A mother has expressed her frustration over sun bed hoggers during her family's getaway to Benidorm. Annie Redfern stayed at the hotel immortalised by the ITV series Benidorm, but her break swiftly descended into chaos.
The mum-of-one, accompanied by partner Declan Nash and daughter Belle Redfern, booked into Sol Pelicanos Ocas hotel - recognisable as the Solana Hotel from the telly programme - for a 10-day stay starting from July 20. However, she was taken aback to discover people forming queues from 6.30am onwards, despite the pool not opening its gates for another two and a half hours.
Struggle for sunbeds
Annie, from Hull, East Yorkshire, revealed they struggled to claim a sun bed until 5pm on most occasions, when guests departed for their evening dining, forcing her family to make do perched on plastic chairs throughout their Spanish escape, the Daily Mirror reports. The holidaymaker documented her ordeal on TikTok, with her clip rapidly going viral and amassing 192,000 views.
She acknowledges that Benidorm splits opinion amongst Brits "like Marmite". Annie commented: "Benidorm divides the UK it's like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it."
"You can just go sit at a table and obviously I've got a child so we're always in the pool anyway so I don't really get much sunbathing. It's selfish. Maybe do it one or two times so you can get a spot or have a day on the sunbeds, but there was one woman and she was at the front every single day."
Queues like 'ants'
"They [people queueing] were speed walking and as soon as the guy would come down and open the barrier, it was like ants." Benidorm, featuring the likes of Jonny Vegas, Tim Healy and Sherrie Hewson, aired from 2007 to 2018 on ITV.
The programme, which chronicled holidaymakers and employees at an all-inclusive resort in Benidorm throughout a week each year, became enormously popular with viewers. Some devotees even make a point of staying at the famous hotel, and that included Annie and her family during their Spanish getaway.
However, things didn't quite unfold as she'd anticipated. She said: "We thought if we're going to go to Benidorm, we might as well see what the Benidorm hotel is like."
"We arrived there at 11.30am and there were no beds but obviously at that point we just thought it was because it was midday. The next morning, I started seeing queues starting at 6.30am, at this point I didn't even know what time the pool even opened. We had gone down to go and get a latte and there were just loads of people all lining up."
"I can't believe that's how you spend your holiday, it's crazy. You see them go, put a towel on the bed then run off straight to the breakfast then eat the breakfast then run straight back. It was a whole routine. What we realised was either wives were sending their husbands or the husbands were just doing it because so many of the line was made up of middle-aged men. It was just like a sea of people."
Online reaction
Online commenters condemned the circumstances. One wrote: "My idea of hell this is." Another remarked: "I'd rather go to Blackpool in the winter."
A third said: "I love Benidorm but I would never lose sleep when there's so much more you can do in Benidorm." Sol Pelicanos Ocas hotel has been approached for a response.
