20/09/2022

A summer of fun at Barracudas

What a summer of fun it’s been at Barracudas this year.

We celebrated 30 years with our biggest summer yet. We ran 195 weeks across 45 camps, that’s a whole heap of fun!

From new camps, new activities and fantastic results for charity to so much more. Here’s our highlights from summer 2022.

30 years of fun

Barracudas opened its first camps in 1992! We enjoyed celebrating 30 years of entertaining children in the school holidays at our summer camps.

Whilst this created a buzz throughout the summer, we particularly enjoyed our ‘30 years of fun’ theme from 8th – 12th August, finishing off the week with a Theme Day spectacular with stand out events at each camp.

We love these group shots from our Barnet and Hutton camps.

Weekly themes

Speaking of themes, we loved making each week a little different this summer. We introduced tweaks to activities and celebrated with Theme Day Friday on the last day of each week.

This year, the children enjoyed taking part in Sing, Step Back in Time, Fantastic Fiction, 30 Years of Fun, Get Set, Go! and Going Green.

We especially loved seeing the kids' imaginations run wild on our dress up Fridays!

New camps

We were pleased to offer even more opportunities for summer holiday fun this year, with 4 new camp locations. Colchester County High School for Girls, Rookwood School in Andover, St Edmunds School in Canterbury and Millias School in Horsham.

New equipment

We invested in brand new electric vehicles for all our camps this year. We know how important it is to be kinder to the planet and we put our money where our mouth is. This summer kids got to enjoy our fun motorsports sessions with far less impact on the environment!

Football camps

Based on the success of the specialist led, official week long courses last year, we introduced even more opportunities for football fanatics this year.

Norwich City CSF was available at Cambridge, Huntingdon and Norwich. Palace for Life Foundation joined us at Croydon and West Ham United Foundation was a great addition to Chelmsford, Harlow, Romford and Upminster camps this summer.

Skill Zone

We introduced a number of specialist courses at Welwyn Ridgeway this year.

This summer we ran baking, coding and dance courses which kids loved. On top of that, we also offered Barracudas Bite Size, a shorter day with 4 fun activities each day, including a sports session, a creative session, a teambuilding session and a life skills session.

Funded places for Ukrainian children

Barracudas was proud to work with Mail Force charity to offer fully funded places at our activity camps this summer.

With 650 places in total throughout our 45 camps. Each child was able to join us for 2 full weeks in the holidays. This was a great opportunity for the children to take part in our unrivalled range of activities. What's more, it helped them improve their English and settle in the UK ahead of the new school year.

We've loved being a part of this and having an opportunity to help.

Hear more here:

Surrey Live Facebook Live interview at Farnham camp

Local news article about fully funded places for Ukrainian children at Barracudas Huntingdon

Local news article about fully places for Ukrainian children at Barracudas Winchester

Charity

Barracudas is proud to be partnering with Save The Children this year. We helped to raise money for this fantastic charity through online booking donations and fun activities at camp.

Our ‘Soak the Staff’ fundraising event raised £1,493.86 this summer, combined with parents online booking donations and Easter fundraising, we’re delighted that parents helped us to raise £4,121.86 this year. This will make a huge difference to many children around the world. A big thank you to our bookers, children and staff for making a difference.

Parent recommendations

Barracudas appreciates the power of word of mouth. To say thank you to our customers for recommending us, we offer a credit note for each person they recommend and a discount for the people they’ve referred to us.

We were thrilled that we welcomed over 450 new bookers to Barracudas this year based on our Recommend a Friend scheme. That’s a lot of savings made this summer!

Independent parent reviews

We care what you think. It’s all well and good us saying how good we are, but we know you want to know what other people think of their experience.

We reached over 1,100 independent Trustpilot reviews this summer and are proud to have an excellent rating.

Here’s just a selection of reviews we received over the summer:

Just perfect – Barracudas Salisbury

Our daughters attended Barracudas Salisbury for two weeks this summer. The eldest is very enthusiastic and talkative and we knew that she was going to do great. But our little one (just 4.5yo) is quite shy and her first language is not English. By the third day, both woke up early and asked me to take them there as soon as possible. The staff at Salisbury is fantastic, especially the ones in charge of the little ones. Everyone was super kind and always smiling at our girls, and very communicative with us. Everything was organized with lots of activities to choose from. Adriana

First class fun and care...👍

If we could score higher than a 10/10 you guys would have it!
Again 2022 has been a resounding success with both Easter/Summer camps.
My foster son attended Hayes, Bromley camp and can honestly say every day of attendance he couldn't wait to get there and every 'pick up' he had a huge smile on his face....Thank you all so much...We will be back in 2023........🤗🙋‍♂️ Mrs Bridget K

First Camp experience and he loved it!

My Son had never been to a Summer Camp before…and he absolutely loved his first experience at Barracudas!! Thank you to all the Staff who looked after him and helped to make his first camp, the best time for him! What lovely memories! I’m sure he’ll be back next Summer! 🙏🙌🕺🎉 Natalie

Parent survey

After every season we send a quick survey out to bookers so we can check we’re on track.

Over 2k parents took 2 minutes out to give us their feedback this summer. The results are in and we're pleased to have had such a positive response again this year!

Here's what they thought:

Thanks to all the parents who filled this out.

We’ve had the best summer yet and would like to thank all of our bookers, children and staff for making it one to remember.

Now, we’re looking forward to our half term camps! With 12 October camps available this year, there’ll be loads of fun still to be had!