30/08/2023
A summer of FUN at Barracudas
What a summer of fun it’s been at Barracudas this year.
We celebrated our biggest summer yet. We ran 212 weeks across 49 camps, that’s a whole heap of fun!
This summer we had over 1380 staff members working, a big thank you to you all, we really couldn’t run our camps so smoothly without you all!
From new camps, excellent parent reviews and fantastic weekly themes to so much more. Here’s our highlights from summer 2023.
Weekly themes
We loved making each week a little different this summer. We continued to tweak activities to the theme throughout the week and celebrated with Friday Finale on the last day of each week.
This summer, the children enjoyed taking part in Intrepid Adventures, Animal Adventures, The Greatest Show, Under the Sea, Sports Heroes and Colours of the Rainbow!
We especially loved seeing everyone's 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 5 new camp locations. Ely at Ely College, The Hazeley Academy in Milton Keynes, St. Piran's School in Maidenhead, Norwich at Langley Prep School and Newbury at Horris Hill School. Kids loved experiencing the fun of Barracudas in these new locations and we received excellent feedback from parents.
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 Bedford, 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.
Specialist courses
We enjoyed a number of specialist courses at a number of locations this year.
Kids loved our baking and coding courses again this summer and we were delighted to launch our new Tennis course at High Wycombe camp. We partnered with the experts at Blueshift Coding, Smart Raspberry and Delgado Tennis to deliver fun experiences that helped inspire children. They got to explore their passions and develop key skills in areas which excite them.
Residential
New for 2023 we launched residential camps for the first time ever.
This was a fantastic opportunity for children to experience a multi-activity camp away from home. Kids loved having the chance to experience a wide range of exciting outdoor activities including abseiling, climbing, zip wires, raft building, paddle boarding, bushcraft and much more!
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. We had collection boxes at camp for parents to contribute to as well as an online fundraising page.
We look forward to totalling up the amount raised over this summer. Keep an eye out for this to be revealed on our social media channels. Your donations 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 give you £20 off your next booking for each friend who books with us based on your recommendation and they'll get £20 off their booking too!
We were thrilled that we welcomed over 750 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. Every bit of feedback is useful to us, it helps us grow and develop and reassures us that we are providing the top notch 5* service we promise.
We reached over 1,450 independent Trustpilot reviews this summer and are proud to have an excellent rating. Also we received a number of reviews on Google throughout the season.
Here’s just a selection of reviews we received over the summer:
Trustpilot
“My child has been attending for 6 years now. Children are split into age appropriate groups and age appropriate activities. The range of activities available are incredible. Giving the children a choice each session makes them feel more in control of their school holiday time. My child would do arts & crafts and swimming all day if she could. Its not just a holiday club/camp, but more of a community with the leaders knowing every child, and the children having fun with them. Can't praise it enough.” Trish
"Your staff are a credit to you - 10/10 :-) I’ve never sent the children to a camp where every member of staff, either face to face when signing in/picking up or phoning the main office have been so incredibly helpful, friendly and polite. The boys have had a fantastic week thank you so much Barracudas!" Charlotte
“Barracudas Norwich is great! This is the second year my daughter, almost six, has attended some days at Barracudas and she has loved it just as much this year. She loves swimming and the choices for activities she gets are brilliant - what five year old doesn’t love a bouncy castle? The team is so well organised and it’s a relief to know that she is safe and having a fun day whilst we are working. Thank you to all of the team at Norwich High School!” Kathryn
See all our Trustpilot reviews.
“My daughter went to barracudas summer camp for the first time she is enjoying it so much that I’ve extended her booking to extra week her confidence has blossomed she has tried out new activities that she wouldn’t have ever tried before. Staff are amazing and friendly rumbi has made me and my child feel so confident and spoken about all the daily activity’s. Courtney the camp manger is amazing thank you all and definitely see u next summer Romford barracuda is amazing thank you again for giving aria a summer she won’t fight.” Angela
“First ever time for my son and he loved it and can't wait to come back” Thomas
“Another great summer at High Wycombe Barracudas for our 2. The team are fantastic with the children, high energy, lots of encouragement to try new things & generally fab. Special thank yous to Emily, Lucy, Emily, Izzy & Tom P ☺️👏🏻😊” Pamela
“My 5 year old son absolutely loved it. He's quite shy and can find it hard to make new friends or try new things, so we're always apprehensive with new clubs. But seeing how confident he has been since going there and excited to go in is wonderful. There's a great range of activities from arts/drama/dance etc to sports activities, swim, bouncy castles and his favourite, motor car racing, so there's something for everyone and they mix it up to keep them entertained. I would definitely recommend it. We've had no problem at drop off / collection either, all experiences have been professional and well organised..” Nadine
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 15 October camps available this year, there’ll be loads of fun still to be had!