John McArthur

Review of The Big Green Bus

A good trip and a nicely converted bus but overpri...

A good trip and a nicely converted bus but overpriced and the website is so out-of-date as to be genuinely misleading which I think will cause disappointment for many people travelling with young families.

My main gripes:

- The website refers to a horse and a pond and even has pictures of this. Sadly there is a high wicker fence surrounding the perimeter of the property (must have been put up since opening) so there is no way to get to the pond and certainly no horse to be found! There are signs everywhere that says the land on the other side of the fence is private property so you are confined to the plot the bus sits on. I am guessing the land adjacent to the bus is now owned by someone else.

- The bus has a fridge but no ice box in spite of this clearly being mentioned on the canopyandstars.co.uk website. Not a big deal you may think but if you are taking frozen food with you (and ice cream/ice lollies for kids) or want ice for your drinks then you're out of luck. This was a real pain on the hottest weekend of the year.

- There are no views whatsoever The bus sits within about an acre of lovely pine trees but overlooks (if you are tall enough to look over the fence) a shabby field that has an old bonfire of scrap. This is absolutely not a view to relish! Again, why talk about views on your website when this is not the case?

- The field mentioned above had kids whizzing around it on a quad bike for the duration of our stay. We didn't mind this to begin with but it grew to be annoying. A two stroke engine whizzing past the fence every 5 minutes is not really peace and quiet.



- Check in at 4pm and check out at 10am is daft. You have to tidy up the bus and strip the beds on the day of departure (which is fine) but this means you really have no time to do anything in the morning aside from clean up and go. It's not worth staying for a single night because of this.

With that said the bus is good fun and well appointed inside but it failed to impress simply as the website creates a false impression. The website (and canopyandstars.co.uk) really needs to be updated to reflect what this is and what it isn't.

Response to owner's reply: You seem to be missing the point Adam. You are not 'correcting' any of the issues I raise as they are all true. I am merely pointing out to others that your website is grossly misleading and there was nothing I (or you) could have done to rectify once we had arrived. You can't visit a horse that died several years ago (!) or visit a pond/land that is stricly off limits yet these are key advertising points you make on your own website and affiate websites where people go to book.

We travelled almost 300 miles from Leeds on false assumptions and this caused a lot of disappointment with our kids. All of this could have easily been avoided if the website was accurate. If you update your website to reflect reality then my review will become obsolete and I don't mind removing it altogether.