A frugal life is an easy life!

Seaview caravan park, Kent - Park holidays review:

The caravan;
We booked a "Gold" standard caravan and paid for a "plus" upgrade for more space.
A total of £833 for a week in August.

Park holiday's website claims:

"Upgrade to a plus for more space"
Not at all sure what Park holidays mean by "extra space"?
Our gold plus caravan was barely the 12 foot wide claimed by the website.
More cupboard/wardrobe space?
Our gold plus had barely any cupboard space.
According to their website, their bronze standard caravans have more cupboard and storage space than their gold plus, if you look at their advertising photographs. Rating 4/10

Our kitchen was a "corridor kitchen" and nothing like as spacious as the website pictures claim their gold and gold plus caravan has.
Our kitchen area was identical to the bronze caravan pictured on the website. Rating 1/10

The bathroom that came with our "gold plus" caravan was tiny.
Sit on the toilet, knees touched the wall.
Sink, shower and toilet could all be touched at the same time, the bathroom area was so small.
Our toilet seat was broken on arrival, had to sit sideways on the toilet to have any room.
Bronze standard website pictures showed a bathroom over twice the size of the bathroom we had with our "gold plus" booking. Rating - if a six year old can touch all bathroom appliances at the same time, how are five adults supposed to manage?
Website pictures are clearly misleading. Rating 1/10

"Bed making service"
Both gold and gold plus have bed making service included, didn't see anything of the sort during our stay.
Why do park holidays sell it as an extra for gold plus customers?
Rating - Simply didn't happen, 0/10

"Early 2pm check in"
Both gold and gold plus have early check in included, so why sell it as an extra for gold plus customers?
Rating - Sold as a better option with a gold plus - pointless, as it's included with gold caravans as standard.

"Bed linen" - included with both gold and gold plus, was fresh and clean. Rating 10/10

"Entertainment passes included"
It's hard to know what these were for, other than to authorise you when playing Park holiday's link up bingo.
The clubhouse could be accessed by all with or without a pass, as was their arcade.
Rating, almost useless 1/10

Entertainment;
Drinks - a bit crafty, five drinks bought on Monday and Tuesday night cost £12.50 - on the Saturday night though, three of the same drinks cost £11.50, bit of sharp practice there. Rating 5/10

There were three people on site providing children and adult entertainment, the kids loved them, they were very good.
Other staff whom were not working but having a drink, joined in with them in the adult games, a good team.
Got the impression though that they were under-staffed, very frantic at times.
One negative point though - went to the clubhouse to enjoy a drink, it's our holiday.
I found it a bit off-putting when what should have been camp fun, was constantly being used to raise donations for a staff help-for-heroes personal campaign, as they were due to visit in the following week or so.
Constantly theming games to get donations for a personal attempt to raise money is not what I go on holiday for. Rating 7/10

Link up bingo
When selling their link up bingo tickets, I heard off other people there on holiday that it was "quite expensive" and "not many winners come from seaview"
I tried it for a couple of nights.
Around £10 for books of tickets, for both link up bingo and their own seaview camp bingo weren't too bad.
For the link up bingo, four games, a line is all that's needed to win the first three games, a full house for the last game.
It soon became apparent, that seaview players do not win very often. Not a single winner came from the camp for the two nights I played.
I did not hear of a single winner all the time I was there.
One night only seven numbers were called before a winner got their line (5 numbers needed) at another of Park's camps. Rating 4/10

Wifi
Free wifi was available on site, along with a private company working with Park holidays, that offered us free complimentary trial wifi - giving us two options.
Both options were worse than useless!
As we had travelled down to visit the area, we needed to check for traffic hotspots and to see what was going on, events, etc. but with both the wifi services not working - 2 hours and 20% of battery life without being able to get on to google - it was useless.
When it did load up a website, BBC for example, click on their sport link for the football results often resulted with the "server dropping the connection"

We also missed all the local festivals that were going on, didn't see any advertising of local events on site.
Shame that as Park holidays claim to be a central point for the area.
Big firework display, oyster festivals, nearby attractions like the shell museum, micro museum, hornby museum, weekend markets with live music, the nearby carnival as well as all the attractions in Canterbury.
Rating 0/10

It maybe coincidence but when Timmy Mallet turned up to offer some entertainment, the wifi wouldn't work, the pool developed "a hole" and the start time was delayed, all coincided with his appearance.

Facilities
Really clean site, bins emptied regularly, recycling bins for garden waste provided and kept empty, couldn't fault it.
There were often dog walkers letting dogs go between caravans early doors and we came across the odd dog mess, but that's down to owners and not the camp.
Rating 9/10

The locals
As I will post later, what made our holiday was the politeness of the local people, very friendly, very helpful, always had time for a chat and a laugh.
Everywhere we went, from KFC to the club bar, couldn't fault the people, a real credit to the camp and the area.
Rating 10/10

Seaview caravan park (Kent) - Park Holidays - overall;
Booking a "gold plus" caravan is a waste of time, book a "gold" instead.
"Gold plus" caravan had same features/space/kitchen area as their "bronze" caravan (£130 cheaper than the "gold plus" we booked)

We asked at booking for a small varander, somewhere to sit outside the caravan and were told "most caravans have them now it shouldn't be a problem, we'll put it in with the booking"
We got nothing, just three rickety steps leading to caravan door.

Facilities are standard fare, ticket wins in the arcade for token prizes, club bar with higher prices at weekends when busiest, club food was expensive, link up bingo (mostly won at other camps), parking was good even when park was busy, staff always friendly and helpful, despite being over run at times, wifi was a complete waste of time (I suggest you set it up with your mobile provider prior to visiting, if you need it), pool was busy apart from when entertainment was on when pool was cleared due "to a hole being found" an hour before club entertainment started.
Camp was always clean and tidy.

Would have been disappointed if we had just gone to stay on the camp for the week, we don't, we like to go around the surrounding areas and use the camp as a base, so for this, it was good.