Sunparks Kempense Meren ***

mooie omgeving, rustig, groen, veel natuur, mooi onderhouden zwembad. Vakantiewoning was echter verre van netjes om niet te zeggen vuil. Overal stof, zand, schimmel in keuken en badkamer ... Dringend aan renovatie toe want het begint te lijken op vergane glorie.

We booked a hotel room + dinner and breakfast over the internet. Payment and confirmation was easy. Arriving by car at the park (sat nav) had a problem finding the entrance. The park itself is situated at a nice like and offers great nature experience. The hotel rooms are old, the beds worn out and the air con is useless (too hot, although we adjusted it to a minimum. Also you can see at the sealing that the rooms are old. The restaurant offers hot food that is best described as rubbish, although the breakfast is OK. Positive: Very helpful staff and the swimming pool and playground area for the kids. Overall convenient, but the oldish, used atmosphere is a BIG minus.

We booked a long weekend with the "Plop" package (Belgian and Dutch parents will certainly know this TV character). Our cottage was ok for a long weekend: it was well equiped and cleaned, but some things needed redoing (e.g. rubbers around the windows, silicones around the bathroom floor, carpet tiles in the bedrooms, stains on a curtain,...). We booked a Select villa and did not have the impression to have something "better" than standard (we have not seen standard villas from the inside). The heating does not work very well. If you come here when it is cold outside: be prepared that it will take a while until your cottage is heated. We put the heat control system at 24°, and then it started to get warmer. For families who want to use the baby bed: there is a decent matress, but no protecting coverage for it, nor a baby blanket. The baby chair was quite old but seemed safe. We did not find a baby park in our cottage, but did not needed one. All cottages are amidst the green, but the cottages are quite near to each other. We were quite close to the parkcenter, which was an advantage (distance can be very long there to walk). The last part of the way to our cottage was very sandy and muddy, so the entry hall of the cottage was immediately dirty. One of the park rules is that cars should be parked at the check in and can only enter the park to (un)load luggage (which we did). We saw cars parked next to a cottage the whole weekend, so we suppose that no-one of the personnel asks to effectively park the car on the parking lot. The swimming pool was fine. Our kids had a very good time. There are good life jackets for the kids (mandatory and free, I do not understand why so many people didn't use them for their toddlers or kids, perhaps because the personnel did not promote to use them?). The "kidsworld" was nice too, but is actually only one "climbing and gliding" unit, placed in a sports hall, next to badminton play fields. Our kids also liked the outdoor playfield (actually also quite small; we were lucky that there were not a lot of kids at the time we played there). We did not eat in the park restaurants as the food did not seem very attractive (nor healthy: burgers, pizzas, fries,...). We bought food in the shop in the parkcenter. The prices are higher than elsewhere, but not overexaggerated. The Plop-activities: it is a good and catching package (several free activities in the theme and tickets for the indoor Plop park in Hasselt are included in the price), but some elements need rethinking. Nice was that the park was decorated in the Plop theme (even the front door of the cottage). The activities could have been better organised. We tried the first one: making Plophats, organised by the activity-team in a crowdy meeting room under the hotel. The Plophats had to be made with a printed sheet of paper, that had to be coloured by the children, cut out and stitched. There was not enough material for everyone. Eventually, we made something by getting around asking other people for some colouring pencils, scissors, etc. As a result, we didn't try the other activities, except for the show with the "Studio 100 - band" and the real "Plop", which was ok. We left the room once the meet and greet with Plop started as this was not well organised either (in fact, the poor actor who plays "Plop" was overwhelmed by the crowd, the activity team could have organised this in a more "ordered" way, but they only stood there and looked at the show). The personnel is friendly, but there are a lot of students or stagiairs who lack experience. For example, if I wouldn't have seen at the check-in that another first name was written on the documents I received, we would have got someone else's bungalow. Or: two young guys of the personnel walked in the swimming area with their normal shoes (hygiene?). Or: a young lady at the infodesk constantly had to ask her colleague for help, while there was a long queu. But, we had nice holidays, we had a great time with our kids, the weather was nice, ...

The villa that we stayed in was okay, fairly well equipped and comfortable although we couldn't figure out how to control the heating which made it difficult to dry clothes and swimming gear. The pool was a bit on the small side although the slides were good fun, two of the slides were controled by red and green lights but the largest one was a big free for all, kind of like a rugby scrum so be prepared for a potential bruising. There was plenty to do on sight unfortunately the sauna / spa was closed for the duration of the stay and none of the staff were sure why. Cleanliness was good The park itself was difficult to find as I put the post code into my satnav and it took us to a town a few miles out so if you are planning to go use the written directioins on the web page

It's an old park, but in a nice environment The swimmingpool is clean and fun, but it's good for one hour. The villa was updated, but nog clean. It was very noisy, the walls are carton. the complete park needs an update. It's not very expensive, but its not worth the money. it's not worth trying. The rooms are very cold, not a picture on the wall, of a decoration. its a good idea to share a bungalow with friends, because it's cheap.