Pontins Camber Sands

me and my family went to camber sands we stayed there for a week the food in the sands resrent was poor cold food not much to choose from and very little food on your plate the rooms were small and a bit dirty not meny power ponits only 3 in the hole flat the t.v had no picture and only 4 channals me and the family will neaver go back untill thay get the act togeter and the staff need to go on a couese about how to speeck to customers

Just got back from a long weekend and as the review said below i was dreading it. But have to say was i pleasantly surprised. When you enter the camp its a bit daunting, looking like a run down council estate but the site itself was kept clean and tidy. The chalet was also clean, running hot water all the time and it was bigger than i expected. We were upstairs so we had no problems of people making noise above us. The kids entertainment although a little dated was fun for the children and it was constant. Which was a major plus. All the staff were friendly, especially the man in the fast food place next to the Queen Vic. Went to get food about 9pm on the Sat night and he had the patience of a saint even with rude customers and was always smiling. They need to update their music as i dont think i heard a track past 1990 but again the little kids don't care but if you were taking teenagers they might have a moan.

Only minus was the food which was not nice at all. The breakfast was yuk and only had it on the first morning but we found a fantastic little cafe just down the road on the way to the beach, which did yummy food for a good price. All in all i would go again but only for a long weekend and take some food to cook yourself.

Pontins does resemble a concentration camp especially with the barbed wire around the campus. The place needs total modernisation, infact it needs pulling down and rebuilding if it is to compete with other holiday camps. The main entertainment building is poor and the carpets are obviously old, stained and smell of old stale cigarettes(must have been down for a long time as most places have been non-smoking for a long time now). The council style housing doesnt work and i can imagine it would be very noisy in the height of season. The metal/wooden staircases to the upper accommodation make the room shake when anyone is walking up them. However the rooms were adequate and had everything we needed to make our stay enjoyable. The main dissapointed was the swimming pool which is cold and old. The floor is freezing and the water was even colder. When your childrens lips are blue and they spend the whole time in the baby pool you know its cold. I thought this was the new pontins, the adventisement shows this lovely pool with slides etc and then we were faced with this old dated swimming pool. The slides were broken(they looked well old and stained) and this is defintely false advertisement(as my 11 yrs old said. However we tried to enjoy ourselves and make the most of it. The beach and the sand dunes are fab and the kids(all four of them) completely loved them and for this reason alone, camber sands is brilliant. Therefore why not completely knock this place down and start again. Hi de hi days are long gone.

Oh yes and one vitual piece of information if you want to catch gastro-enteretis or some terrible psuedomonas(excuse me im a nurse) get your kids to stick there hands in the holes of the crazy golf when its been raining to fish out the golf balls and then put there hands in there mouth(as young children always do) It works everytime!!!! This is unexpectable i did mention it to the reception staff who reacted with all the approprateness thats probably because they are used to being told the same stuff over and over again, i say this because I read another review which mentioned the holes on the crazy gold course. And even if you have gone through the sun holidays to book this holiday it is never just 9.50 there are always extras on top so dont think you should just except it.

i have just come back from a 3 night stay here i must admit i was dreading it after reading the reviews but i can honestly say it wasnt half as bad as i had expected the chalet was clean we had constant hot water we had heating the seetee bed was a bit uncomfortable but that was about it. i did get lost a few times finding the chalet as they all look the same. the food was a bit ropey in the whistle stop cafe although the hot dogs in the club was good. the entertainment was good and bluecoat Jakey was lovely i didnt know any of the others but they all seemed nice all in all dont believe all you read i would go back for a holiday.

Complete disappointment. Dirty. No entertainment. No service. No inflatables as advertised. No quad bikes. No blow up slide. No croc club. In fact none of it. We did get to see forensics at work after the brawl on saturday night outside the kids entertainment hall. And we even got questioned for evidence. Different world from what I am used to, and will not put my kids there again. Glad to be home. Oh forgot, no hot water and cockroach on the kitchen sink. Feet were thick with gunge if you stood on the room floor. Hygiene in food hall was revolting.

This place is so disgusting that we arrived on the Monday at 4 and left the next day if we could drive it would have been sooner. Freezing cold I had to walk around with my coat on in our room. I arranged and paid more for drinks and chocolate on arrival as it was my boyfriends birthday we got these 10minutes before we left to go home. We was speaking to the bar staff and they were agreeing that the place is a mess and telling us the horror stories of what has happened in the past there. This place needs to be shut down it so disgusting mould on the window seels a 4-5 inch gap in the front door. Reception staff are sooo rude. Please don't waste your money!!!

We went on Holiday to Pontins and had such a bad expreience so we sent them a complaint letter. I waiting over 30 days to receive a lette back from them giving us 10% off our next visit to you. This is not acceptable and we will defiantly not be returning to this holiday park, we wanted a full refund and if you were to read the letter below I feel that our bad experience would defiantly warrant a full refund. I feel that my complaint has not been looked into or taken seriously -

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing to you following our recent holiday with Pontins Camber sands from Friday 3rd - Monday 6th August under the name of Ian Ambrose (chalet number 155). This is a letter of complaint as we were extremely unhappy with the service and the facilities provided.

After settling in on Friday and attending the shows / arcades we arrived back at our chalet at approx 11:00pm, we were rudely awoken at 1:00am by a group of approx 6 teenagers between the ages of 15 - 19 years old who were screaming / shouting and drinking alcohol. This woke the whole house including our 2 youngest children aged 8 & 10. After listening to this for about 2 hours this was obvious that they were going to continue this all night so it left us no choice but to call security by this time all members of our household had been up for over 2 hours. Shortly after the phone call the security guard arrived to have a word but not before handing them a lighter to light their cigarettes but also had a joke and laugh with then which was extremely unprofessional. Not only did we get little sleep but we were woken up again at 6:00am due to the upstairs packing and dragging cases around the floor. During Saturday day we bought some earplugs as we did not want another sleepless night. Again after returning from an evening out we were woken at approx 12:30am by loud noises and music coming again from the group of girls, not only were they just as noisy as the previous night but they were also leaning up against our front room window where 2 x members of our family were sleeping. Due to the loud noise the earplugs made no difference, we immediately called security whereby they arrived again and offered the girls a lighter and have a general laugh with them. The security asked them to turn of their music which they did but did not reduce the noise that was coming out of their mouths. We then called them again at approx 3:30am when a female and male security guard attended but they were still making a noise after they had left.

So once again we had another really bad nights sleep, the following morning there were beer cans, champagne bottles and cigarettes butts outside our chalet. On Sunday morning my daughter went to reception to discuss this matter and was told by the deputy manager (who was more concerned about it being all men we were complaining about) that he would arrive at the girls chalet at 10:00am that morning to have a word. Unfortunately by 6:00pm Sunday night they had already started drinking and shouting so we made a decision to pack up and leave straight way (1 x day early) as we were so exhausted and did not want another bad night sleep, upon leaving the park we headed to reception to hand in the keys which turned out to be closed and when leaving the reception area we made conversation with another family who could see that we were not happy and advised us that they had only paid £89 for a family of 5 whereby we paid £289 (which was halved from £578) for a family of 7.

I have always understood that Pontins is a family orientated park but this was definitely not the case. I am absolutely furious that as a single mum of 6 who can only afford 1 x holiday a year could be so disappointed and upset with not only the service provided by members of your staff (security guard) but also your facilities that were not well managed or maintained to a basic standard. I attended this exact same park over 7 years ago and I can confirm that it is no where near as clean, well kept and managed as it was back then, it has actually alot worse, when your website states that your holiday park is newly refurbished and fun for all the family! When driving into the park on Friday we were all gobsmacked by the sight of the surrounding chalets and entertainment facilities which we could only describe as a prison! Driving around the park to get to the main entertainment building we viewed

1. the sports court, which is all falling down and the sports facilities had seen better days.

2. Work being carried out on chalets fridges, ovens and carpets left all over grassed areas and skips overflowing with rubbish.

3. General waste, cigarette butts, beer cans and glasses.

On seeing all of this we decided to go in the entertainment building with hope that things would change on the inside. We were sadly mistaken! On realizing we could not check in until 4pm, we decided to take a walk around the park and view other areas. We entered the games room and was disgusted with what we could see. Stained carpets, litter, dirt on every window and playing table, pool tables ripped, about 10 ceiling panels missing with wires hanging out. Approaching the service desk of the games room we were served by a member of staff who was more concerned with his mobile phone! Leaving here disgusted we walked to the children's play area and golf course which didn't look too bad from eyes sight. We also visited the swimming pool, which once again looked like it had seen better days and was extremely dirty. We then visited the outside activity area. From a distance we could see what looked like a building site construction area- which when we got closer soon realized this was the rock climbing wall! Entering the hire shop we was kindly greeted by two members of staff having a laugh and joke and swearing! Both members of staff were not friendly or helpful and after looking at the prices to hire out bikes etc we walked out even more disgusted. After leaving the camp to find somewhere to eat, we came back to collect our keys and unpacked hopeful that the night time entertainment would be our uplift for the day. After suffering a bad first night sleep we awoke to the decision of what to do for the day. We decided that it would be best for the children to visit Rye for the day as I felt that the camber sands camp would not be able to keep the children satisfied and happy for the day- let alone safe! We got back to the camp at around 4:00pm and decided to give the games room a try. After once again being served by the rude member of staff, the boys in our group went to play snooker. My 3 daughters and I decided to have a game of pool and table tennis. Well the table tennis tables were collapsed in the middle and the pool tables were either ripped, didn't have the right amount of balls or the whole side of the table had fallen out and was Lying on the floor. When asked abut the pool tables and the balls for them, we were kindly helped by a shrug of the shoulders. We then asked for golf clubs for us 4 to play golf. Well all I can say abut the crazy golf was that it was not at all "crazy" more disgusting, filthy and an infection pit! After playing the first few holes we decided to return the golf clubs and balls. Every hole on the crazy golf was filled with dirty, stagnant water and thick with mud- to the point that we had to fish the balls out with our golf clubs as we was afraid that the children would end up catching something from the water. We returned the clubs covered in thick mud and carrying the balls in tissue. When handing these over at the service desk, I told the member of staff that we could not continue playing and the reason why, once again to have the shoulders shrugged at us. We then took the children to the outside play area. All was well with the play area apart from the fact that the smoking area for the queen vic pub was right beside the play area, the outskirts of the play area was covered with cigarette butts as there was only one ashtray provided which was on the surrounding fence of the play area, and there was a deep hole in the play area where the frame had come out of the ground. This was blocked off by a metal fence which didn't even cover the area. Walking around the camp we could also see many glass beer bottles and glasses from the bars spread around that had not been cleared away!

The following day we visited Hastings for the whole day. As a single mum of 6 and spending £289 for a weekend away I didn't expect to be spending out unnecessary money to spend days out of the camp site although I felt this was the only way to make good of what was bad and try to make the holiday a little bit enjoyable for my children's sakes!

I have attached some photos taken as proof as to how disgusting the play area, golf course and games room was.

This is definitely not a safe environment for any child or family. I have never been to a holiday park so badly run and disgusting as which Camber Sands is. I am still in shock with the fact that I stayed for two days in a place where I had to go and buy disinfectant and cleaning products to clean our chalet before I would let my children settle, and a place where I carried around disinfectant wet wipes in my handbag and was constantly worrying about the health of my children and the other people in my party!

I feel that I should receive a full refund back due to the very bad experience i have had on this holiday.

Just got back from a 3 night stay in Camber Pontins...Upon arrival the first impression was "prison camp",the staff were all unhelpful and not professional.We were waiting in a long queue for the key,which was very unorganised,After been given our key we had a mission to find our cell.After walking round and round,we found our accomadation.OH MY WORD it was AWFUL,FILTHY ROOMS,BROKEN TAPS,BROKEN WARDROBES WITH NO DOORS,SCREWS STICKING OUT OF WARDROBE,DIRTY CURTAINS AND WINDOWS,HAIRS ON THE DUSTPAN AND BRUSH AND IN THE BATHROOM,BROKEN BED SETTEE,SAND EVERYWHERE,CIGARETTE BUTTS SCATTERED OUTSIDE,STAINED DUVETS AND PILLOWS,NO BEDLINEN UPON ARRIVAL....

The food outlets were dirty ,tables piled with pizza and chicken cartons,food on the floor,nobody seemed to care.The wholeplace was outdated,the arcade didnt pay out on machines,kids rides were filthy with food the kids had dropped,and most of them were broken.I just cant believe it is being allowed to stay open,i cant stress how awful it is!!!.On the plus side Camber and surrounding areas are lovely places to visit,with some beautiful scenery ,so we stayed out of Pontins as much as we could,just using it to sleep,when we could get to sleep that is............."enter at your own risk",take cleaning products with you...

Although I asked for refub:chalet wasent all new just spent 4 nights origanally booked 3 nights but having read (impersonater) of Kenny Rogers was going to be there I booked extra night (thing is he never turned up)

They said he had cancelled but did he? the entertainment was quite good, as for the food in the"Sands restaurant"not good looked like a lot of slop...my husband had fish and chips the night before we left and he was sick for two days.The chalet had wood floor that was in need of a wash,we watched cleaners clean other chalets, and they just hoovered the wood floors no mop and bucket.spent no more than 5 mins in each chalet no wonder there not clean. In our shower we had to remove two slugs that was crawling up the tiles.Need to take some Dettol Wipes to clean all around,beds comftable but had one flat pancake pillow,so had to get more for accomadation office.So you arrive on holiday after traveling hours and have to disinfect chalet, make up beds,get things from accomadation office,that should be in the chalet,get electric tickets,unpacked,go to supermarket.then colapse with exhaustion.Best part was the lovely beach,with good sunshine.

Just had a lovley stay in refurbished chalet.It was clean, bright and all new.Staff were polite and helpfull, entertainment good.Cant wait to go back!