Lion fans lacking power and shower

Tim Murphy, left, and Kevin Evans say facilities have been better elsewhere. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Some Lion fans have not been happy campers since arriving in Auckland.

Two early arrivals for the final two Lions games were dismayed at the facilities available for their campervans at Alexandra Park.

The racecourse park has been granted resource consent to house many of the 2000 campervans expected to flood the region. Lions supporters can expect to pay up to $70 a night, with a minimum of four nights.

Birmingham visitor Kevin Evans drove his campervan to the makeshift village yesterday to meet a fellow tour supporter but was disappointed to find only about a dozen showers.

He had expected hundreds. And he was also dismayed to find no continuous power supply for his van.

"I'm refusing to stay here. It is absolutely disgraceful.

"These vans need electric power to fire them up. You can't shower in your own van without the power."

Mr Evans said his stays in other parts of the country had been "fantastic", even though the infrastructure struggled to accommodate them.

"We've been treated like royalty all the way through. It was very busy in Wellington. There were 450 campervans on a site at Lower Hutt, and they did everything they could to cram everything in."

In some places, the stay was free, while in others, a nominal fee of $20 to $30 was charged, but they still had access to washing machines and showers.

The Auckland fee was unbelievable, he said. Many campers, like his Irish friend Tim Murphy, had prepaid and were unlikely to get refunds.

Mr Murphy, visiting from Cork, said he had booked and paid for seven nights.

"We're going to find some way to get our money back."

But Robert Blake, the general manager of Alexandra Park Functions, is puzzled by their comments.

He said every campervan had its own shower, toilet and cooking facilities, and the campervan operators had told him the vehicles would have enough power to last an average of two days once charged.

"In real terms, there really was no need to put a shower in, but we thought we had better just put some in. And it's the same thing with the toilets - they're really not required."

The site could not offer continuous power supply, but he said 120 vans could power up fully every four hours. That was apparently enough to run each van's hot water and electrical gadgets comfortably.

"I don't know how he would be unhappy with what we've got.

"The fact of the matter is apart from the things being repowered on a full-time basis, the facilities there are massive."

To install continuous power supply for each campervan would have cost $400,000 and was not feasible, said Mr Blake.

"We couldn't rent it, so we would have had to buy it and obviously we'll never have use for it again."

He said all the tour supporters who had pre-paid for their stay were informed that no refunds were possible.

The venue was doing this for the tour, and was not in it for profit.