[mattlondon]

We stayed for the first time this year with our two small kids. We went "off season" in Jan when prices were reasonable.

I can see the attraction but centre parks does not feel like a great place for small kids. There is no laundry facilities in the lodges, and not even anywhere on site! The heating kept resetting to 14c overnight in January. There are gas ovens (gas! In 2024!) with zero effort at child proofing (I await the inevitable news story about a family getting blown-up when their 18 month old accidentally turned on the gas oven...). You are made to feel very unwelcome if you have the temerity to try to leave the place not at the scheduled time - getting back in by car was like trying to pass through a Berlin Wall checkpoint or something equally unpleasant. Many activities were only for 3 years+. Despite not being allowed to drive your own car, there were a lot of service vehicles and the like driving around the place so it wasn't even safe to cycle around or let the kids run free. There were outdoors playgrounds, but no indoor playgrounds/soft play apart from tiny ones attached to restaurants (perfect combo that: recently fed kid and jumping about....), and the outdoor playgrounds were mostly unsuitable for kids under 5 ... This is the UK - it rains all the time so you need indoor options! You have to wear an electronic wristband everywhere you go to e.g. use a locker or unlock your door, but you can't use it to pay for things.

I could go on.

We won't go back.

[krisoft]

> I await the inevitable news story about a family getting blown-up when their 18 month old accidentally turned on the gas oven...

What do you mean "accidentally turned on the gas oven"? Do they not have flame failure devices?

> We went "off season" in Jan when prices were reasonable. ... This is the UK - it rains all the time!

Now you see why off season is off season.

> there were a lot of service vehicles and the like driving around the place so it wasn't even safe to cycle around

How many service vehicles would make it "not safe to cycle around"? Do you cycle anywhere?

[thebruce87m]

First time I tried to preheat the oven at Center Parcs I nearly blew us up.

[krisoft]

Could you be more concrete please? What did you do? What did you experience?

Basically I'm asking this because I'm trying to understand. I see two options:

option 1: the oven is lacking several expected safety features and it is actually dangerous.

option 2: the oven has the usual safety features, you (and your toddler) were perfectly safe, you just didn't know this because you don't understand how gas ovens functions, and what safety features they have.

On any modern oven if you turn the gas on and the flame goes out (or does not light at all) the gas flow stops. You have to keep the knob pressed in to start the flow just turning the knob does not on itself enables the gas to flow. At the same time the action of pushing in the knob starts sparks which light the gas flowing out.

For a toddler (or you) to blew up the oven they need to turn the knob, push it in, and the ignitors need to fail to ignite, and you or your toddler need to keep pushing the knob. Are you saying that the ignitors failed? or that the thermistor failed to shut off the glass flow?

[thebruce87m]

Honestly, I can’t remember the details. I turned the nob to preheat the oven not realising it was gas. Later came back to check, opened the door to a strong smell of gas. Maybe it had cut out by then, not sure.

Was I dumb? Yes, but I’d just driven for hours and was trying to unpack, handle the rest of the family and cook dinner all at once and was still in the mindset of the electric oven I had at home.

[krisoft]

> Was I dumb?

Doesn't sounds like it. I mean in general it is bad form to blame users for safety problems. Even more so in an unfamiliar environment.

If the oven had a safety thermocouple and it was working correctly there should have been 0 gas smell after what you say you did. If you did that and smelled gas then the oven was either faulty or very old.