When a friend told us she'd been offered free accommodation in Trabolgan, Co. Cork, and did a group of us want to come along for the weekend? Of course we did! Now I couldn't find Trabolgan on the map particularly where it was supposed to be at the mouth of Cork harbour, and my early attempts at googling resulted in loads of information about a racehorse. So you can imagine we began to doubt the authenticity of this generous offer! My friend though kept her cool under cross examination, only replying with an enigmatic: "You'll see!" So having assured ourselves that she probably wasn't going to drop us into a secluded part of Cork harbour, we began instead to imagine a mythical land populated by the leetle peeple, where the sun always shone, bright rainbows arced the sky, and where it never rained on your dreams! Trabolgan exists! It lies about 19km from Midleton in Co. Cork, (which I'd heard of because of the old whiskey that Jameson now owns), it's a holiday camp, er.. I mean village. The Irish perhaps quite sensibly don't go in for these much, I know of one in Co. Louth, but not many others. I think this is run by the same organization behind Pontins in the UK. We arrived by cab, the driver greatly amused by our fantastic imaginings of what lay ahead for us in the magical realm of Trabolgan. Just by the entrance I saw a pretty and very drunk young lady dressed as a witch, which always works for me! (It was the week of Hallowe'en we went) It's a big place, and you drive through a kind of forest to get to it, and then after finding yourself at reception, where we were given a key, and a very colourful childlike map depicting Trabolgan as an Island, which momentarily boosted my flagging active imagination. After negotiating lots of roads and numbers of mostly houses. but a few residential caravans as well, we found our very nice not chalet, but proper nice house. All conveniences & smart well maintained. Trabolgan is a great place to take a young family, we were very much out of season when we went, so it was quiet, I imagine a lot more noise and raucous behavior in season, but I don't have to set foot out of my house to experience that! The facilities from what I saw of them are quite good, there's bars, restaurants and burger joints, and kiddies areas, performance areas, outdoor activities areas, nice swimming pool, and the setting is the best thing about it, although it might not impress a surly teenager, but then not much would! It's just on the very eastern edge of Cork harbour, (which is one of the largest natural harbours in the world), nice small dramatic cove, beach & rockpools, cliffs to go walking on, and if it's your thing, a golf course. The only leetle peeple are children, and the only rainbows at the bottom of my glass, but it's a pleasant spot, didn't see that witch again though more's the pity! read more

Trabolgan Holiday Village - Vacation Rentals Near Me - Midleton, Colorado

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A group of 14 of us booked into 2 houses in Trabolgan for a full weekend as we got a great deal for 3 nights in total. I had seen previous photos of the houses and to be honest I was expecting them to be dirty, run down and insect infested but I was pleasantly surprised when we discovered they weren't. They were cheap and cheerful. They had everything we would need, like fridge, toaster, kettle, etc. The walls are just painted blocks so they do look a bit cheap from the inside, but still they were spotless and you get what you pay for. We weren't paying hotel prices so had no problems between any of the 14 of us. Even about 20minutes after checking in a member of staff called up to ask us was everything ok with the houses which we were impressed by. Trabolgan is really kids orientated and they had a great variety of things for the kids to do every day and every night. Then for the adults they had 2 bars, one in a kind of hall where they would have activities for the kids and the other is in between 2 sides of an arcade so it is very easy to monitor the kids while you relax yourself. In the centre I did notice that the Wifi was poor, but it still worked most of the time and was free. There is no Wifi around the houses though so if you do need Internet connection for things like YouTube for the kids, be aware of that. Some parts of Trabolgan really do need a lick of paint but at the same time I never felt I was being ripped off, for example the Crazy Golf is really run down and really needs to be done up, but they didn't charge for this, you simply give €5 deposit to cover your club and ball and get this back at the end so you aren't really losing out or being hard done by. There are plenty of play areas for the kids and a great pool also which was fairly clean and has a slide and waves for the kids to play in. The golf course looks small but well maintained and during our stay I saw plenty of groups availing of it. Litter wasn't an issue and every day I saw cleaners walking around picking up any stray bits of litter. When it came to food, we ate in the complex every night. We cooked our own dinner the first night without any issues, but the ovens are extremely slow (I saw other reviewers mentioned this also) but everything else was fine. We ate out the following two nights (one night was just the chipper and the second night in the restaurant) and we were very happy with the food and the range offered. There was a nice little market in the complex on the Saturday we were there also (not sure if they have it every Saturday), it had mainly cheap stuff but had some nice food and sweets. Overall we were very impressed and would definitely agree that we would return. read more

Having visited Trabolgan twice previously I have to say I was very disappointed with a couple of things on this third occasion. One of the main things being the inaccessibility to the mascot characters which Trabolgan is meant to be known for. There was no meet and greet by any of the characters that we could see on arrival and we were in the main area between 3 and 5pm when they're apparently meant to be around. There was a photo opportunity later that evening if you wanted to join a huge queue and wait which my toddler got bored of fairly quickly. We were advised in the restaurant that evening that if we purchased breakfast in the restaurant we could see Peppa Pig there i.e. if you're paying you can see them. We would have gone for breakfast and paid regardless had the food there not been appalling that evening. The carvery dinner we opted for was inedible with grizzly beef, potatoes somehow overcooked and dry on the outside but rock hard on the inside and bland carrot and swede which was reminiscent of hospital food. We saw Bonnie and Florrie the following morning on stage for the 10am kids show, they were not hands on and neither of my kids managed to get close. Later that morning Ben and Holly appeared for a magic show, again since only two children were selected to go on stage, neither child got picked to participate and left disappointed that they had no hugs. That was the last view of any of them, after that the kids weren't bothered about going to see any of them again since they only associated the experience with boredom of waiting around and then disappointment of not getting close. We checked out on the day of leaving at 10am as required and again not one mascot in site to say goodbye. There are VIP tickets you can purchase to meet the characters but we didn't bother. On previous visits the characters were around more and you didn't have to pay to see them, now it seems they're only there to make money and if you're not paying for the privilege then forget it. Back to the food, other than the restaurant which we weren't prepared to visit again, the burger place wasn't too bad, over priced certainly and not great but at least edible. We had a breakfast roll at Costa Coffee one morning and again it was terrible, I don't know how they went wrong with sausage and bacon but it was awful. The bacon I'm not sure was cooked and the taste of it was off but I couldn't pinpoint what tasted bad, possibly old fat or very cheap meat. In the end we lived off food purchased from the onsite shop. If we were going again we'd definitely do a shop on the way down. The restaurant on our previous visits was good enough but it's definitely slipped way down in standards since. Upgrading the place is all very well but if you're serving food that's not even edible then there is something wrong. Other than that though the kids had a great time and enjoyed the play areas and pools. The accommodation was clean and functional as usual. My only other gripe is the sofa's in the houses which are uncomfortable and why would there only be one two seater in a house that sleeps 5? The seating could definitely use upgrading, people would like to relax in comfort after a day of chasing round after kids and there was nowhere to go to do this which meant we had to go lie down on our beds to relax our aching limbs at the end of the day. read more

There are loads of things to do in Trabolgan, from go-karting to swimming, crazy golf to absailing. There's also a restaurant and two bars. The foods not bad with a huge menu to choose from. It is quite pricey to stay during the summer but off peak weekends can be quite reasonable. Season starts in March and ends in October every year read more