Woolacombe Sands Holiday Park — Hotel in North Devon

Stayed at the 2-bed Sands chalet August 2022. Positives:

Great location about 20 minutes walk from the beach. It was good to be able to walk to the beach and not to need to use the car.

Friendly helpful staff. When we needed something, the housekeeping team brought it over very quickly.

The chalet was comfortable with good lighting. The storage space was good. The bathroom had a bath and was a good size.

Children enjoyed the indoor and outdoor swimming pools and going to the evening entertainment.

The shop is well-stocked and convenient, if expensive.

Negatives:

I would not describe the accommodation as luxury! I suppose it is luxurious compared to a tent and it is certainly bigger than a caravan. However, it was far inferior to the holiday cottage we normally stay in (we didn't stay there this year as family were at the caravan park). If the chalet was substantially cheaper than the cottage, then I wouldn’t mind. However, the chalet was more expensive, even taking into account the money saved on car park fees and fuel for trips to the beach.

Cost of chalet: £1,349 (with 30% early booking discount) + £15 for the bed linen. Cost of cottage: £1,296 (we would have had 5% off that as a loyalty discount). This includes a washing machine, good wifi, washing up liquid and hand soap, a DVD player, bed linen on made-up beds, a bigger and far better-equipped kitchen, etc.

The fridge is tiny, not much bigger than a minibar fridge. We could hardly fit anything in it. The freezer compartment is also tiny, with just about enough room for two ice packs - and it was about 34C on the day we arrived.

There is not much pre-arrival information provided about what to bring. This would have been really helpful. For example, the website does not say that the chalet has a dishwasher, so we didn’t think to bring any dishwasher tablets (see screenshot). It doesn’t warn you that the fridge is tiny. It would be useful if there could be a list of what is included in the kitchen (it wouldn’t be a long list), or a list of common items that you might want but aren’t provided, such as a cafetiere or water jug. We brought our own towels, as we have done with holiday cottages before. However, there was no bath mat - I’d assumed this would be included. Fortunately the reception team had one sent over.

The chalets need more of a check between guests. There were a couple of items left by previous guests (an e-cigarette on the floor behind the bedside table in the master bedroom, clothes labels in the drawers). There were some cigarette butts (not a normal cigarette - either a roll-up or a joint) on our patio. I had to go and ask for a dustpan and brush and chopping board, as we didn’t have these in the chalet. The dishwasher lights were flashing as it needed rinse aid and salt. Presumably you are supposed to bring those as well if you want to use them. And toilet cleaner! The cutlery tray in the dishwasher had a hole in which a knife fell through, stopping the rotor and preventing the machine from working. The dishwasher was full-size - we either had to run it when it was half-empty or wash up some of the items by hand, as otherwise we would have run out of crockery and cutlery. I would have rather either had no dishwasher or a mini dishwasher and a bigger fridge. There is plenty of cupboard space so there would have been room for a bigger fridge. The oven was full-size but the dials need attention as it is difficult to see what temperature it has been set at.

Only two pillowcases per room were provided, when there were four pillows.

The laundrette was expensive (£4 for a wash, not including detergent) and the driers didn’t work very well. There were only three washing machines and four driers for the whole park and two of the driers weren’t working. If you need to do washing you may be better off going to the public laundrette in South Street, about 10...

I am currently staying here as of yesterday 6th May 2022 and upon arrival I was very excited and impressed with the warm and friendly welcome from all the staff and looking around it's facilities and what it had to offer and its absolutely beautiful and my whole family and kids are enjoying it and are having a blast so Far Everything is going really smooth and we still have alot more to explore and my first impressions were wow. Everyone we met are really friendly and kind on our first day apart from a few individuals who spoilt our holiday by unnecessary complaining and demanding compensation for noise from our kids. Completely unaware We get a phone call to come to reception and was abit curios as we already checked in and they told us our neighbours made a complaint and are demanding compensation. I was like really wow, and those are the same people who completely ignored us and peeping from their windows watching over us. This review is for the whole 3 days we experienced for our stay. We are a Asian family from Birmingham and have a very large group of families with kids and they wanted to have a good time but they didn't see the other kids who were even louder but they wanted to focus on ours. Kids were playing in the park opposite the accommodation. I'm referring to the customers. We also faced a few couples and individuals completely ignoring us and not replying to hello or good morning, just turning the face away. When you try and be nice but get this in return i really don't understand the logic behind it. Sometimes i think to myself you cant be nice to everyone anymore because you don't know what your expecting in return. There was dog hair on the sofas and we had a incident where someone let a dangerous dog loose and it came into my sisters caravan and my neices were very shook and had anxiety and panicked, it came twice inside and chased her inside and she threw a blanket and as i Watched on from the window from our caravan next door it came running towards our caravan so i ran and closed the door as it stood there barking and the owners stood there thinking it was funny when this dog is on one of the dangerous guard dogs and will bite at any attempt. My sister phoned the reception but they tried to deal with it but didn't believe the fact that the incident really happened and didn't want to believe it yet we had to assure them about the noise when there weren't any as they asked if we can reassure them. It was the weekend and we saw and heard people coming from outside partying at night and what not and they were making loads of noises but yet they (the customers) want to focus on the only Asian families there, this is not acceptable. This is our first time here and the Seaview and scenery is unbelievable. Will definitely recommend to all and 5 plus stars. This place is clean apart from the sofas we found dog hairs and everything about im left speechless as we do go to alot of family trips in caravan parks around the country and so far this has to be up there one of the best experiences ive had. Thank you. Just unprofessional few individuals and racist customers. Absolutely no need for that at all. We all come to enjoy ourselves especially the kids. The reason im given 5 stars is for staff who were very kind and helpful especially a few in the clubhouse/reception and the shop who went above and beyond with the warm and friendly gesture and smile, bright, bubbly and the...

Came here for a weeks holiday with my family, before arriving we were staying at bude however had to leave early due to how disgusting the place was and woolacombe sands were very accommodating on the phone and let us extend our visit and also upgrade to a larger caravan as we had previously booked the cabin which then realised would be to small for our needs as we have 2 children with disability's.

Upon first arriving the caravan looked lovely however the beds are not comfortable at all, there is very little storage for a family with 3 children, no real kitchen storage as cupboards are small and full of cooking equipment, the TV kept dropping out of signal due to the really poor onsite wifi….when i say poor its diabolical for the 21st century. We had 2 power cuts during our stay both around 11:30pm, the door to the caravan doesn't close fully at the bottom and the steps are a hazard for young children and elderly people due to the steepness and only having one hand rail.

We have a son with a life limiting condition so thought we would book a experience with wooly bear for him which he did absolutely love, he is only 1 years old of course. However when we later went to the club house for dinner woolly bear made another appearance in the club house so my partner took our son over to see him again and say hello bearing in mind he is 1, only to be told that we’d seen him on a private visit so we had to get out of the way so other children could interact with him, bearing in mind my our son cant crawl sit or walk unaided due to his disability. I think this is absolutely disgusting and basically what the hell did we pay for, this put a real turn on the entire stay.

Also when you have a delivery driver or even staff members leaving the park or delivering its a massive danger to children as its almost like silverstone race track and lewis Hamilton is in pole position.

We thought the swimming pool would be a great bonus for our son to help with the gap in his hydrotherapy sessions especially, as-well as our two other children but this was also not the case as the public can use it freely and on two occasions there were 20+ people in the pool, and its not a massive pool to begin with, and thinking back the parent to child ratio for safety was way over the limit to the point it was unsafe so we left.

Arcade is medioca and when tickets get stuck or a machine jams they don't want to know, my other son even got told to wait by the engineer as he was enjoying a pint in the club house in full uniform.

And another thing, don't appreciate the unwelcome entry to our caravan while we were out, took our kids to the arcade in ilfracombe on our last night only to come back to an unlocked door and toilet lights on, now we know it was locked due to having some high end valuables inside the caravan.

To be honest theres a-lot i could write but it wont make any difference as this place is not what it used to be.

One thing i will add is that the two older staff members and the young lad who work in the gift/shop were excellent and very friendly and helpful. Shame about everyone else to be honest.

Unfortunately wont be staying again as we looked online and found woolacombe bay resort up the road which has 100 x more stuff for children to enjoy and you can also visit two other sites while...