Parkdean Resorts Camber Sands Holiday Park - Read This Before You Book!

Camber Sands Holiday Park is one of Parkdean Resorts bigger sites - but is it any good?

Search latest
offers at Camber
​Sands Holiday Park

Planning on visiting Parkdean Resorts Camber Sands Holidays Park with the family? 

Before you book, read our essential guide to everything you need to know (Ed: a little modesty wouldn't go amiss).

Camber Sands is certainly one of the biggest Parkdean Resorts holiday parks in the UK and offers loads to do. But is it any good?

We've split our guide into four categories:

1. Good and bad reviews and customer opinions of Camber Sands Holiday Park compared to similar holiday parks.
2. What to expect from a holiday at Camber Sands Holiday Park, including facilities, entertainment and nearby attractions.
3. How to save money and get the best value out of a break at Camber Sands Holiday Park.
4. Choosing the best accommodation at Camber Sands Holiday Park

---

1. Reviews - the good and bad points about Camber Sands Holiday Park

Parkdean's Camber Sands scores 3.5/5 from reviewers on TripAdvisor - but how does it compare to rivals?

The overall review scores for Parkdean Resorts Camber Sands Holiday Park are 3.5/5 on Google reviews and 3.8/5 on Google reviews as of May 2023. Please don't confuse it with Pontins Camber Sand Holiday Park which scores 2/5 on TripAdvisor.

We ranked all 66 Parkdean Resorts Holiday Parks based on their customer reviews on Google reviews and TripAdvisor to see how it compares.

Those scores put Camber Sands Holiday Park in 57th place, which is towards the bottom of our Parkdean Resorts league table.

However, don't let that put you off too much. Our experience is that larger holiday parks with more facilities tend to score lower than smaller resorts with fewer facilities. This may seem a bit counterintuitive at first but bear with me! 

My theory is that there is more to find fault with at a larger site with lots of facilities. There's much less to complain about if you stay at a low key holiday park which is a row of 100 caravans and zero facilities. If you book a holiday park without entertainment then you probably realised that in advance and planned to explore the local area instead.

Also keep in mind that TripAdvisor review scores are done in half marks so it could be that Camber Sands is on the brink of scoring 4/5.

---

Digging deeper into Camber Sands reviews. What are customers saying?

We can get a little more detail on what customers think of Camber Sands Holiday Park by digging into the reviews:

• On TripAdvisor, Parkdean's Camber Sands Holiday Park gets its most positive ratings for its location. It gets its lowest rating in the 'cleanliness' category. The 'service' and 'value' sit somewhere in the middle.
• About half of visitors consider Camber Sands Holiday Park to be either 'Excellent' or 'Very Good' (i.e. 4/5 or 5/5). About a fifth of reviewers give it a one star rating.
• Google provides a 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' tool which picks out key themes of reviews and decides whether the general opinion is positive or negative. Keywords which have a positive review at Camber Sands including 'family' 'beach' 'location' 'atmosphere' and 'nature'. Thumbs down ratings are given for themes including 'food' 'bathroom' 'sleep' 'parking' and 'kitchen'. I've pasted a screenshot of the ratings below. I would encourage you to dig into this yourself and to take it with a pinch of salt as it's an automated system.

Google provides a summary of public opinion on different themes. Credit: Google

---

Review scores for rival resorts near to Camber Sands Holiday Park 

There are some other holiday parks along the Sussex coast which are also worth considering. Let's take a look at their review scores:

• Haven’s Church Farm Holiday Park in West Sussex and Haven Combe Haven in East Sussex both score 4/5. Read our comparison of Haven v Parkdean.
• Park Holidays has five caravan parks in East Sussex. I would start with Pevensey Bay Holiday Park near to Eastbourne or Rye Harbour Holiday Park which is close to Camber Sands. They both score somewhere between 4/5 and 4.5/5 on review sites.
• Butlins Bognor Regis is very large and has spent a lot on upgrading its swimming pool. It scores 4/5 from reviewers.
• Pontins Camber Sands Holiday Park is cheap, but review scores are considerably lower than holiday parks from Haven, Parkdean Resorts and Park Holidays. Personally, I would stick with one of the other holiday parks mentioned above if you can afford it.

To save you the bother, we've also created a ranking of some of Sussex's holiday parks based on customer review scores. We added together TripAdvisor and Google Reviews to give a score out of 10:​

1. Park Holidays Pevensey Bay Holiday Park - 8.9/10
2. Park Holidays Rye Harbour Holiday Park - 8.4/10
3. Haven’s Church Farm Holiday Park - 8.3/10
4. Butlins Bognor Regis - 7.8/10
5. Haven Combe Haven Holiday Park - 7.7/10
6. Parkdean Resorts Camber Sands Holidays Park - 7.3/10
7. Pontins Camber Sands Holiday Park - 4.3/10

Haven's Church Farm Holiday Park is a big name rival resort

Pevensey Bay Holiday Park is smaller than Camber Sands but it gets good reviews

Rye Harbour Holiday Park is run by Park Holidays and is near to Camber Sands

---

2. Facilities, entertainment and what to expect at Camber Sands Holiday Park

Parkdean Resorts classifies Camber Sands as one of its 'Action Packed Parks'. 

That means it has more facilities than most of its other resorts. It isn't the place to avoid people but it's great if you want non-stop entertainment.

There are four swimming pools and you don't pay extra to use them (although you do pay for the sauna and spa). There's a waterslide and an outdoor splash area as well.

There are also activities in the swimming pool, some of which you pay extra for including:

• Aqua jets
• Kayaks
• Mini jet skis
• Wiped Out 2.0 (a bit like Total Wipeout)

The indoor swimming pool at Cambers Sands Holiday Park

Some of the sports and activities you can do include:

• High ropes and climbing wall
• Adventure bugz (six wheeled vehicles which children can drive round a course)
• Arts and crafts
• Virtual reality experience
• Woof park (obstacle courses for dogs) - see our guide to dog friendly holiday parks if this is a priority for you
• Adventure golf
• Adventure playground
• ​Soft play
• The outdoor canopy (outdoor venue for live shows)
• Bungee trampolines
• Bike hire and family kart hire (four seater pedal karts for getting around the site)
• Table tennis
• Aeroball (a bit like volleyball on a trampoline)
• Archery, tag archery and hover archery (i.e. archery on hoverboards)
• Battle blasters (a bit like Nerf) and laser quest
• Bumper zorbs (giant inflatable balls you climb inside)
• Cricket
• Football
• Hoverboards

You pay extra for some activities but my experience is that Parkdean Resorts isn't as expensive as Center Parcs.

For example, Adventure Bugz is £9.50, Adventure Golf is £2-6, Bungee Trampolines are £5 and the High Ropes Course is £13. These prices are correct at the time of writing. You can check Parkdean's latest activity prices here.

My advice is to plan your activities beforehand or your activities budget may go on the first couple of days!

The Bungee Trampolines at Parkdean's Camber Sands Holiday Park will cost you £5 extra

Places to eat out include:

• Thunderbird Fried Chicken
• The Boathouse Bar and Restaurant
• Scoops ice cream parlour
• Mobile street food​​

---

Entertainment at Camber Sands Holiday Park

Camber Sands is one of Parkdean Resorts 'headliner' parks. This means that the range of entertainment is bigger than you get at its smaller resorts. About a third of Parkdean's holiday parks fall into this 'headliner' category. 

The entertainment schedule varies but you can see the latest information here on this page on the Parkdean website.

The sort of entertainment you get at Camber Sands include bingo, talent shows and live shows for grown ups as well as kids' clubs. The kids' clubs are split into different age groups. If your children are under eight then you need to attend the groups with them, as they are 'entertainment' rather than 'childcare'. See the kids' entertainment section of the Parkdean website for the full details.

There are several kids club activities at Parkdean's Camber Sands Holiday Park

---

3. How to save money at Camber Sands Holiday Park

Parkdean's Camber Sands is a good value holiday park - but prices can be quite high during peak times.

Here are five ways to save money at Camber Sands Holiday Park:

1. Of course, we all know that it is considerably cheaper to visit UK holiday parks outside of school holidays. Anyone who point this out is very annoying and has not had to face the shame of handing in an unauthorised holiday request form to a headteacher. However, it's worth mentioning that if you aren't tied to school holidays then the cheapest breaks are usually the midweek holidays which run from Monday to Friday. The start and end of the season - March and October - are particularly cheap. Parkdean run Tots Breaks at Camber Sands which are great value.
   
   
2. If you are stuck with school holidays and want a cheap holiday then I would take a look at late August and early September. Demand drops around this time, but you may find that you can squeeze a break in before the schools go back.  For example, we looked for a weekend in August 2024 and found that August 23rd - 26th at Camber Sands Holiday Park started at £579. The price dropped to £359 for August 30th until September 2nd 2024. My children's school don't go back until September 4th, but yours may be different!
   
   
3. Sharing a large caravan is nearly always cheaper than booking two smaller caravans. As an example, we searched for the cheapest accommodation for eight people in early August 2024. The cheapest price if you book an eight berth caravan was £1119. If you book two four person caravans then the total price came to £1998 - more than £800 more expensive! Just make sure you get on well with each other, as eight people in one caravan is cosy!
   
   
4. My usual advice for bargain hunters is to book Parkdean Resort holiday parks early. This is because the cheap caravans are often booked first. However, there is a last minute deals page on the Parkdean Resorts website. 
   
   
5. Finally, get yourself a supermarket food delivery. Parkdean allow deliveries from Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda etc which works out much cheaper than using the onsite convenience shop. This is another pretty obvious bit of advice, but I'm sure you'll forgive me.

---

4. Choosing the best accommodation at Camber Sands Holiday Park

There are a whopping 39 different types of accommodation at Camber Sands Holiday Park - plus camping and touring.

However, you can quickly narrow it down. 

My advice is to do the follow.

1. Put in your preferred dates, as that will immediately remove some options. If you prefer to do it the other way round, start on this accommodation page which shows you every grade of accommodation at Camber Sands Holiday Park.
2. Next, choose the 'allows pets' filter, if you are bringing a dog. I haven't found a way to only show accommodation which doesn't allow pets unfortunately.
3. Similarly, if you want more accessible accommodation, choose the 'accessible unit' filter.

The next big decision is what type of accommodation you want.  These can roughly be split into two categories.

1. Caravans, chalets and bungalows are the cheaper accommodation at Camber Sands Holiday Park. They range in size from 1-3 bedroom and sleep 4-8 people. The majority of properties are caravans. A typical caravan is 12 foot wide.
2. Lodges at Camber Sands Holiday Park are much more expensive but they are also much more spacious. Lodges are usually 20 foot wide, which is getting on for double the width of a caravan. When we checked for holidays in August 2024, the cheapest lodge was about twice the price of the cheapest caravan. However, it does vary depending on your dates. At the time of writing, there aren't any lodges with hot tubs at Camber Sands Holiday Park. I wouldn't be surprised if this changes as Parkdean Resorts has added hot tubs at some of their other resorts (see our guide to holiday parks with hot tubs).​

Lodges at Camber Sands Holiday Park are 20 foot wide whilst most caravans are 12 foot wide

---

Why are some caravans at Parkdean Resorts' Camber Sands Holiday Park cheaper than others?

Parkdean Resorts doesn't have as clear a grading system as Haven, so it can be a little difficult to work out why one caravan costs more than another. However, there are key things to look for when choosing your caravan or lodge:

• What year was it added to the park? The newest caravans and lodges will have dates included in the description. This is a big selling point for me, as I would rather have a newer caravan with less facilities than an older caravan with more features.
• How many bedrooms has it got? This is much more important than the maximum number of people it can sleep. A three bedroom caravan can sleep eight people, but I prefer a proper bed to a sofa bed.
• What review score does it get? Parkdean Resorts offer a useful score alongside each caravan.
• Does it have a dishwasher and washing machine? These are only found in a handful of different types of accommodation at Camber Sands Holiday Park. If you plan to eat out a lot then I wouldn't pay a lot extra for a dishwasher.
• Does it have a veranda or balcony? Most accommodation grades at Camber Sands don't come with this feature, but I think it's a worthwhile upgrade if a) you are visiting in summer and b) it's not a lot more money for the dates you are looking at.