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- Hi guys!
So today as promised is my Center Parcs review.
Some of you may know that we recently went
on a Monday to Friday holiday
to Elveden Forest Center Parcs.
Third time we've ever done a holiday like that.
We've been once to Center Parcs as just a couple.
And we've been twice to Center Parcs
with a baby and a toddler.
The best thing about Center Parcs holidays
for me is the fact that you can just pack up the car
and get to
the holiday that you're going to within just a nap time.
Get in the car and go
and you're there within an hour and a half.
But you feel like you're actually on holiday.
You'll feel like you're very much removed
from your daily life routine.
And my son who's four and a half
he was actually telling everyone
that he was actually from England,
and when he goes back to England
and stuff like that.
So he obviously felt that he was genuinely on a holiday.
So I'm just going to give you a bit
of a review on everything.
These views are completely my own.
This is not PR.
We just wanted to go there
and I thought I'd share my experience with you.
The best thing is the accommodation.
We stayed in a woodland lodge.
I think there's four tiers of accommodation
and I believe Woodland Lodge is like second from bottom.
Yes but I know that Comfort is the bottom
and we've stayed in that before
and that was actually fine.
Woodland Lodge, New Executive Style
and then some super duper amazing stuff.
Us, we're not that snobby.
We don't really mind you know, pretty basic.
But this accommodation,
although it was like basic, it was really nice,
it was very clean, the beds were really comfortable.
The interiors were very nice.
It was very much like bringing the outside in
with the interior design.
It had really big windows so there
was always loads of light always coming into the house.
Although there was lots of other lodges around you
it did feel quite private
and quite secluded because you weren't overlooked.
There was a lovely outdoor patio
and the wildlife was amazing.
There were ducks, squirrels, bunnies,
even like a muntjac deer
I think that's what it's called. (laughs)
And they were coming right up to your door
and they're so tame and my boys
that was probably one of the highlights of their holiday
was running to the patio door with some bread
or whatever it was and you know
wanting to feed the wildlife.
It is obviously as the name says
set in the forest, in Elveden Forest.
And it's very much there's trees everywhere.
I know that sounds really stupid
but I don't think you'll appreciate until you go there
how much you are in the forest
and how much wildlife,
how much nature is around you.
It did feel really really nice.
Although the lodge was a three bedroom lodge
It could in theory cater for six adults.
The fridge was quite small.
Take some food with you that
doesn't necessarily have to be refrigerated
like some pastas or something along those lines.
Or have plans to go to some of the restaurants there.
One tip from us is
to pre-make your food for when you get there.
So if you were to just like make a big fish pie
at home or a big lasagna or something like that
and just take it with you
it would just make it so much easier.
And some of the days, the activities that you do
you are exhausted by the end of it
so if you could just like
throw something like that in the oven
I think that is really really nice.
So my mom is a big foodie
and she loves to cook so she complained
a little bit about like the knives
that they weren't sharp enough.
And that the pan wasn't really big enough for six adults.
And also the barbecue in our accommodation
had to buy like the disposable barbecues
for the accommodation that we were
But apparently in the higher end accommodation
like the Executive Suites and the Villas
and things like that it comes with like a gas barbecue.
So if that is important to you obviously
look at what your accommodation gives you
and like book the highest.
Obviously you have the option
of eating in your accommodation
but there are also loads of restaurants on site.
And lots of them are chain restaurants so
there'll be ones that you are familiar with.
Cafe Rouge is there, Bella Italia is there.
There's three Starbucks.
There's one by the lake, there's one in the pool
and there's one by the big swimming pool as well.
Huck's like American diner.
There's an Indian restaurant.
There's a Dexter's kitchen cafe.
And my kids loved the pancake house
cause they did savory pancakes or omelettes
but then they also did really really sweet,
exciting pancakes for them as well.
Loads of choice in terms of going to restaurants
and we definitely had some lunches out.
We had a date night at the Bella Italia.
Before we had our dinner in the Bella Italia
which was really nice,
we went for a drink in the Huck's American style bar
and that was really nice.
The best thing about them as a parent
was that every restaurant had a soft play area.
So for instance we went to Cafe Rouge
they had a soft play area with a TV screen
on top of the soft play area.
So if you were sat at a table where
you couldn't exactly see in the soft play
there was a CCTV so you could see
what they were doing in the soft play.
There is a fully stocked like
I think it's called like The Park Market.
Like, supermarket on site that you can go to
and it has like pretty much everything
that we even needed ginger and it had that.
There is also a Sainsbury's that is
not far at all from the resort.
The main car park was really far away our lodge.
I say really far
it was like a good 15 to 20 minute walk.
So when you get there you obviously
unload your car and you have to return it to the
main car park that night.
You can't keep it outside of your own lodge.
And at first I was like
Oh that's actually a bit annoying
that we have to take it all the way back and then come back.
But actually during our stay it was really nice
having no cars around sort of our boys
could sort of run along the road
and you know the paths and things
and all we really had to worry about was bicycles.
So that was actually really nice.
I believe if you again stay in like
the nicer accommodation that is even
closer to the main car park.
Parcs if you're watching I thinking
that you should introduce like a valet service
so for those people or single mothers or whoever
that can't be bothered to take their car back
to the main car park, you could like
call someone and pay someone to do it.
But, that might be unrealistic.
A few things that I brought that were really useful
there was a few things that I was thinking of
that I should have brought.
So here's a list of things that you should pack.
Definitely pack dishwasher tablets
because you only get a couple.
Toilet rolls cause again you only get two rolls
and if there's a big family with you
you'll need more than that.
Also bring Fairy Liquid.
I brought my like handle thing like this
so that I could scrub the dishes
and like have some Fairy Liquid in it as well.
Also bring matches.
We ordered some really lovely like self burning logs
for the fire when we were there
but it didn't come with matches.
Bring DVDs for the TV as well for the kids.
And also you can bring like connectors
for like game's consoles or you know devices.
You don't get your towels changed.
and you obviously you have to bring
your own towels for the poolside.
You can hire towels at the pool
but it's two pound per towel.
And there's also this like big human dryer
at the pool as well which we did try
but we were still like pretty wet afterward.
For activities there is so much
you can do at Center Parcs It is crazy.
You get all of the swimming, waterslides,
all of that kind of stuff included
in the price of your holiday.
But there are lots of other things
that you can book as well.
So what we did was we booked one other activity a day.
Our children are quite young
and we thought that's probably all they could handle.
To be honest, they just loved the swimming pool so much
I don't even think that we really needed the extra.
There are parks, there's like the beach,
there's so much that you can do just walking around.
Some of the activities
that we did were really really good.
I would definitely recommend booking bikes
before you go if you need to hire bikes
because we left it too late
and there wasn't enough left.
And also cabanas,
we booked a cabana for one day.
To be honest we thought it would be
a great base for us to hang out
with the young kids and everything.
But to be honest I do feel like
it was a little bit unnecessary.
I think it was 50 pounds for three hours.
And what we should have done was
we had it booked for two o'clock
I think it was two o'clock til five o'clock.
What we should have done was get there at one o'clock
swim for an hour and then go to the cabana
and like enjoy it but we got there at two
we sorta wasted an hour like doing all the things.
It is quite noisy in there so you can't actually
hear like the Sky TV that you get in there.
I mean it's a nice place to eat food
and like leave your belongings.
You get a safe and you get some drinks
and all that kind of stuff.
But to be honest, I think with our
children their age it was a bit unnecessary.
Maybe if you have teenagers that
just wanna hangout there
of if you had a special birthday
or something like that it'd be worth getting.
There were water sports you can do.
There was rock climbing.
There was cupcake decorating and that looked really good.
We went to see the baby owls.
Also did den building as a family
which I would really recommend.
It was so much fun and it was an activity
that you just pay for per family.
And it was a good hour and a half
and it involved everyone like
the boys won the prettiest den award.
So they all felt very special
and it was a really really good.
Another one I would really recommend
was my husband took our eldest
to the magic show at the pancake house.
And it includes a carvery a dessert and a magic show.
And he said it was brilliant.
Frazer was so impressed
and the magician came around to each table
to do magic tricks for everyone.
And I believe that one gets booked up really quickly.
So definitely book that one.
We also did jet skiing for our eldest.
But if you're gonna book jet skiing
or any early morning water sports
make sure you book them at nine or nine thirty
because the pool doesn't open til 10.
And the only slot that we could get was eight thirty
so once he'd done the jet skiing we had to like leave
and then you'd have to come back at 10.
Tennis looked good.
The little farm looked good.
Badminton looked good.
There was like balance bike, there was roller skating.
There was just so much you could do.
The pool was just brilliant.
The water slides were great.
Is just 19 months but he's a real daredevil
and he was allowed to go down on my lap so that was great.
And I believe some children over the age
of 24 months are allowed to go
down alone on the water slides.
There's a kid's bit in the pool
that's called like Adenture Cove.
That is amazing.
It had little spray slides,
it had spashy water coming out all over the place.
It had buckets that were dumping things on people.
I also really enjoyed the Lazy River.
There's a Lazy River that goes round in a loop
and we spent a lot of time going around on that,
that was great.
And there's a big wave machine that goes off
every now and then
and that looked really popular as well.
Yet there was also hot tubs and saunas.
And there is the most amazing spa at Center Parcs.
It's called Aqua Sana Spa
and when we went there pre-children
we went to that spa.
And I'm not just saying this,
it is one of the best spas I've ever been to.
It's beautiful.
it's huge.
It has about five or six different sensory rooms
and they each have a different theme.
So you'll go into one room and it'll
be like a Japanese steam and sauna
and like the smells and everything will be Japanese.
And the next one will be Balinese.
And the next one will be like Turkish.
You know, they're all different.
And the treatments are lovely
and I would really recommend if
you could get the childcare or you're going without children
to visit the spa.
It's really good as well by the pool
that they provide life jackets
for the kids of like all sizes.
We brought arm bands with us but
the life jackets they provided were
just so good that we used those.
I also brought toys for the pool
but they were just totally unnecessary
there was so much going on we
did not need the toys at all.
The pool was really the highlight of the holiday.
It was so so good.
And it was really nice to be indoors
and not have to worry about the whole
sun cream thing as well with out little ones.
Also you could go there in like the middle of Winter
and still use all of those facilities.
So that is a real plus.
There is food that you can get by the pool.
It's very much like burgers and chips and things like that.
But then we did order a salad one day
and that was really nice.
Overall I would recommend visiting Center Parcs.
We had such a good time as a family.
It is obviously quite geared towards families.
But if you are like a couple that just wanna go
it is really nice
and you can go to the restaurants,
you can go to the spa.
You can completely avoid the whole like family thing.
But if you are going as a family it's just fantastic.
It's so easy, you just get in the car and go.
It's so nice to be somewhere where
it doesn't matter if your kids are being like kids.
Yeah, if you have any questions at all
please just leave a comment down below.
I feel like I might have missed something or.
I hope you liked this review.
Let me know in the comments if you did
and give it a big like if you did.
And yeah, thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you all soon.
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