how do you find a decent site to stay in?

[LEAH DRAPER]

RE:  PASSPORT AMERICA

I joined them once several years ago, but after a visit to one of the listed places, I dropped my membership as it was a real scuzzie place in which I didn't feel safe at all.  For a 50% discount, I felt I wanted to safe 100%, not 50%.

What have you'all found relative to their member listed campgrounds, are they really worth the savings??  Do they give accurate information regarding "big Rigs"?

[Richard And Babs Ames]

We tried a book called "Big Rigs Best Bets" and it reviews nicer campgrounds but too limited as the authors stay at each park so skips a lot of nice ones. Trailer Life and Campground reviews and KOA has some nice parks.

[Gil_Johnson]

[quote author=]One thing I like about RVparkrevies is that it is collection of acutal camper based reviews and that as such should have no real agenda other than presenting actual experiences.  My thinking is that other sources that accept paid advertising may have a conflict of interest posting negative information about a paid advertiser. [/quote]

Don't bank of the reviews coming from actual campers.  It could be friends of the owner input ratings to improve their score.  It could be competing local CG trying the slam the competitors.  It happens.  When I use rvparkreviews I put more creditability in reviews from those that have sumitted several ratings.  I somethings look at their other ratings to see how critical they rate.  So far, rvparkreviews is the best collection of independent ratings I've been able to find.

[Joel Weiss]

RE:  PASSPORT AMERICA

I joined them once several years ago, but after a visit to one of the listed places, I dropped my membership as it was a real scuzzie place in which I didn't feel safe at all.  For a 50% discount, I felt I wanted to safe 100%, not 50%.

What have you'all found relative to their member listed campgrounds, are they really worth the savings??  Do they give accurate information regarding "big Rigs"?

We are members of Passport America and have used it enough times in the year to more than pay back the membership fee.  I always use RVParkReviews to check out a Passport America CG before bothering to go there.  There have been only a couple of times that I read the review and decided definitely not to go to that CG.

[Peter and Connie Bradish]

We are life Passport America members.  We bought it when it first came out. It was either $275 or $295, I don't remember which. I kept a list at the beginning and stopped when the membership was paid off. We use the membership during the year but only when the CG is somewhere we are going to be. Yes, we have found some undesirable CGs. So we just mark them off in the book and never go back. However, we have found some very good CGs also. It's like any CG reference book, some CGs are good, some not so good.  We have found Passport America very useful in Canada especially the Maritimes.

FYI, we averaged just under $20 per night in 2011 for CGs. This does not include rally nights at BAC, FMCA or Escapees rallies. $20/night is a combination of Passport America, dry camping, Elks, Moose, Good Sam discounts, Escapees discounts, friend's places and paying the regular amount per night which seems to be at the $30/night and up.

We do not have Thousand Trails, or any of the membership parks. We looked into them early on but we found that the places we wanted to go didn't have many or enough CGs to make it worthwhile for us to purchase them. Many of our full timing friends have memberships and use them especially in the winter. We have a sticks and bricks home base in Florida so we use this instead.

Hope this helps. Connie B.

[George Gaston]

After using Good Sam, Woodall's and any other available sources I go to Google Earth. All you need to do is put in the address of the campground of your choice and Google Earth flies you right to the CG.
This allows you to see the CG lay-out, Closeness of sites and what the landscaping is like. Sometime you can even tell what type of RV's are in the CG. You can also see the access roads and get an idea of what route to the CG is best.
It's a lot better than looking at pictures on the CG's web site that are usually just pictures of people having fun or sugar coated pictures of the best sites.

Hope this helps.
George Gaston

[Larry Fisk]

We use a book called Big Rig Best Bets. It usually leads us to RV Parks that are at least acceptable. We have also discovered some really nice parks thru this book.

[JimDyer]

We tend to do a one campground/three nights at Walmart or Flying J rotation  while travelling, so we have just been lazy and used the KOA book to find a good spot, especially since we tend to be pushing the date envelope for the locations we want. This week we threw the KOA book out and said "never, ever, never no more" after being charged $41.80 and then discovering the blasted place had neither water or sewer, and our promised 50 amp site had only 30 amp connections. That's when we discovered that KOA allows campgrounds without the basic services in their system and their book makes no mention of  whether or not it has any services!

[Joel Weiss]

[quote author=]We tend to do a one campground/three nights at Walmart or Flying J rotation  while travelling, so we have just been lazy and used the KOA book to find a good spot, especially since we tend to be pushing the date envelope for the locations we want. This week we threw the KOA book out and said "never, ever, never no more" after being charged $41.80 and then discovering the blasted place had neither water or sewer, and our promised 50 amp site had only 30 amp connections. That's when we discovered that KOA allows campgrounds without the basic services in their system and their book makes no mention of  whether or not it has any services![/quote]

Jim:

When we book KOA's we always do it online and have never had an issue with the site being what was reserved.  I would be interested in knowing which KOA you had this problem with since we have never encountered one that didn't have the capability for full hookups, let alone not even having water and sewer.  We stayed at a pretty "basic" one in Laramie WY this summer, but even it had full hookups.

Joel

[JimDyer]

Delaware Water Gap, East Stroudsberg, PA

[Dick Simonis]

Regarding KOA's, we've found a fair number that have gas/electric sites in addition to full hookups.  Also, these sites tend to have only 30A so during the busy season, those that arrive later in the day for an overnight may get one.

Personaly, I try to avoid KOA's as the price is awfully high and, being older campgrounds, tend to have the narrow "buddy" sites.  Most KOA's were built before slides and awnings became prevalant.

One in particular comes to mind that used to be a KOA but dropped it's affiliation is Snake River in Idaho Falls.  Very few full hookups and those are pretty tight.  We stay there so often (poor selection of parks in I.F.) that we know the owners and always request one particular site.  Last visit we didn't call early enough and suffered for it.

[Gerald Farris]

We avoid KOA parks, because to us they seam to be a little overpriced for what you get. Since I am very value conscious, I usually prefer to stay elsewhere.

Gerald

[Jerry Carr]

We also like Gerald avoid KOA I find the most parks are very dated and overpriced, on my last stay at KOA #1 in Billings I mentioned that the pricing was very high 72.00 for a standard spot and was told that if I didn't like the price we should look else where, we did.

[Joel Weiss]

I agree that on the average KOA's probably are at least $5 higher than other parks in an area, but like most averages, this statement can hide significant variations both up and down.  We recently stayed at the KOA in Salt Lake City which is a really nice park literally in the city, minutes from Temple Square.  We had a full hookup site for $42 plus tax and that was just a daily rate, not a weekly.  Having been in 31 states since January, IMHO this is a very good rate for an "urban" campground near a major city.  The fact that it was a really nice place to stay made it an even better buy.  In contrast we paid >$60/night in St. Louis for a non-KOA campground with virtually no ambiance but it was was the closest CG to where our son lives.  If we didn't stay at that one our choices were literally a "trailer park" at which we refuse to stay or an additional 30 minute drive further from town.  For us, for a short stay, it made more sense to pay more for the CG and save time and gas.

When we are looking for a CG in a particular location we try to strike a balance between quality (ratings on RVParkReviews), location, and price.  We won't stay at the cheapest place just because it is cheap, but nor will we pay for resort amenities if we are in an area for a brief time and are more interested in sightseeing away from the CG.  I don't reject anyplace just because of its brand affiliation (for what it's worth, I dislike Jellystone Parks far more than KOAs), nor do I reject a place just because it's price is higher than the average we try to maintain.  I keep fairly accurate financial stats with Quicken and have found that a few nights at a high cost urban CG quickly get balanced out by, for example, a week at a COE site where a full-hookup costs us no more than $12 (with a senior discount pass).  Since we are full-timers we can take this perspective because we know that we will, on the average, spend far more time in rural areas where we like to be when the weather is good than we will in urban areas.  Usually, but not always, that will translate to lower cost.  We spend two weeks with full hookups at Colter Bay in Grand Teton NP this summer; it wasn't cheap, but, in the words of the MasterCard ad, it was priceless.

[Gerald Farris]

Joel,
I agree with you, that the KOA in Salt Lake City is a great park if you want to see the Temple Square area. The last time I was in Salt Lake City, it was the only reasonable place to stay, so I spent several days there. However it is the exception. Most KOA parks with that good of a location, and no competition in the immediate area will be twice as high in price. Part of the high cost in KOA parks is from the high franchise fees that they have to pay to the national headquarters, mostly for advertising, but some of it covers the reservation system cost.

Gerald