Skegness is definitely the best one. We went last year with the DCs who were almost-4 and almost-2 and they absolutely loved it, we're booked to go again in July. We had a gold apartment with premium dining and it was lovely. New pool is brilliant (and free). Funfair, especially the Bob's Yard bit with small rides for little ones, was something else the children enjoyed and was also free so they could go as often as they liked. We went to the shows in the Pavillion in the early evening (kids shows like Bob the Builder, Skyline Gang, etc) and you get a good view from every seat plus floor space for the kids to play. We also went to the Elmo show in the show bar and for all we were at the back we still had a decent view. I never noticed a mad scrimmage to get to the front, but maybe that's because I'm not bothered about sitting at the front.
Meals are at set times but they are very broad and you don't have a specific time slot - the premium dining was open 7am to 10am for breakfast and 4pm to 7pm for dinner, you could just drop in at any time within those opening times, its no different to a cafe or restaurant having set opening times. We never queued for a table or for food and the food itself was decent with lots of choice and lots of it made to order such as omelettes and stir fry.
The staff were nice and everything was very clean. They were very quick to react to any problems. For example, our bathroom door handle fell off, we texted the number on the resort guide and within an hour it had been fixed. DD (the nearly 2yo) found a £1 coin in her fries from the onsite Burger King (I know, I fed my baby BK but we'd been travelling for five hours and needed an instant lunch) and Butlins management gave us a £50 Next voucher "to buy her something nice to make up for it"! The staff were all great with the children too, especially the ones who were "in character" such as the Skyline Gang wandering round.
Prices on resort were no more expensive than anywhere else and I found them quite reasonable. We took £500 for five days and came home with over £100 of it left. The DC liked the plastic tat sold at the stalls such as bubble guns, light up wands, helium balloons and so on and even they were fairly cheap - £5 for two bubble guns including a refill pot of bubbles and when one of the guns broke (because DD dropped it literally five seconds after it being bought) they exchanged it without a quibble. Drinks-wise it was no more expensive than our local, I was newly pregnant so was having soft drinks and DH was having large Cokes (he doesn't drink when I can't), plus soft drinks for the children, it was costing us around £3-£6 per round depending on exactly what drinks we were buying and what size. There were lots of offers on though like if you buy the plastic character cup for the kids they get cheap refills all holiday and things like that.
I really don't understand the snobbery over Butlins. I never saw beery people at breakfast, never heard a peep of noise after 10/11pm and we all enjoyed ourselves. Maybe we stuck to the naice areas of the resort :o