Center Parcs Sandur Emmen

This is a nice place for family locations. Its not luxury resort - so expect basic fried food and a amall basic house. But for what you pay its great value, every house is right on the canal. Many kids activities are on offer from indoor pool to bowling and laser tag. They have an on site supermarket that is spacious and affordable. I recommend this place for an affordable family vacation.

We had the family house, with (old) toys for younger children, a fenced garden (which was great). Overall, the house was clean, but with room for improvement (doors were dirty, crumbs under the beds, and plenty of dust). Otherwise, we were very satisfied; the activities were enjoyable. Unfortunately, at the bowling alley, the lane is closed after exactly one hour, even if you can't start immediately due to children and the people who played before us, so we couldn't finish our game, which was disappointing and frustrating. At the pirate indoor playground, a child cut their toe and bled; something like that shouldn't happen. Afterwards, they came to me at the gym to be comforted, and I was rudely asked if I had checked in for sports and why the child was there; after all, they were too small. He was sitting next to me, I was almost done (had two sets of the exercise left, and would have left anyway). Nowhere does it say, and no one has said, that children are not allowed in the gym, so I found the reaction a bit uncalled for. Apart from that, we all had a lot of fun and also went to the swimming pool. The food is great, and there's something for everyone, young and old.

Nice Parc. bungelow falling apart, heating very loud, stains running down the ceiling., couldn't lock the door from the inside. (not good if you have dogs). Not really clean. Lights not all working. Let's get to the service... Absolutely disgusting, in the time we there nobody was prepared to give assistance without showing disapproval... You feel like you are a burden to the staff if you ask for anything. Another problem was most of the Parc just caters for Dutch visitors, hardly anything was in English or German and the staff couldn't (or wouldn't) speak anything but Dutch. I have been going to center parcs for many years and always been reasonably happy, we decided to go to sandur as we wanted to try it out. End result? Disgusting. Never again. Center parcs should definitely get someone down there to sort it out.... Rant over. It's a shame you can't give zero stars.

Before we start: If you find yourself reading this after you’ve already arrived, first up I’m very sorry for the disappointments you’ll likely experience. Take frequent trips to Emmen, it’s a really nice town. I have great memories of this place when I was a kid. I was horrified when I saw how this place looks now. First off: it’s a blast for kids or in our case adults in their 25s/30s who wanted to revisit old memories. Lots of activities, water boating, sports, you name it. But man, was that house ever filthy. Set aside at least one day of cleaning and re-doing the bedsheets. Plus, there’re signs of disuse everywhere. It’s like this place was built at some point and subsequently never once visited by staff or management since. We could see and smell the people who were here before us. There was hair on the bed, the kitchen surface, the toilet and the sofa - the sofa! That in particular really turned my stomach. There were stains, scratch-marks of generations of dogs, a heavy layer of dust and what we assumed to be kitchen grease, mixed with the aforementioned hair. We had to spend a solid day of our holidays just deep-cleaning. Cleaning supplies we had to buy ourselves, mind you. If you come to Sandur, accept the reality of this: nobody cares if you’re living in a dirty home. You can complain, send in the feedback slip, even talk to management - nobody will clean up the mess if you don’t do it yourself. Lastly: Make sure you visit April or later, otherwise many of the activities will be closed to you, particularly water activities. And even then, don’t expect everything to be open. On the positive side, the Sauna and Whirlpool in the VIP house were nice.