Rental Rv's-where You Rented, looking for reviews and recommendations Options

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What? Rent an RV? Why? (is that what you're thinking?)
Well before we bought our RV we wanted to rent one because we'd never driven one and didn't know anyone that owned one.

CruiseAmerica is where we rented and had our our first RV experience 5 years ago. It was horrible. The RV was old, not clean and the "check engine" light came on when we were far enough away from the rental company to be obnoxious, they wanted us to drive to get it repaired during our weekend rental, no thanks. Since CruiseAmerica is a nationwide franchise this is not a condemnation of all CAmerica locations but we rented in Estero FL just north of Naples and south of Ft. Myers.

The only good thing that came out of that horrible rental was while staying at a campground (Periwinkle Park in Sanibel FL) we met some people driving a Roadtrek van and they showed us their unit and we liked the size. We ended up buying a similar conversion van and have been happily RV'ing for the last 4 years.

BUT...we live in SW Florida and would love to skip the 4-5 days each way travel time to get to California or Utah. In short we'd love to find a great RV rental in California or Utah or Colorado, etc.
And even better would be if they rented conversion vans like ours.

Internet searches don't come with many trustworthy reviews. I was thrilled to find a conversion van rental in St. George Utah, yippee, and then my husband looked and they don't appear to have air-conditioning units other than in-dashboard. What? We're planning to be there in the height of summer. Please don't tell me we don't need A/C. We did a 7,000 mile trip to that area in 2010 (NE Utah, NE/NW New Mexico, N Arizona) and we sure did need A/C.

Any suggestions with personal recommendation is welcomed!
And bad reviews are also informative. I'm going to post second message right after this with my review of a rental RV we just did in Anchorage AK (didn't want to drive there from Florida either lol).

Thanks for any/all replies

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Thanks all for your replies, very helpful.

I'm glad to hear that CruiseAmerica can be a good choice, I guess it depends on the local franchisee and we had a lousy one. Too bad, it gives the company a bad name.

fitzjohnfan-thanks so much, I'll be checking out that rental place for sure. Colorado is on our wish list, plus Wyoming Yellowstone and the other Utah parks we haven't seen yet (been to Arches and it was AWESOME).

I'll keep checking back here from time to time in case anyone else has recommendations.

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Thanks all for your replies, very helpful.

I'm glad to hear that CruiseAmerica can be a good choice, I guess it depends on the local franchisee and we had a lousy one. Too bad, it gives the company a bad name.

fitzjohnfan-thanks so much, I'll be checking out that rental place for sure. Colorado is on our wish list, plus Wyoming Yellowstone and the other Utah parks we haven't seen yet (been to Arches and it was AWESOME).

I'll keep checking back here from time to time in case anyone else has recommendations.

I am from the UK and take a 3 to 4 week RV trip every year, have done since 1992 and of course have to rent an RV, I have used Cruise America twice but that was more than 12 years ago, these days they seem to be a giant advertising hoarding on wheels with stupid graphics all over the RV.

So, I now use Elmonte RV and have done since 1997, I currently rent their family sleeper AF34, its not cheap, but this year we had a 2011 36ft Fleetwood Fiesta 34B, less than 20,000 on the clock and in superb condition, last year we had a brand new Hurricane 36 footer, it didnt even have licence plates, just a reg slip in the winshield and under 2000 miles on the odometer.

I have found Elmonte to be superb in all aspects if you are looking for late model and high quality RVs with TVs , DVDs multi slides etc, I used to use the Los Angeles depot but currently use the Las Vegas one, but have used others too.

As said, they are probably not the cheapest out there, I get a rate of around $6000 for 21nights with the large A class family sleeper including unlimited miles, ALL insurances, taxes and kits etc, but I cant recomend them enough, in 20 years never had a major fault with any of the vehicles I a have rented from them.

I also see a lot of Roadbear Rvs and Camping world rentals too...