Center Parcs de Eemhof

We stayed 3 nights. On our last night now, we’re a UK couple with 9 yr old daughter in a kids cottage. We’re used to 5* hotels but knew not to have too high expectations for this 3* rated accommodation. Cottage is warm and purposeful. Pre book towels and bedding unless you’re bringing your own. We’ve also done Centre Parcs Uk which I’d say is of a higher standard than this one. However the grounds here are good for exploring. We hired an electric buggy which was great fun and good to get around. Would recommend pre booking it for a discount and pre book activities. If you fancy a different adventure and away from Brits it’s worth booking!

The house we stayed in was nice and clean. We did share walls with all our neighbours and one of our neighbours had a bubble bath, which they used at 6AM. We could hear everything. The vibrations of the bubbles and their conversations could be heard very louldy and woke us all up. The houses are insanely noisy! Most people visit centerparks for the pools, and so did we. The pool had some very nice slides but the interactive slide speakers which are supposed to play music were broken the entire week and they were also broken on our last trip, which ruins the slide. The pool was fairy clean but they were a lot of dirty bandages and other thrash in the changing rooms. There's also very few showers (around 10) which means you can wait up to 15 minutes for a shower after swimming on busy days, which is a bit ridiculous. Speaking about the restaurants, the all you can eat restaurant is a nice place but the price is insane and it's basically impossible to eat enough to cover up the cost so I wouldn't recommend. The Italian restaurant had very nice food and was reasonably priced but the staff wasn't great. We had to wait 15 minutes to get our drinks order taken. The food got brought insanely fast, which was nice except the fact that we got our food first and the drinks after we finished our meal already. The door also let through a lot of wind so it was very unpleasant and cold. I wouldn't recommend Nonna's. Overall, the stay was fine but there really are some things that are just plain bad.

I'm going to start this review by stating that I was dubious about travelling here having read very mixed reviews from others who had recently been to this Center Parcs, but given our open-minded approach and past experience of another European Center Parcs (Bispinge Heide, Germany) these doubts were ill placed and I shouldn't have been worried as we all had an excellent stay and it met and exceeded our expectations. We stayed in apartment 24 which is on the waterfront and shared with other, non-Center Parcs residents and holiday makers; Center Parcs call this accommodation a "Water Front Suite VIP Apartment" This location was wonderful, peaceful yet near enough to the main part of Center Parcs and the all important Aqua Mundo and other activities. One extra bonus about the waterfront location is that you can park very close to your accommodation and not have to leave your car in the large car park like usual, this also means you got quick entry/exit to/from the parc when you needed it. From your living room or the outdoor patio (apartment 24 is on the ground floor) you can watch the boats sail by and you get a wonderful sunset in the evening). When we arrived we found the apartment perfectly clean and tidy with fresh towels, bed linen and kitchen essentials such as dishwasher tablets, cloths towels and a few other items all ready to go. There were some small (carry on size) toiletries in the bathroom too. Both bedrooms were a good size with the usual large wardrobe for clothes and bedside tables; the 'master room' had a safe which was free to use and a dresser with hair dryer. In the kitchen, there was a large fridge (also clean) and a good sized, 5-burner hob and microwave/grill appliance. The cutlery, crockery and pots/pans looked pretty new and of good quality - easy to make meals with. The on-site shop was reasonable with a good selection of food to buy, prices were OK with the expected slightly higher prices to pay for the convenience of being nearby (think about your local village shop). Although we didn't use this facility, you could pre-order fresh breakfast rolls for delivery or go there yourself in the morning. The all-important Aqua Mundo was clean, had plenty of lockers and the usual in/out changing rooms with Juliet type doors. I remember seeing one review saying that the doors didn't lock - they do, you just need to lower a catch which is part of the seat to lock both doors and protect your privacy. Inside, there's a good selection of slides including a duo-racer for the competitive ones and others besides. We found it well staffed and not too crowded at all, given that we were in the back end of the holiday season. A particular mention needs to go out to the staff on the flow rider (an indoor body boarding wave machine) who were excellent in instructing and making sure everyone who had booked got the most out of their experience. I would highly recommend this activity (15EUR for 1 hour). On one occasion we had to