£9.50 Sun Holiday At Golden Sands Dawlish
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While the Sun £9.50 holidays have been running for years, it’s not something I’d tried until recently. So amid all of last years uncertainty, I took a punt and booked a cheap holiday for this year’s May bank holiday weekend (naively thinking all the Covid restrictions would be over by then!) This is our 9.50 Sun Holiday Experience at Golden Sands Dawlish.
What Is a Sun £9.50 Holiday?
Sun £9.50 holidays are a range of holidays linked with Sun Newspaper. The prices offer a big discount on what you would normally pay if booking directly with the holiday park. You buy the Sun Newspaper to collect a series of code words, then input these into the website when booking your holiday.
The Sun Holidays are partner with lots of well know holiday brands such as Parkdean, Pontins, Haven and Butlins and there are locations all around the U.K. You can book a weekend break or a Monday to Friday break.
You can also use the Sun Holidays to book cheap breaks abroad in European countries such as France and Italy although of course that’s not been possible this year.
Does It Really Cost £9.50 Per Person?
Booking a holiday for £9.50 per person may sound too good to be true, but as long as there are four or more of you, you could nab a break for just £38.00. Even if there are only two of you you’ll still need to pay for at least four people.
However, these super cheap holidays can be hard to come by, are usually during term time and out of season and don’t include things like bed linen or entertainment passes which you’ll need to access on-site facilities such as the swimming pool.
These extras usually come in at around £10 per person. Expect to pay a premium for school holidays and popular dates such as Bank Holiday weekends where the price jumps to £15.50 per person
If you plan to use your caravan or chalet just as a base for exploring the local area and are happy to sort your own bedding then it’s a great way to bag a very cheap getaway.
Booking A Sun 9.50 Holiday
Pick Your Dates – When you go to book a 9.50 Sun Holiday you’ll be asked to pick four parks and four dates. You’ll then get a list of what is available, and some similar suggestions if your park or dates aren’t available.
Collect The Codes – Before this though, you’ll need to collect the seven code words from the Sun Newspapers. Personally, this isn’t something I do. There are LOADS of Sun Holiday Facebook groups out there that share the codes as they come out.
Book ASAP – You’ll want to think about booking as soon as you can after the final code has been released to get the best chance at the dates and break you want. All extra costs are clearly shown at the time of booking. Your holiday park may then offer a further upgrade when you get confirmation from them, which is what I chose to do.
Our 9.50 Sun Holiday Experience: Golden Sands Dawlish
I thought it would be good to talk about our 9.50 Sun Holiday experience, where we stayed and exactly what we paid for it.
I’m going to be honest and say that I was nervous about how clean and how up to date our accommodation would be, especially as our most recently holidays have either been to Center Parcs or staying in private holiday lets with friends. I’m in a Sun Holidays Facebook group and there were lots of negative posts about the site I had booked.
However, the campsite looked nice overall, it was near Dawlish, an area we knew we liked and only an hour away from home so if it was really awful we could just head back.
What We Paid For 9.50 Sun Holiday
Here’s what we paid for our 9.50 Sun Holiday.
So to begin with it was quite a bit more than £9.50 person.
As we had to pay a peak supplement for a bank holiday weekend it was £15.50 per person. However, as my husband is self-employed this was much less than the cost of him taking a day off work – a Bank Holiday meant the building site he works on was shut anyway. I then had to pay for linen, service charges and entertainment passes.
I paid £64.80 to the Sun when I booked the holiday and then the remaining £62.20 to Park when they confirmed my booking.
Below is the screenshot I took showing how much each thing cost, plus the booking fee. This doesn’t include linen fees which is why my final total for the holidays slightly different.
Upgrading To A Caravan
Before going away I read a lot of reviews about the chalets (the accommodation we were allocated by the Park was a chalet, rather than a caravan) and was really put off. They looked tiny in the few images I could find online and every single review of them was awful.
So I made the decision to upgrade to a caravan. There were two options for this – bronze for £45 and silver for £60. Park actually sent a link to 3D caravan viewer when I made the enquiry about upgrading and it was really helpful to see what we’d be getting.
As there was only three of us going I opted for the bronze and paid an extra £45. The chap I spoke to on the phone was super helpful and really lovely. This took the total cost of our holiday up to £172.00
Golden Sands Dawlish
Check-in was at Golden Sands Dawlish was from 4 pm and although we hadn’t planned to arrive exactly at that time, the bad weather meant we ended up getting there at then and was pretty chaotic trying to find somewhere to park while I went into reception and grabbed the keys and welcome package. While there was a huge queue it did go down pretty quickly and soon we were off to find our caravan.
We stayed in number 130 which was in one of the furthest corners of the park. We loved being able to park right outside and headed straight in to take a look around our caravan.
We were very pleasantly surprised with how big, clean and modern it was, especially my husband who hadn’t done a caravan holiday before. While there were some small signs of wear and tear, overall we didn’t have any issues with the accommodation at all. It was also very warm and the heating worked really well.
Walking past the chalets later in the weekend, I was very glad we had upgraded!
Golden Sands Dawlish is a huge site with 350 plus caravans. We were in the furthest corner of the park so walking up to Dawlish Warren beach and the shops took around 25 to 30 minutes. The site is very hilly so might not be a good fit if anyone in your party has problems with mobility. The views are stunning though!
We didn’t use the swimming pool as it required booking due to covid and we had plenty of activities already booked in over the weekend such as Paignton Zoo. We also didn’t use the onsite restaurant or entertainment as it’s just not our thing.
Golden Sands Dawlish has two children’s play areas, one for toddlers and one for older children. The toddler play area is in serious need of an update and most of the equipment either didn’t feel safe or was covered in bird poo.
The other children’s play area is lovely, situated in a large open field which would be perfect for family picnics and games of football or rounders. The only disappointing thing was there no play equipment geared towards younger children and the toddler play is a good five-minute walk away in the opposite direction.
The only small downsides we found were it was very noisy, particularly noise from the two caravans next to us. Possibly because our two year old goes to bed at 6.30 pm and we had very quiet evenings relaxing, we noticed it more than we would if we were in a larger group.
Overall we really enjoyed our stay at Golden Sands Dawlish and would definitely book to stay there again via the 9.50 Sun Holidays offer.
Our 9.50 Sun Holiday Experience: Was It Good Value For Money?
Overall our three-night Caravan stay cost just under £20 per person per night which I don’t think is bad at all, especially considering it was a bank holiday weekend. Our caravan was comfortable, warm, clean and modern. I did a price check a couple of weeks before we went at it would have been £348 to book then directly with the park.
I’ve already taken a look at prices for the same weekend next year and was quoted £570 a staggering £400 more than what we paid for exactly the same accommodation.
Should You Book A 9.50 Sun Holiday?
Yes, I definitely think the Sun 9.50 holidays are a great way to get away if you’re on a tight budget. I do think it’s worth reading some reviews before you book as some holiday parks definitely get better reviews than others.
It’s also worth thinking about what extras you’re happy to pay for. For me personally, I was more than happy to pay the linen charge because I hate making beds and it was the last thing that I wanted to do while I was on holiday.
While the thrifty girl in me knows camping is the ultimate cheap holiday, I just can’t cope with the lack of toilets and a hot shower. This was definitely a much better budget option for us!
Tips For Booking a 9.50 Sun Holiday
The first time you book a 9.50 Sun Holiday the whole process can seem a little daunting. Here are my tips for booking a 9.50 Sun Holiday, how to choose your park and more.
Pay Only Dates – Look out for Pay Only Dates as these are dates where you only pay £9.50 per person and are the cheapest Sun Holidays by far.
Research – I think it pays to do a lot of research before booking your holiday, such as which holiday park you would like to book as they all offer different things. For example, some are in the middle of nowhere with just a beach nearby, for these you would definitely need your own transport. Others might be at busy seaside resorts where there is plenty of transports link and other amenities on your doorstep.
Travel Times – For us, I didn’t really want to travel more than an hour and a half as we were only going for three nights. You may also want to factor in the cost of travel as well as other things like eating out and general spending money when planning your holiday. Cornwall is particularly expensive whereas south wales can be quite cheap.
Make It A Week If you’d like to book a weeks holiday, some parks will let you book breaks back to back for a small additional charge, which I think is around £20. You can also book more than one holiday, so you could book a couple of long weekends at different times during the year.
Be Prepared – While our caravan was lovely, I did take lots of cleaning supplies with me, just in case there were any issues.
Holiday Abroad – Sun 9.50 holidays do offer parks in Europe and booking works in much the same way as booking a U.K holiday. This is definitely something I would do in the future but due to Covid I think European holidays are out for us for the time being.
If you’d like more info on 9.50 Sun Holidays and how they work, see the Club 9.50 Website.
