any non-english guests as I didn't see anyone who wasn't english, and the area is known for electing an extremely far right MP.

From my pre-arrival experience, I expected a below par site. Boy did they aim lower than I expected.

Camping is not the focus of this site. They sell caravans.

Arrival was very basic. There wasn't an introduction, or advice on the rules, or on activities, or where anything was. A simple "you're on pitch X, it's there, off you go", which wasn't very welcoming.

When we arrived there was no hot water in the shower block. Guests were advised to make the 20 minute round trip walk to their other site where there was a swimming pool, which had two showers with no privacy. It was not really an adequate solution to the problem. We didnt want to drag our kids 20 minutes for a basic shower, so we just made do with cold water.

Water was restored on day 3 of our trip, but the showers are designed so you have to hold the button in to get water. This means you can't have a leisurely shower and instead have to try to wash one handed.

The entire touring site is crammed around the toilet and shower block. This means that out of the 80 or so plots, about 30 are adjacent to the toilet. You have a very high probability of hearing your neighbors poop. It is also lit all night by strong floodlights, which is great for safety I guess, but it means if you are anywhere near the lights, you'll have a super bright light shining into your tent all night.

You get very little space, it's about cramming as many tents as possible into the site, not about giving their customers room to fit their tent, a car, and some outdoor space for playing or sitting. It's clearly very highly occupied as the grass was dead throughout and there were large sections of each plot without any grass at all. I accept there has been mimimal rainfall, but they are not interested in keeping the grass healthy by having gaps in bookings. It's all about cash cash cash for the owners.

The facilities are basic, and the entertainments are very strongly focussed on bingo. I think it was Bingo three times a night each night we were there, except the saturday, which was kareoke. You could hear the kareoke from the tents at the rear of the campsite.

The indoor pool, as I said earlier is on a seperate site, and although it tells you that you must book online, this is not true, only 25% of their capacity is offered online so you are better just turning up. It's 1.25m deep throughout, so it's not suitable for poor swimmers who can't stand up. The lifeguards were more focussed on having fun and not on looking after the guests. Instead of spraying water at the swimmers, they really should have been watching for the safety of the swimmers. If I'd have been on duty, I'd have twice rescued my own daughter who got into difficulty. As it was, they never even noticed her.

If you are travelling as part of a group, you won't get to camp near each other. I was with a family member and our tents were about as far apart as it was possible to be. She was right next to the bins so I felt a bit sorry for her. We at least were up against the fence, which offered some nature and 5am wake-ups from the local cockerel.

All in all, the price does not reflect the service. It's possibly the most expensive campsite I've ever stayed at, and it was also possibly the worst. I'll be requesting a refund for the 2 days without hot water, and given my experience of their customer service, I expect to be treated very rudely, and ultimately have to submit a chargeback request via my...

Our holiday here was average , wasn’t anything special and wouldn’t be in a rush to come back here . It’s a shame as we have been to other park dean resorts and we felt like there is a huge difference between this park compared to the other ones we have stayed at. The facilities were okay , had an outdoor pool with a water slide which my son loved but was disappointed with the the opening times of 10:30-12:30 and 2:30-4:30 . I would have expected more time to use the outdoor pool . Other than that they had a very small arcade which you had no chance of winning anything seemed like a scam. We noticed on the 2p machines , they would put the prizes back to the top of the machine the next day so felt like you were wasting your money and time using the arcade. The restaurant was alright standard pub grub but not worth the prices . However the loaded late night food was good and reasonable prices .

Entertainment again was standard & very repetitive , my 7 year old got very bored quickly and felt like there was hardly any kid’s entertainment on it all finished around 8ish then the adult entertainment started . My son was disheartened when he tried to interact in the children’s entertainment (kid-oke) to be let down that there wasn’t any time for him to join in. Felt very rushed hence no time for my child to take part in anything which isn’t very fair. There was no live performances /singers other than the same girls who presented and worked at the site . Drinks from the bar were far too overpriced £8 for two small bottles of vk when you can get a big bottle for £2 from the shop is shocking . Nearly £7 a pint of beer is just outrageous. We were put off going into the entertainment for these reasons .

There was an outdoor park which was decent for the kids but overall there wasn’t much for the kids to on the site other than couple of activities, outdoor pool/indoor pool with restricted times and a money robbing small arcade. Good job we went out most days to do other things otherwise my kids would have been extremely bored by day 3.

Indoor pool was nice and the staff over at the bure village were lovely and friendly . My son took part in two activities at the indoor pool which he enjoyed and the lads that led the activities were nice and made it fun for him. The Nisa shop located at bure village was a 10 minute walk from the yare village where we were staying and it isn’t worth the trip due to how expensive it was. Best off going to a local supermarket.

Most of the staff at the yare village were alright but felt a bit of a rude presence. Some of the staff were still training and new staff were training even newer staff so didn’t seem very professional. Half of them didn’t seem to know what they were doing . Security guards were nice and could have a chat to them and were quite helpful. The presenters at the entertainment were nice but did come across as rude at some points.

Moving onto the accommodation, upon arrival it was clean and tidy and quite spacious for a family of four . We had enough room in the master bedroom to put a travel cot . It also had an en-suite toilet which was a nice touch . We had trouble turning the central heating on as it was cold in the morning and evenings . Even after reading the instructions on the boiler on where the controls were located it was no where to be seen at all. There wasn’t any cleaning supplies other than a dust pan and brush which wasn’t ideal when the floors needed cleaning ,could have at least done with a broom to have been able to get up the sand from the beach days . Every night we got into bed we kept hearing footsteps in our caravan so we had to keep getting up and checking no one was in there . Had to keep checking that we locked the door and closed the windows because it generally felt like someone was walking around in our caravan or ontop of it which was quite spooky . Without a doubt it happened every night .

To sum it up I wouldn’t come back to this particular...