Pontins Prestatyn Sands Review
This was a break in the UK in between chemotherapy sessions with an old school friend.
I have just stayed in a place that actually made me worry about my health as it was so disgustingly dirty navigate like to name and shame bad places because at the end of the day everyone has their own opinions but I can just don’t understand how Pontins in Prestatyn can feel that they can put people who have paid good money they said that they gave us originally no fair play we booked via sun holiday vouchers that we didn’t pay a lot for a holiday but it was the convenience of me meeting with a friend in a central place for us both to get to during my treatment so we could have a girly catch up so we weren’t expecting curious accommodation but I did expect it to be clean standards. The Sun should be wary of letting people use this as an option with their holiday vouchers as this could have put me off ever using them again but luckily I have heard many good thing about the other places you can use the codes for.
I was already a little apprehensive about visiting Pontins as I had read bad reviews but as I said when you pay £33 each for 3 nights you can’t really complain as it’s a lot cheaper than most places for one night. However, for them to give us the most appalling accommodation I have not seen is not appropriate.
I have never seen any accommodation so dirty in my life I have stayed in hostels and cheap accommodation in Asia but as always thought of been clean standards but this was pure filth. Even the light was smashed it would have been better to more the whole light shade rather than keeping the broken one there.
I am not a clean freak and I don’t mind a bit of fluff but the bathroom was half painted the bath had a had a large nail poking out near the toilet and I’m sure if I went anywhere near it I would have ended up impaling myself on to it.
There were wires hanging from the sink I didn’t even now wires needed to be near a sink they looks like electrical wires so that just scared me thinking we would have a wash and end up electrocuting ourselves.
There was a thick layer of dust around the skirting boards now this makes me sound as though I was on my hands and knees looking for dirt but I wasn’t it was just prominent. It needed a deep clean before they should even consider renting it out to paying customers.
It made me worried about my health to even stay in the room due to currently going through chemotherapy but even if I wasn’t this isn’t the standard of room you expect to find in a UK holiday park.
The kitchen and bedroom look OK but the state of the bathroom just put me off completely there was no way I was going to stay there and risk getting an infection that affected my treatment plan.
We headed to reception to highlight the issue who sent us to the accommodation office, and I must admit they were really good about it I explained the situation I’m going through treatment and I just can’t stay in a dirty place they did say they come and clean it and I said to be honest it really needs a deep clean. The manager then said hang on a minute, went off to check something she came back and said right we’re going move you. We had to go back to reception to get aa new chalet key and then we were moved to chalet 7.
The chalet they moved us to was OK and more to the 2-star standard.
The thing I can’t understand is the park wasn’t busy so there was no need to put us in a half decorate dirty dangerous chalet.
Due to me being a travel blogger and I would have been writing about it I felt that I had to give them the option of moving us. I could have just left and then wrote the bad things which from the reviews on TripAdvisor suggest this is what people have been doing. All the park needs is a deep clean a lick of paints some damaged fixtures replacing and it will be an OK place to visit.
As long as a place is clean I can stay as at the end of the day you make your own fun and if you’re with good people you will have a good time wherever you are. Now I got the moaning part out of the way let me explain the rest of the park
Check in to Pontins
When we arrived at the entrance we will welcome by a friendly security guard asking if we were checking in, he gave us a piece of paper and told us that we had to display this in our car and directed us to where we needed to go to check-in
When we went to reception there was a large queue but it moved quickly. I explained that I had no paperwork and they just took my surname found the details and gave us our key and a £5 complimentary electricity card staff. The check in staff were friendly, I was disappointed about was not seeing the dressed-up characters. I went to a Pontins when I was a child and there were lots of opportunities to see the characters but we didn’t see any go in this trip apart from on posters but to be honest we didn’t hang around that much anyway.
The park looks tired but we were expecting that anyway from the reviews we had read.
Facilities at Pontins
This is the first place I have ever stayed where you have to pay for your electricity £5 which would have lasted but we just didn’t know. We had never used an electricity metre before and it started off going down quite fast so we ended up buying another £5 as we didn’t want to run out of electricity in the middle of the night. We never actually used the extra and it was non-refundable but at the end of the day it’s only £5 I left it in there for the next people staying.
It seems you have to pay for everything at Prestatyn Sands. The Wi-Fi was also quite expensive considering the speed was average I would have been annoyed to have bought it and it had been really slow we didn’t actually need it because of having our own devices with Wi-Fi but we were planning on watching Netflix on a chrome device as we were there for a girlie weekend and when it was raining we wanted to watch movies and eat junk food.
However even the TV was old and small and hard to turn over obviously the batteries has ran out in the remote but I didn’t want to have to go to reception again as e had already been as the fire alarm batteries kept beeping. But even the button on the TV was faulty making it hard to turn over.
There is an arcade with a few penny slots, games car and motorbike racing games, toy grabs, the general things you see in these sort of places.
There are few rides and children play areas that looked as though you had to pay for them. A lot of holiday parks have an entertainment pass you can purchase so you can use everything but this park doesn’t which is not good if you have 3 kids that want to go on everything I can imagine the costs adding up. It was OK for us though as we didn’t want to use anything as it was geared more towards children.
There is an entertainment plan in place with games and evening entertainment but apart from the bingo we didn’t see or do anything. I have visited Pontins and holiday parks like this before and found the staff to interact with holidaymakers more maybe this was because it was in April so it wasn’t high season but there was just no fun factor.
One of the entertainments rooms were closed for maintenance and we had a sneaky peek inside and it was set up similar to the other entertainment room where we played bingo. We had a laugh playing bingo we paid £5 for Four games the prize money for each was £36 to £114 so not bad although we didn’t win. We were getting close to winning and both of us were too nervous to shout house even if we did win.
After the bingo we didn’t stay for the entertainment as there was then a kid’s disco and as we would have a girly weekend we just went back to our chalet
Food and Drink at Pontins
There was a place to get Fried Chicken a fish and chip shop and milkshake place but we never saw these open. There was a Nisa shop where things were slightly more expensive than you’d pay in a supermarket but not overly it had toys basics like bread milk wine beer pop tins and a few frozen items lots of sweets a few souvenirs cigarettes and even the lottery.
There were a few drink machines with bottles for £2 but the bar was really slow. It was funny seeing a single file line at the bar but it made it fairer I guess as they knew who was next. The drinks were served in plastic glasses in the entertainment area. There was a pub but we didn’t go in as it didn’t look very nice from the outside.
Accommodation : Chalets at Pontins
After first being checked into dirty chalet 584 in block 52 we were then moved to chalet number 7 which is right next to the entertainment block and at first, we thought we were going to be kept awake all night but we didn’t actually hear anything
The chalet reminded me of Hi Di Hi I actually liked it, it was one bedroom with two single beds and a wardrobe with no door and a storage heater the mattresses had plastic coating on and did look clean. Bed linen was provided at a cost of about £15 but we brought our own. There were two single thin duvets and one thin double duvet and four pillows. In the living room there was a dining table and 3 chairs a wardrobe and a futon style sofa that opened up into a double bed. This was not the most comfortable but I put one of the spare duvets under my sheet and that hid some of the springs.
There was a small kitchen with a cooker kettle microwave toaster and plates, cups, glasses, bowls and cutlery. We didn’t cook anything during our stay apart from using the toaster. It was clean and I would have cooked if we were staying longer.
As this is self-catering so you do need to take everything with you that you may require such as towels, tea towels, kitchen roll, washing up liquid sponges and toilet roll
Even though this chalet was a lot cleaner than the first one that they put us in it is still not very high standards but I wouldn’t have complained if they had put us in here first or maybe is just felt clean as we had first been put in such a dirty room.
It was hilarious listening to my friend trying to take a shower. Do to it being on a electricity metre she said it kept cutting off the shower and as she has very long hair it was getting on her nerves trying to get the shampoo rinsed out by a shower that is crap. I personally could not get into the shower due to my health conditions so I washed in the sink which had very hot water.
Location of Pontins Prestatyn
It is a few minutes’ walk from a nice beach and 10 minutes to walk to the train station and town I got a taxi to the station for £3.50. If you want something nice to eat then heading to town and there are a few nice places including 2 pubs, a chip shop, a bakery, a spar shop, Tesco’s, Marks and Spencer’s and a petrol station along with a few other local shops and cafes. Pontins is a good base if you have a car so you can visit other attractions in North Wales, there was a bus stop outside the main gates.
The beach is lovely. It was a sandy beach and looked very clean. A few holiday makers were even braving it in the cold sea. We had a ice cream whilst watching people fly kites and walk their dogs along the promenade along the beach it was a lovely day as the sun was shining.
I felt safe here it’s just a shame but the place has been left is such a state a little paint and a good clean can I be an all right place to stay.
Would I stay at Pontins again if there was no other choice and it was with a group of friends and it was a cheap price then yes, I probably would but don’t expect much.
