Me and the boys arrived on fri 17th and when I entered the site I saw the trailer toilets and thought to myself "at last, they have the toilets sorted", how wrong I was!!
I was camped in the americas field(from now on known as AF) oppisite the toilet trailers. Whilst wandering around the site on saturday I bumped into rex and told him them toilets in AF were not open and his reply to me was, and I quote, "the toilet people are on site, I will get them to open them for you", this was said in front of my dad. I also told him that 2 of the mens cubicles in the toilets by the entrance to the hop farm were out of order. On sunday the toilets were still not open so I went to the booking in tent and informed a lady there who said she would get onto rex and sort it. I had another wander round the site and noticed that the toilets in the monktons field were open and the toilets in the quiet camping were also open.
Late on sunday afternoon the toilet contractor turned up with about 60 portaloos and put them oppisite where I was camped. I asked him when the trailer toilets would be open and he said he was not contracted to open them until monday. He said if I could get him 15 gallons of water he would open 6 portaloos, so me and a twickenham off roader got the water and he opened the portaloos for us.
Monday morning came and the toilets were still not open so I wandered over to talk to a marshall who I had been talking to via the internet before w+p and told him the toilets were still not open. He got straight on his radio to the hop farm site manager who said that toilets in the AF were opened on sunday! The left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing? The toilets in AF were eventualy opened monday afternoon.
The toilet contractors did clean/empty the toilets everyday, but once a day is not enough for a show the size of w+p IMO.
Whilst comming back from the shop later in the week I noticed portaloos and a trailer in the public camping area and wandered over to have a look. In the public camping area there were 21 portalos and 8 showers!. In the AF there were 14 sit down toilets and a mens urinal.
The toilets that I mentioned earlier by the entrance to the hop farm? They were not fixed all week!!, as complete disgrace.
I can remember when I first started going to w+p 15 years ago there were blocks of 4 portaloos scattered all over the AF and they were cleaned everyday, why don't they do this anymore?
The main question I would like answered are;
Why did rex tell me the toilets would be opened on the saturday, even though the toilet contractor was not due to open them until monday?
Why were the toilets at the entrance to the hop farm not fixed for the whole duration of the show?
Why don't w+p have the toilet contractors on site all day cleaning the toilets at least 3 times a day?
Why did the public camping area have more toilets and showers than AF even though the public camping field is a quarter of the size of AF? The cynic in me thinks its because the public pay over £100 to camp and rex did not want to upset them.
Why were the toilets in the monktons field and quiet camping area opened before the AF?
I feel rex is to blame, after all its his face all over the promotional material and he is the show organiser.
When I went to overlord last year, they had toilets everywhere and the toilet van was on site all day cleaning them, if overlord can do it, why not w+p.
I really do feel that w+p have firmly stuck 2 fingers up at us this year.
Rant over.