By:
Submission
This was our first time bringing our little one camping. We were all so excited. We chose a cabin because having a little one would just be hard to camp in a tent and we knew it would be warmer. Well the first night it became below 60 and the heater in the cabin in every room did NOT work. With all blankets we brought was still beyond freezing. Not to mention the whole time we were not notified that the stores and arcade and what not would be closed so couldn't even take her to shop there. We had to leave early because of the nights being so cold and when I emailed about what was going on NOBODY responded. Not a very good experience for our little ones first time camping especially with everything being closed.
Cabin we rented had a torn couch, screen door basically falling apart, mattresses on the beds were straight springs a solid 3 inches thick. Counter tops were barely cleaned there was food from the last people on it. The park itself was okay. No trash can in the arcade so there's trash sitting all over. Basketball court has tons of empty bottles and juice boxes laying around at 8am meaning no one cleans that up. Beach was dirty and needed cleaned. Water in the water park was literally freezing I didn't even bother taking my toddler to it. I did not see 1 adult working all young kids. For the price of this place it should be much cleaner. We will not do a cabin again luckily we brought our own clorox wipes and duct tape so we could try fix up the place. When the bear comes around they were in golf cart going so fast the kids barely had time to run up.
We were excited to hear it was under new management, as it went downhill fast after Jackie left about 7-8 years back. They got brand new, beautiful cabins in the spring, but let me tell you they were absolutely TRASHED and FILTHY in such a short time. We had no HEAT so they gave us a few portable heaters that I wasn't about to use with small children in our cabin. There is an outdoor fireplace that does not work and were told when they do get fixed, that they will charge to use them, that's ghetto. Half didn't have front window blinds, our kitchen didn't, and half of the bedroom windows didn't. We had to use our pillow cases/sheets that we needed to cover the disgusting beds. The bunk bed had no safely railing, there was a weird worm on one of the beds, the freezer did not make ice and the fridge didn't have a light bulb. The toilet backed up too. This place needs to visit the deluxe cabins at KOA, in NF Canada. they provide linens, towels and a Keurig for the same price, if not cheaper. We asked management to call us, but they never did, big shock! Oh and the workers pick their family members with half a costume on to win the costume contest, lame!
This was our first ever Jellystone experience and we loved it so much we've continued to go to a new Jellystone every year for the past 5 years. We tent-camped while in North Java with our 5 boys and even though the temperature dropped to 50 degrees with storms and hail, we had so much fun. Before the storms rolled in, we enjoyed the water park area, jump castles, the playgrounds and all of the activities. When we visited, there was still a lot of upgrades happening, so I"m sure not it's even better than when we were there. We plan to revisit North Java soon in the future.
We had a horrible experience last summer. It was towards the end of summer and they were “out” of a lot of things. So many of the staff were unprofessional, one even picked on my kid waiting for a kayak. They were out of gel for the blasters, lights were blown in our cabin, they were out of shirts to tie die and were told we could leave and go to dollar general about a half hour away to go get some then pay to dye them. It was like they were already shutting down for the season but it was only Aug 20. This is a small fraction of what was wrong. I brought all the issues to the attention of the general manager who said he would come back later that day and make things right. We never saw him again. Never got anything in the way of making it right. I even wrote him a long letter after the fact detailing everything and asked him to please reach out to me. I never heard a word. We will not be going back again.
