Our trip to Center Parcs Sherwood Forest Winter Wonderland in Pictures

We have just returned from our annual mini break to Center Parcs for their Christmas Winter Wonderland, and this year we chose to visit Sherwood Forest at winter instead of visiting Whinfell up north, which is where we usually go in November. I have to say, though the accommodation isn’t as good at Sherwood Forest for the money, the facilities and decorations at Christmas were just sublime. We had a total blast, even if the boys were demonic on Sunday during the Christmas trip, it was all worth it and absolutely wonderful.

I wanted to share a few insider tips, so if you are planning a trip this might help out:

• DO book breakfast passes – if you eat out a lot, or you just want to treat yourselves, I can’t recommend these enough. For the whole family (including my mum) it cost us £80ish for the passes. To eat the wonderful, filling breakfasts everyday would have come in at just under £200 – a massive saving. Yes, you can take your own breakfast food, we usually do but this year we wanted to get out and have cooked breakfasts that we didn’t have to cook in the chalet. So worth it, although next year we won’t book them for the kids as they were too excited to sit and eat.
• DON’T bother with early check it – this year we did and it was disappointing I think. You pay quite a bit (£60 I think?) to go to your chalet 1 hour early, and it was pointless as the staff were still cleaning at 2.40pm. The only good thing about this was that I left the kids at the pool with Daddy and Maw Maw whilst I went and moved the car… still not worth the money though.
• DO book a cabana for a baby – I think I’ve mentioned before that the cabana we booked was fab when we were at Whinfell. It’s quiet and cornered off in all the parks but at Sherwood it is *just* off the children’s pool, so your older kids can play without being far away. We all agreed it would have been helpful for Edith, who is a dreadful nap taker at the best of times and simply couldn’t get to sleep with all the commotion by the baby pool. On a side note, don’t bother booking one if you have older kids that want to play in the pool and you can’t leave them unsupervised (I’m thinking Reuben/Toby age) because you won’t be in it and it will be a huge waste.
• DO go to guest services if anything isn’t to your liking – Center Parcs are wonderful at making sure their customer satisfaction is high and they will go out of their way to help you out. We had a wonderful stay, but I did go to the guest services to tell them I wasn’t happy about my chalet being 40 minutes delayed when I had paid for it to be ready. They immediately apologised, gave us a bottle of wine and box of chocolates. If I had asked they would have refunded to payment, but I thought that was overkill when it wasn’t that big a deal. I’m not suggesting you complain for freebies, that is just ridiculous, but talk to the guest services because if you aren’t happy they will find a way to make sure your stay doesn’t suffer.
• DO book evening meals – we have learnt by past mistakes, we book every evening meal we intend to have weeks in advance. It might seem OTT but when you have three hungry kids and every restaurant is booked until 10pm, you won’t regret the forethought.
• DO visit the pool late – all the times I’ve been and I always forget that Center Parcs pools are open until 9pm! We dragged the kids out at around 4pm just as things started to get quiet – I would suggest coming out at lunch, going and doing something else, then revisiting at 4pmish.

So, those are my tips from this trip, here are our pics:

I seriously can’t recommend it enough for a convenient little family break – it is the best thing we have discovered.

H x