De Biesbosch

Great location for a vacation park; the cottages are clean and tidy. Some of the amenities are a bit dated but reasonably well-maintained.

The restaurant was closed; there wasn't much to do

We had cottage 316; the exterior of the cottage was nice, but there was a hole in the deck by the water.
The bedroom inside was dirty—there was still a Twix wrapper left behind by one of the previous guests—there was a lot of dust in the living room, and there were potato chips in the couch, also left by a previous guest. In the kitchen, there … was a lot of dirty cutlery and glassware, and the faucet was also quite loose. In the bathroom, the mirror had smudges, and in the cabinet there was toothpaste—and yes, that was also left by a previous guest.

In short, the cleaning left a lot to be desired. Read more Show less

It was okay, though—some of the cottages are in need of some maintenance. The person who checked us in wasn't very helpful. And while the location is nice, the main road is very close by.

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Vacation Only for Those Who Can Endure It
During the 7-hour drive there, we had to add one more person at the last minute over the phone and received a payment request for 70 EUR via email. Since we arrived after the front desk had closed, we were threatened during the drive that if we didn’t pay the 70 euros immediately, we wouldn’t receive … our keys—even though we had already paid over 2,000 euros. I had to stop the car to make the bank transfer and continued driving with the uneasy feeling that we would have to spend the night at a hotel. We found the reception by the security staff to be unfriendly and suspicious. Despite having already entered our personal information online, we were required to write it out by hand again on a piece of paper left out in the open, and my ID was scrutinized with suspicion. Once again, we were threatened that if we didn’t write the information on the piece of paper, we wouldn’t be granted access to the park.
The vacation home itself was in poor condition: Bed linens were missing despite a promise to the contrary; underfloor heating running at maximum power with a room temperature of around 36 °C—and no German-language instruction manual to be found—turned the house into a sauna; a loose footrest in the bed caused it to tip over; the towel radiator looked dirty. During the day in summer, the house regularly heats up to 36–39 °C (even without the underfloor heating). There is no air conditioning or fan. In the evenings and at night, ventilation is virtually impossible due to the lack of fly screens, so we found ourselves on a veritable mosquito hunt every evening.
Another nuisance is the location right next to the highway, with a constant traffic noise level of 50 to 70 dB. You have to be careful when going for a walk—there’s dog waste everywhere. Hiking is only possible after a 10–20-minute drive. The same goes for grocery shopping. The condition of the outdoor areas leaves much to be desired: some bodies of water are gray, plant-free pools and thus breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and some properties appear unkempt.
Particularly disappointing was the “park manager’s” handling of our concerns: complaints were dismissed with an annoyed roll of the eyes, issues were questioned, and she didn’t even seem to be aware of basic details about her own properties. I couldn’t sense any empathy or genuine interest in the guests’ concerns.
On a positive note, the technical staff—unlike the park manager—speaks German and appears competent.
After four previous stays, this was a clear disappointment—so this will likely have been our last visit. Read more Show less