summary of our week, Presthaven holidays review

Were home, the week has been to short I feel like I have blinked and missed the week it has gone by so fast!
But the boys have loved there week away and it has been one big adventure for them. Its a shame the weather was not better for us but typical of English weather you just can not predict it, I guess we were just unlucky to have had so much rain.

Haven Holidays

We stayed at the resort of Presthaven sands, which is in North Wales. On Arrival to the site you have to travel about a mile over quite substantial speed humps before you get to the complex area.
There is no actual desk to check in at, you have to travel through the arcade and food area to get to the live lounge where the staff are waiting they were quite helpful and gave us all the information for the week including a map of the park and where our caravan would be situated, The weather was awful heavy rain, but you cant change that, so we made our way to the caravan, after getting to the caravan, turning the key in the lock, making sure we had the right van (which we did) the key would not open the caravan door we contacted the staff and then had to wait a further twenty minutes before we were let into the caravan not a very good start to a holiday having traveled a long way, two tired young children being hungry and it heavily raining.

Once inside the caravan it was lovely quite clean and tidy two toilets one of which was a toilet bathroom and connected to the main bedroom it almost felt like it had an en-suite, the kitchen was equipped adequately, although had no baking trays to cook anything in the oven. We were very lucky that our caravan was only a stones throw away from the complex as the complex is a huge site (take a look at Google maps), I could imagine that if you were placed further away it could make things a bit more difficult so if you don't want to be situated miles away from to complex I would suggest ringing and booking rather than booking online.

The pool; - I have never seen such a dirty small changing area. The walls around the swimming pool were slowly falling to pieces. You had to grab a locker when you could otherwise you did not get one. The shallow end of the pool is not that shallow which meant that Adam could not stand at all in the pool he was out of his depth, being quite a nervous child it ruined his experience and mine as he was clinging to my side the whole time we were in the pool.

The mash and barrel;- We had a lovely meal the service was quite fast and the staff were polite, maybe the food was a bit over priced but I think at all resorts you always seem to pay extra.

The children's Play areas;-  Well what can I say! the outdoor area for the older children looked fantastic but the part for the younger children was awful the slide you had to climb up what looked like metal bars to get onto it and even Liam could not manage it without my assistance there was only one swing the other was two hanging bits of metal that should have had a seat at the end of it but there was no seat and a little house type thing that was neither here nor there I think for the size of the site it was far to small and inadequate.
The boys loved the indoor soft play area, we spent quite a bit of time here although it could get quite busy at times and I should imagine within peak times of the season would be far to small.

The live lounge;-We thought the drinks were fairly priced, getting a drink or a seat was never an issue, the children's gift shop was quite expensive and beware of the lady selling balloons £5.00 a balloon is ridiculous for a price of an average looking helium balloon. The entertainment seemed quite good although we usually went back to the caravan by 20.30 so missed most the night.

Entertainment and activities;- We did go to a couple of the sessions in the day and stayed out till around 20.30 but as a mum I felt like most of the activities are aimed toward children over five, there isn't much to keep little ones interested and entertained.
On the site there are some fantastic facilities like the high wire and the go-karts all at extra costs but aimed more for older children.

Overall Impressions;-
Good Points, The accommodation is great, the beach is lovely and not to far away, quite an adventure through the sand dunes. Food outlets are clean tidy and are what you expect to pay on a resort as are the drinks in the clubs, The spa shop is very reasonably priced and has a budget range which is great if you don't want to spend a lot on branded items.

Bad points;- The play areas, swimming pool and changing rooms need seriously updating they are very tired, not great for young children under five this is the same for the entertainment.
Around the site every bin that you came to was full of wasps. On the one nice day we did have that week, we only had the caravan windows open for half and hour and had four wasps came into the van forcing us to close all the windows again.

My thoughts; Wales is lovely and there is a lot to do and see off site, I personally wouldn't recommend this site if you have children under five, We made the most of our holiday the weather didn't help with it not being so good. As a consequence to the lack of facilities for younger children we wont be visiting Presthaven sands again.