Butlins is blasted by angry mothers whose children’s holiday featuring Mr Tumble was cancelled

Two mothers were shocked and outraged to discover that a fun children’s weekend break at Butlins featuring Mr Tumble had been turned into an adults-only 90’s rave festival.

At the holiday company’s camp in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, Gemma McKenna, 34, and her sister Amie Greaves-Hurd, 31, were overjoyed that their daughters would be entertained by the CBeebies clown.

However, their delight turned to rage when they discovered that their special three-day children’s themed weekend break had been cancelled without their knowledge when they logged on to make their final payments after receiving an invoice from Butlins.

Instead, the couple discovered that their booking had been changed to a 90s Reloaded weekend on the same dates, with performances by Peter Andre, comedian Joe Pasquale, and tribute acts covering Spice Girls and Take That hits.

After booking their trip in March of last year, Gemma, who has a 21-month-old daughter Georgia, and Amie, who is the mother of Madeline, four, and 11-month-old Cali, were looking forward to taking their children and husbands away from September 9 to September 12.

‘Butlins advertised a special children’s break featuring Mr Tumble, which seemed ideal, especially since it fell on my daughter’s second birthday.’ Mr Tumble is well-liked by all. He’s fantastic, and he’s the main reason we made the reservation.

‘We each paid the £60 deposit and promptly forgot about it until we received emails informing us that our card details had expired and that we would each be responsible for paying the final balance of £235.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I followed the link to log in to my booking and saw that it was coming up as a 90s weekender.’

We had allegedly booked in children when there were not supposed to be any under the age of 18s, so the booking was showing up as an error.’ I don’t have anything against Butlins adult party weekends.

I went on one with a hen party and had a fantastic time. It’s just that they’re not appropriate for children, and that’s not what we came for.

‘I called Butlins to see what had happened, and the guy was very sorry and kept putting me on hold for a long time while he tried to figure out what had gone wrong.’

‘He could see on the system that our booking had been changed in September, with the adults weekender taking its place, but he couldn’t explain why we hadn’t been notified, so he refunded our deposit.’

‘It is a shame because we have landed up with nothing now. Even if we had been able to book again, the prices have now gone up. But we were unable to go on the weekday Just for Tots break because it would have interrupted Madeleine’s first day at school.

‘It is especially upsetting for her because she is old enough to have known that she was going away on holiday and would be seeing Mr Tumble, and now it is not going to happen for her.

‘The weekend break was going to be ideal for her because she could have set off after going to her school on Friday – but we never received any email or notification about the change.

‘If we had been told about the cancellarion last September, we would have just shrugged our shoulders and accepted it as one of those things – but it is disappointing to only find out now so close to the date.

‘I am left wondering whether other people have been affected by the same mix-up. There must have been more than one people than us who booked that particular weekend for their children.’

Justin Fletcher has been playing Mr Tumble and other members of the Tumble family on his CBeebies show Something Special since 2004.

The show teaches signing and is aimed at pre-school children with delayed learning or communication difficulties, but Justin has proved to be a favourite with all young viewers for many years.

A Butlins spokesperson said: ‘We’re sorry for the confusion these guests had with their Just for Tots booking. We’ve since offered a full refund of their deposit and a gesture of goodwill on a future holiday.’