BAC Forum
General Boards => General Discussion => Topic started by: Keith Oliver on November 10, 2011, 01:09:37 AM
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We are in Southern California for a month. We have a site. It has turned out to be pretty nice. We spent 3 days away from this site, to visit friends who have a park model in El Centro. The site we got there wasn't anything to take pictures of, but at least it was quiet and had enough space between the rigs
However, next time we come south, we would like to stay in a place that is just as nice as this one, but elsewhere, so today we did a little reconnoitering, down towards San Diego. We took the big Woodalls book, and, as we had already seen the Palm Springs version of the Sunland Resorts, we looked at three of their places in the San Diego area, Escondido and El Cajon.
What a disappointment! None of them have any space between the rigs, all are right on noisy highways, one looked to be full of rigs right out of Christmas Vacation (remember Eddie: "messter's full Clark"), a place old rigs go to die.
How am I going to find a place my wife will want to go to if those were the best that San Diego has to offer. How many other places are worse than SD for selection?
How do you guys find a decent site?
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Like many other folks we use http://www.rvparkreviews.com/ for recommendations if we've never been to an area before. We gave up on Woodalls a long time ago; IMHO the reviews there are heavily influenced by the amount of advertising a CG purchases. Furthermore, most listings in Woodalls are simply based on a checklist, for example, is there a swimming pool? a game room? etc. In other words, the ratings are based on having specific amenities, not on their quality or the overall quality of the CG.
It's not that RVParkReviews is perfect; you often have to read between the lines to figure out if a CG got a "1" because someone couldn't get the wifi to work or if there was a real issue. But we've never been burned by going to a CG with average reviews of ~7 or more. Nothing beats actually seeing a place before you pay for a site, but that isn't always possible. Our reservations in Port Aransas this winter are at a CG that we spent two weeks at in the Spring. It still doesn't mean we'll like it for the winter, but at least we had a chance to explore our options. I wouldn't say that the CG we chose is ideal, but it was the best compromise we could find in that area and that's where we wanted to spend the winter.
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Joel:
Good to see that on the site you suggested, the first reviewer of the Sunland "Vacationer" park "left within the first hour of setting up". My impressions not that different. The reviewer of the park we are in seems to be right on as well.
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Keith--
IMHO the best reviews on RVParkReviews are those that provide a decent explanation of the reasons for the rating given. That way I can decide if the "problems noted" are germane to us. For example, since we don't use CG bathrooms and rarely use the laundry comments about either are largely irrelevant other than as indicators of the overall condition of the CG.
Also, some folks get so torqued off about little things that they give extremely low scores to places for reasons that strike me as downright silly. There was one review of a beautiful CG in Grand Teton National Park in which the reviewer was totally incensed that the stupid trees blocked his satellite TV reception and there wasn't any over-the-air reception for his antenna. In my subsequent review I suggested that IMHO the reason for going to a National Park wasn't to watch TV (although we did get satellite reception there, even though we had to settle for SD rather than HD) ;D
But, all things considered, it is the most reliable guide to CG's that I have found. A big plus is that it gives fair treatment to government CG's (federal, state, local) which are virtually ignored by Woodalls (since they don't buy advertising).
Joel
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Ask on the Forum helps.
Try Chula Vista RV Resort and San Diego KOA Campground. We have had rallies in both.
Larry
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I have to agree with Joel on RV review.com I use it all the time and find that, for the most part, it's pretty reliable. Still, there are times when we use Woodalls also. If we're just overnighting, then we have a fairly high tolerance for pain but Pat does keep a pretty good log book and we make note on the parks as well as spaces that we like. If we see and interesting park enroute, Pat make an entry and we look into later.
On the other hand, if we're staying put for awhile than we might "park shop" in the vacintiy and see if we like anything better...after all we are mobile.
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http://www.rvparkreviews.com/ works for us
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We use RV park reviews. Then we use Google maps and find the RV park. Then use satellite view. You can see what's around the CG, how the CG is laid out, how big the spaces are, where the trees are, etc. Occasionally there is the little man you can move to the street and see a ground view of the CG from the main road. We also call the CG the day before or the day of our arrival to make sure there are spaces.
Usually all of the above works to keep us out of not so nice parks. But sometimes it happens you just get a poor park. You can always just leave and not stay at the CG but then you have to find some where else to stay. Even in some run down parks we have never been hassled or bothered by the management or other campers/seasonals/permanents.
One of our problems is we do genealogy. Some places we want to do research are not destination recreation areas so CGs are limited. We have stayed in some unusual places like local mobile home parks, fairgrounds, Elks/Moose lodges. Again we have never had a problem.
Also for local attractions, etc. I google the city name with the word attraction or restaurants, etc. Many of these towns now have websites as do many restaurants. You can even see the menu of the restaurants which is a great help in deciding where to eat. I also use www.tripadvisor.com. They have attractions, restaurants, etc and have users evaluate those things. I find trip advisor a very useful tool.
Connie B.
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I would be very suspect of the reviews in RV Parks/review. If it has any negative comments they won"t post the review. This happened to me when trying to submit a review on a KOA campground in the Santa Cruz/Watsonville area of CA. They refused to accept my review, because I mentioned their outrageous rates, the damage done to my paint on both the coach and toad from the drip off from trees/bushes and the kids running around thru others sites and playing in the streets making almost impossible to hitch and unhitch.
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I have used RVparkreviews and had very good experience so far. I also contribute my posts to the site, with accurate information (positive OR negative). Most of the places we have stayed were very accurately described by others (after removing the obvious flames).
I have not any problems posting a negative rating. In particular, I recall posting a negative rating for the KOA in Pine Island, FL - which was published without question. Again, the post provided accuratly supported, non-emotional information that I belive would be valuable to others in making their decision to stay there.
From what I understand, all the reviews are read by the website moderators rather than auto-posted. Sometimes it takes a few days for the review to appear. For those that had any problems posting there review, perhaps you could email RVparkreviews and ask what issues they had with the review.
All in all, for a free service, I think they do a very good job.
Jim
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We have also had good and poor reviews posted without changes. We do describe problems in detail.
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My first "go-to-directory" is Good Sam Directory. I think it is a better reference and more accurate than any other. I also consult the Big Rigs Best Bets. However they are limited in number sites they have inspected.
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Leah:
thanks for the suggestions.
As a quick test, I went to both sites, to look at their ratings for the scuzziest site I have seen to date, as described above.
Good Sam gives it a 9.5/9/6.5, which looks to me like a pretty good rating. Big rigs, would have me pay $25 for their book or website access before I could check their accuracy.
I expect more form Good Sam, and they probably do a better job on a lot of sites, but that, being a sample of one, tells me that GS can't be relied upon for an accurate idea of what to expect at a site.
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We find that Good Sam Directory tends to over rate CGs. We do buy it to use along with RV park reviews website, Passport America Guide, Elks Lodge guides, Days End Guide, etc.
We have not had any trouble putting in both positive or negative reviews with RV park reviews. What we like about this site is that sometimes we find a CG that is not listed any where else.
No one site or book has it all. So we use a combination of sources when looking for CGs.
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Connie makes a very good point. There doesn't seem to be any single source that lists all CG's. We also use several sources, including RVParkreview, Passport, Woodall's, as well as state and federal park guides/websites.
I'm confident that even with all of these sources, there are still many CG's that are overlooked.
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.
Jim
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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"?
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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.
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[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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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!
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[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
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Delaware Water Gap, East Stroudsberg, PA
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
Gerald--
I don't disagree with your statement, I was simply pointing out that people shouldn't condemn a "brand" on the basis of average prices. Each location has its own pluses and minuses. We recently stayed at a >$60 KOA near West Chester PA; try finding any CG in the Philly/Wilmington area and you'll understand why it was expensive.
As much as I dislike high prices, I'm a committed capitalist; if you have a commodity for sale you should be able to charge whatever the market values the commodity at. If you price it too high, it won't sell; if it sells then the price must have been a fair one. If a KOA or any other CG has no competition in an area it can charge whatever it wants and the buyer can decide whether or not to buy. We paid $35 for a KOA in Laramie a couple of months ago. The place was barely worth $20 from an ambiance standpoint, but there wasn't any other place to stay and we don't like Walmarting if we can avoid it.
Joel
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One other thing about KOA, that bugs me are the hidden cost like in Seattle if you want a 50 amp service add 10.00 of if you have a dog add 5.00 on top of a 70.00 camp fee. I am sure that some KOA parks are great but I tend to avoid. In my experience they are often not up to date.
I use RV Park review and the Big Rig book. I write very detailed reviews on every park we visit good and bad will always be posted. You do need to read the reviews for problems.
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One other thing about KOA, that bugs me are the hidden cost like in Seattle if you want a 50 amp service add 10.00
If you make your reservation online you are usually given the choice between 50A and 30A sites with the prices clearly stated. Many CG's charge more for their "premium" 50A sites, especially if they have only a limited number of them.
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Also use Big Rigs Best Bets in conjunction with the other publications!!