Advertisement

Why we love Center Parcs – even though it costs a bomb

center parcs holiday milddle class - Center Parcs
center parcs holiday milddle class - Center Parcs

An army of Sweaty Betty-clad mothers with vanilla lattes, searching for the nearest baby changing area; a sea of children pestering their fathers for another round of crazy golf; ten-pin bowling; endless sourdough pizza. This could be your nightmare of suburban Middle England – or it could be a postcard from any of Center Parc’s six holiday villages around the UK and Ireland this half term. And if you’re thinking of going, don’t bother – the villages are fully booked.

Since it first raised its electronic barrier to UK visitors to its Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire site in 1987, Center Parcs has been the go-to for middle-class British families in search of nature, childcare, all-day bars and no maritals about who’s driving. You leave your car at the barrier on arrival, and then you walk, or cycle, or zip-wire your way around the glorified holiday camp. Since 1987, five more sites have been created: in Whinfell Forest (Cumbria), Elveden Forest (Suffolk), Woburn Forest (Bedfordshire) and Longleat Forest (Wiltshire). There’s also a Center Parcs in Longford Forest, Ireland.

All are conveniently near a major motorway or commuter hub, sounds of which are muffled by the foliage. A newly proposed site in West Sussex, in an area of woodland at Oldhouse Warren in Crawley, is an easy drive for the Range Rover owners of Richmond.

And families will come to the new site in their droves, keen to check out what is not a variation on a theme, but a holiday experience that offers no surprises. That’s one of the reasons Center Parcs boasts a loyal customer base, with more than half of its visitors returning within five years. The group pulls in 2.1 million guests each year and has a 97 per cent occupancy rate in all its villages. Most budgets are catered for, from tight to bottomless: starting prices for a four-night break range from £379 to £2,399 for a family of four.

Center Parcs claims that nowhere else can rival “the scale, choice and quality that we offer”. It amounts to middle-class holiday nirvana, if you read starry-eyed online reviews from those who’ve had “the best staycation ever” and say it’s “totally enjoyable for families” and ignore the killjoys who claim the pleasure zone is “overpriced”, the experience “itinerary-driven” and “soulless”. So what is the experience, and what is all this “scale, choice and quality” doing to the nation’s understanding of holidays in the great outdoors?

It’s making the outdoors fun, and tame, and clean, no danger of white jeans getting mud on them or the pony trekkers getting lost. The trouble is, kids lucky enough to be dropped off at one of the many activity centres might grow up thinking that the great outdoors is one giant playground.

center parcs holiday family england - Center Parcs
center parcs holiday family england - Center Parcs

Others see Center Parcs as the UK’s answer to Disneyland. “Each village offers over 150 different activities for all ages, both indoor and outdoor,” explains a spokesperson as on-message as a cheery Disney employee. Like Disneyland, the thrills and spills don’t come cheap at Center Parcs, whether it’s bowling, wild water rapids, or quad biking. While visits to the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, cycling, and walking all come without cost, the price tag to filling your days with the likes of paintballing (from £36.50), badminton (from £8.75) and pottery painting (£5.75) soon tots up.

Even nature walks come at a price. It is £8 for an organised nature walk in the already rather organised natural surroundings. Perish the thought that you muster the courage to look at a map. It’s £48 for 90 minutes of den building - a handy skill for any age group - and while some might argue that there’s a forest out there with plenty of material to do it yourself, paying someone to show you how to balance a few sticks against each other turns nature into an event.

“The Center Parcs experience is about cutting down the risk of going slightly hungry, being caught out in the rain and of actual discomfort,” says explorer Benedict Allen, himself a father. “The great outdoors is reconfigured into a safer, cosier holiday in which you are guaranteed a positive result – the already risk-assessed bike ride, the age-suitable water slide.”

For environmental psychologist and wellbeing consultant Lee Chambers, “a place like Center Parcs can certainly bring some of the benefits of the great outdoors without the uncertainty and discomfort some people perceive.” But, he says, “the challenge comes with the fact that these resorts still have structures that resemble human-made patterns of activities and routines, potentially making it harder to fully disconnect or embrace solitude.”

There’s no wilderness at Centerparcs, only a pre-booked routine of “fun”. Queues are part and parcel too, with spontaneity, like risk, in short supply. Center Parcs has everything under control, from the temperature of the swimming pool (a consistently balmy 29.5C) to the number of trees in its forests. Despite its vastness there’s very little room for failure.

center parcs holiday family - Center Parcs
center parcs holiday family - Center Parcs

“Center Parcs has always been about families getting away to a forest environment to spend quality time together and make lasting family memories,” says a Center Parcs spokesperson, as if the memories are ordered in advance, along with the shiny bicycles and the massage in the spa.

Having the likes of Starbucks and a private spa therapist on tap might please those who can’t function without their daily frappucino or neck rub, but is it a realistic representation of  a ‘forest environment’? There’s no need to answer that.

The bottom line is, your kids are not going to meet Bear Grylls on their way to the pony enclosure, or have a life-changing moment in numinous nature. “An increased chance of awe” is what you get in the wilderness,” says Chambers. It’s here that you learn how to “ tackle adversity as you navigate the extreme, and the increased separation from our everyday existence” and that’s “powerful”.

And very off-message. There’s no untouched wilderness at Center Parcs, which is why parents keep coming back. Safe, tamed nature is what they want, not sleepless nights as they worry about how safe their young kids or teenagers will be during their next adventure. As for the next generation, their Disneyfied outdoor experience is bringing them up to expect to have life’s luxuries at their fingertips. It’s a distorted reality that makes Benedict Allen shudder.

Children, he says, will not only forego the agony of “learning to lumber with their inadequately-packed rucksack up an unforgiving incline, but all the rest of it too: the misery of the leaking tent, a night of shivering, the sand in the sandwiches.” Electric bikes are now as common as dinner reservations and if you’re not eating out, there are food delivery services on demand. Allen calls for a reversal back to “real life” holidays.

“I’m not proposing that everyone benefits from suffering, but that a holiday should be a learning opportunity. Learning about yourself and the real world – how to seek out the good times, how to pick yourself up after a calamity – is rewarding. It’s also real life, not fantasy – and probably cheaper.”

There’s nothing calamitous or basic about a short break at Center Parcs. “We have constantly evolved the accommodation over the years and we have a range of different lodge types and sizes, from our Woodland Lodges up to our Treehouses, there is something for everyone,” explains a Center Parcs spokesperson. By everyone, this means, anyone who can muster up a minimum of £2,049 for a last-minute four-night escape in a two-bedroom lodge in Longleat this half term.

However, for the price, the luxuries are undeniably impressive. “Spacious, stylish and modern” by design, there are endless hot tubs, treehouses with cinemas and games rooms, and more kitchen appliances than one frazzled parent knows what to do with. And that’s if they choose to cook for themselves; they’d be more than welcome not to. Over its six villages, Center Parcs has 11 brands of restaurants, offering recognisable high street chains that you’d struggle to find anywhere else outside of a major town or city.

Again, no chance of running short of prosecco or going out of your comfort zone - and that includes the dress code. The Center Parcs group recently announced a new partnership with family clothing brand, Joules, which will soon have a store on every site. The bright, wholesome brand will take its place on Instagram, where #centerparcs currently notches up over 450,000 posts – a mixture of dogs lounging by fireplaces, selfies taken in spa dressing gowns and children looking cute in their cagoules. It’s the perfect picture of middle-class delirium.


Are middle class families right to return again and again to Center Parcs? Comment below to join the conversation