marton mere holiday park, blackpool (haven)

Whooo hooo somewhere i can air my opinions at last!!

We booked a holiday in april to go to the marton mere holiday park in blackpool, it boasted a nature reserve, kids clubs for all ages, a huge swimming pool with aqua gliders and water jets, on site entertainment, and loads of other stuff included in the price, we paid 700 pound for a 7 night stay in a luxury caravan, and compared to butlins we thought that this was quite reasonable for the school holidays (our holiday started on the 4th of august).

on arrival to the park all we could see for miles was caravans, and on the side of each caravans was an advertisement to buy your own caravan, check in took an hour!! we go our keys and headed to the caravan, now, dont get me wrong the caravan was lovely, had everything you needed for a relaxing stay, shower, 3 bedrooms, big living room, dining room kitchen, cable tv, dvd player the works, so all unpacked and settled we decided to take the kids swimming, only, when we got to the pool we were told that because we didnt own our own caravan the only hours we could swim was between 2 and 5!! and that the aqua gliders and water jets were for the owners only! so one bad point there, a bit deflated we went to get the kids some fish and chips from the on site chippy, and for 3 kids meals and 2 adult meals it cost the grand sum of 30 quid! Bike hire was 20 pound an hour for a 2 person bike, we let the kids hire one on the tuesday and my 7 year old knocked the bike into a post, no damage was done to the bike or the wooden post but 2 security men saw him crash and had a right go at him, now my 7 year old has learning difficulties and was inconsolable, these 2 men told my 11 year old to 'get the bike back to the shop NOW' they had been on the bike for little over 15 minutes, so i went to complain about the way my boys had been treated and all the manager said to me was 'you should be glad the sun is shining'!!! i didnt know that haven actually controlled the weather.........learn something new everyday i guess!!
so basically, we paid 700 quid to use a caravan for 7 nights and to use the pool for 3 hours a day! the customer service is non-exsistant if you dont own your own caravan, and all they want is yur money, we have tried to contact the head office since coming back but to no avail, so if you are thinking of booking a holiday with haven, i would steer clear of marton mere! they ruined our holiday non stop and took every penny they could in the process!
this isnt the only bad things that happened but i am in a net cafe at the minute and i need to get home, i will add more later at home from the blackberry

We spend a lot of time in and around holiday parks. (For YSUK). Two parts of your review particularly rattles me.

1/ The upper / lower class system of pool usage. That's truly unusual and unacceptable. If I were paying for the caravan for a week, it should be deemed that you do own it while renting it. The use of the extra features for owners is simply shocking. I just looked at the website and it refers to an extra charge.

I think they think people are going to want to own a caravan for the privilege. Like you, I'd be pretty angry. When you're on holiday you want to do things in your own time, not their restrictive timetable. If the facilities can't cope with the amount of visitors either build more facilities, or remove some caravans.

2/ The attitude of security and management. On holiday you'd expect a better attitude.

As for the concept of the hard sell on the caravans....

Time share companies actually pay you to go to spain to look at accommodations. It sounds from your comments so far, Haven are doing a hard sell, but charging you £700 for the privilege.

Sorry you never enjoyed. Family hols are few and far between.

Thanks v much for the update and advice there.