To think Center Parcs really isn’t middle class

[GodAgainstAll]

Just spent a few days there for the first time. It’s expensive and the people there seem to be v affluent in terms of clothes/cars, but middle class? I was surprised.

So if the middle class is low brow, who is high brow?

I've always thought of CP as a wet, miserable, kagooly type place where people from urban areas can go for the novelty of the fake nature experience. I'd have thought anyone invested in their MC status would either shun it for its artifice, preferring their experiences to be 'authentic' or already be living in rural areas and not see the point. But I'm WC so the workings of the MC mind will forever be a mystery to me.

A true upper middle class would not spend a penny on ‘owl training’, even if it were free. Can’t think of anything more naff!

Don’t get me wrong! I don’t actually think this about people in the building industry…I was sending up the stereotype. I have one friend who’s a senior director at a large company and her DH is a plumber. Class distinctions are far more blurred and fluid now ( which is probably why there’s so much status anxiety)

I also suspect that some traditionally middle class people don’t like couscous.

Of course it’s more complicated than the class stereotype…which is why this thread exists.

How does a toddler train an owl anyway.

surely nature walks and such are the order of the day.

This could not be further from the truth - see the recent thread on what parents in your kids’ private school do for a living. Almost all the responses were traditional middle class professions - lawyers, doctors, accountants, dentists, vets, barristers etc. with the odd celebrity. Private schools are not majority new money, what a far fetched claim.

Once again, this is just the declining middle classes denigrating something they have become priced out of. Sour grapes, basically.

I went to CP as an 11 year old in 1988 when it first opened and it was SO middle class back then it blew my mind. My family and the area I grew up were very working class I’d never seen anything like it.

One family insisted on buying us drinks all week when my parents told them how much spending money they had budgeted (£30 a day if anyone’s interested. We took all our own food).

😂😂😂 spot on!

@penjil can you clarify how our whole country revolves around class please?

Quite. “You can take the girl out of Croydon, but you’ll never really tighten her sphincter.”

This thread is negative advertising for CP. The differentiator may be taste rather than class.

Such snobbery on this thread.

@Poblano you could be us!! we are going next week, it cost £430 for four nights in a three bedroom villa, so not particularly expensive. We shall walk about, do some swimming and just spend time with our young adult DC.

I expect we will swim at off peak times and avoid the crowds. People are right, it's easy (and close) just what we need after a stressful year.

This is probably how the French aristocracy felt when all those vulgar, jumped up merchants and traders started demanding access to the finer things in life to go with their newly acquired wealth!

And look how that ended...

Watch out OP, the plebs are at the (Center Parks) gates!

I agree with much of this. I think CP has lost its target market. I'm a big fan but it's changed. We still like it but if you've been going for years there's no denying it's changed.
We are just back and there was a high number of guests vaping and a few smokers. Far more than usual. I know this is contentious but my view is vaping is chavvie. Saw one Dad pushing a buggy, vaping, with a 3 or 4 year old, on the phone repeatedly saying the Ct word.
A 4/5 year old playing adventure golf shrieking Fk each time he played a bad shot.
Male member of staff in spa walking through relaxation areas shouting his mouth off into walkie talkie about how he couldn't wait to go home. Yes, first world problem.
A younger teen started on DS15 on the rapids calling him names to provoke him. I know it was unprovoked as I was there though at the time the boy didn't realise I was with DS15. Seriously, who goes to CP to start a fight? My DS won't react and wasn't fazed (he's a black belt and has multiple fighting medals) but another person could have been upset rather than amused.
We first went to CP 14 years ago. The above just weren't an issue then as CP marketed itself as wholesome and at one with nature. Now it's touted as expensive and middle class, and there's even been a tv show about this, so you get people there who are mainly concerned with fitting the "middle class tag" by posting they're at CP.
All this said, we will still go and do our own thing as we love the visits from deer, squirrels, ducks etc to the accommodation, the car free rules, and the activities. Still mostly a good vibe I think but definitely changing.

Enjoy!

I know barristers doctors solicitors etc who are first generation university. The brilliance of our education system is that actually it has enabled working classes to go to university where previously they wouldn’t.

being first-generation university doesn’t make you middle class.

class is built up over several generations, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Academia class. Well educated, lots of degrees but no job or low paid academic style jobs.

So who is allowed to go to cp then?

which job titles and annual income?

asking for a friend

@Begsthequestion 🤣

I mean is it in the suns £9.50 holidays yet 🫣

We've not had a class thread for a week at least. Who cares anyway. It's an overpriced Butlins. I feel a bit sad for people who can't organise their own holiday (activities), but to each their own.

Haha my brother and his family are there it was probably them lowering the tone for all you middle class people 🤦‍♀️

I think it’s fair to say that the MN MC are the sort who tut about English Center Parcs and tell anyone who’ll listen that the European sites are soooo much better.

I hope he doesn’t tell you one of them pooed in the pool! Then you’ll know! 😄

Correct me if I’m wrong but 89% of the UK population is white, so as we’re an overwhelmingly white country I would expect the CP guests to reflect that?