Great Lake Holiday Park — Local services in North Island

I cannot believe how terribly bad this motor camp is, looks genuinely are deceiving here. On arrival the woman behind the desk could not find my booking - which was booked online MONTHS in advance at a HIGHER rate than what is advertised at the door. After that we needed permission to use any water or the dump station and all the nozzles on all the taps have been removed so unless you have your own you have to ask again for permission. As we were the first camper here, she put us the longest drive away from the office which was fine, until two other campers arrived an hour later and she put them on either side of us out of at least 40 other spots. Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, a MASSIVE asian family took over the kitchen as we were trying to make dinner, using 10 cooktops and asking to use ours too, the owners of the campsite however did not care about this, nor the fact their children were blasting music from 6pm onwards. We wanted to wash our clothes, she charges $4 per wash and $4 per dry (which is essential in the winter) and the bloody washing machine only runs for 20 minutes, it did not wash any of our clothes and most of them werent even wet when we pulled them out, the ones rhat were wet did not even dry in the dryer (also a short timer) To top it all off the state of the bathrooms are horrific, they are dark, dirty, muddy and you need to press a button every few minutes for hot water (which is only hot for 2 seconds before it starts fluctuating between freezing and boiling) which then shuts off and sprays you with cold water. I genuinely could not be paid to stay here ever again, there are even signs in the bathrooms saying you are on CCTV, strict rules about every single thing here that are only selectively enforced by the owners. Please, go...

In summary, if you have dogs and want to stay in taupo, you may not have another option. If you don't have dogs, I'd stay elsewhere.

Pros: -Kitchen and bathrooms are really clean and tidy. They allow dogs year-round.

Cons: I don't think this camp is safe for kids. It's close to an 80km/h road, with a large entrance and no gates. Some sites are just a couple of meters from the entrance so it'd be easy for kids to wonder out. It is is really noisy, because of the nearby road. During holidays it was noisy up to quite late in the night (from cars passing by). Location is not really good as well. There isn't anything you can do in a walking distance. -There was minimum effort preparing the sites. Good luck trying to get your caravans leveled. The grass is extremely patchy, so you'll be stepping on dirt and mud (if it rains) and making a mess inside your RV. Staff (or perhaps the owners) were really unfriendly. The first time we've been there (in 2021), the lady at the reception was really rude, but I decided to ignore it as I thought she was just having a bad day. I came back a year later and was treated worse by a different lady, so it seems to be...

What seemed like a good location quickly turned into a nightmare. The "complimentary" wifi is 100mb, and slower than dialup.

Signs everywhere saying "CCTV in use here", even in the bathrooms. Shower on few minute timer. I was the only one in the bathroom and the water temperature fluctuated between freezing and boiling.

More signs everywhere with strict instructions "Use left roll of toilet paper first", "Access to dump requires key from office", "Your responsibility as guests is to turn off bathroom lights at 10PM".

$8 to wash and dry your clothes. The machines are so small they don't fill with water so our clothes were half dry and had smeared washing detergent all over them after it had finished. (Didn't overfill) The ovens even require you to pay money. (You pay for warm-up time too)

I'm just in a state of shock at how bad this place is run. It's a complete money grab and they won't put a single bit of effort into maintaining it.

These owners disregard every complaint and treat people badly - Seemingly have done so for years.

i highly recommend you find a different...