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Appreciate hearing (well, READING) your side of the coin........

I still gripe about "nickel and dime" charges, but appreciate your side of the story.

JJ

No flames here. I agree with Gilda.

Why should a camper with more than a set number (2 or 4) pay the same as someone with 8 or 10, or more? The more people at a site the more they use in water, sewer, bathroom supplies. Not to mention increased liability for the park owner, road usage, wear & tear on the facility.

How about the one where the pool and playground was so far away the 'little ones' couldn't walk there. I couldn't figure out if the 'little ones' would be escorted by parents or not. It sounded like not.

Or the one where they were upset because they had to pay for having more than one tent at the site. I'm surprised they allowed more than one tent at a site.

Or the one about the park staff pouring water on the campfires if they weren't out by 12 midnight. It sounds like a safety measure.

Some of the reviews are good for a chuckle, but others are mean and nasty. I attribute mean and nasty posts attacking an owner, manager or worker as being written by a disgruntled worker or disruptive camper that was asked to leave.

I've been camping for 55+ years and camped throughout most of the US and Canada. We always try to be off the road by 5pm, but if that doesn't work out and we pull into a campground after hours and are met by someone with a drink in their hand, so what. That doesn't mean they're drunk. I don't expect campgrounds to be open 24 hrs a day. Guilda is right, WHAT A BUNCH OF WHINNERS.

As for the tents on RV sites, let me explain my point of view. One of the biggest complaints on this website is that RV sites are too close together. If a park was to allow tents on the sites along with the RVs that would, in effect, be creating a site between each site. The only thing worse to me that having an RV right next to your RV is having a tent next to you. A tent does not muffle noise like a hard sided RV and where a tent is pitched next to the RV it is usually children, who end up unsupervised all night because the parents are blissfully asleep in the RV. Tents also make keeping grass in the site alive problematic. I get a lot of flack and lose some reservations because of my no tent policy, but I feel it sure makes life for the other campers better. As for campfires, there is really no need to have the party going after midnight. Of course the poster would have you believe everyone is completely silent when sitting around a campfire, and if you believe that, I have some nice Florida waterfront property for you, you need to act fast, because it is going fast!

As I was reading this reviews and others my thinking was boy this is a fun way to pick up new tricks in RV life. What does this type of person do for a job? Now as we drive into a new park will this person be in a site someplace? It takes all types to make the world turn but this takes the cake. I think we will see more good reports soon.

Let me see if I have this right. The Stateline reviewer said they camped in a motorhome, and they also had a pop-up and a tent all on one site. There were two families so I'm guessing at least 8 people. They stayed 3 nights and paid $250. That is about $83 per night for three camping units OR about $27 for each unit. You could also look at it as about $10 a night per person if there were only 8 people. I'll bet the campground lost money on that one.

There was another review at about this same time for another park in the same general area but by a different reviewer that sounded uncanningly like this one. There were 2 families, 8 people and they were upset because the cg wanted to charge more because there were 2 tenting families on the same site. These two reviews were both for the same weekend so I guess it wasn't the same group, but they must be related.

I do not understand how someone can think that when they rent a campsite they can pack as many relatives/friends onto it as possible. Quoted rates should be for 2 or possibly 4 people, not 25 or even 8. And actually I'm surprised the cg let them put more than one unit per site. That sounds pretty accommodating to me, and the campers should be grateful they got to stay together.

Thank you Gilda,

You speak for a lot us "greedy park owners". My Park has the busiest State Park in Texas directly across the river from us and other campgrounds next door to us on each side. I am not about to allow one camper to make a reservation to stay here, and invite all of their buddies and/or relatives to come visit and use our superior ameneties, bath house, showers, activity center, etc. for no charge. These facilities are for our guests, not people who are staying elsewhere. Our largest concern and a concern of most of our campers is overcrowding, both from extra vehicles and extra people. That is the main reason that we charge for extra people and extra vehicles - not the fact that their use of our facilities costs us more (which it does). If this is considered "Nickle and Diming" by some, I'm sorry, but we are not in business to give it away.

Doug

Hi Parkview,

I've never had the pleasure of a tent beside my RV. What are the issues it causes? Too me it almost appears to be a "good idea" for it would space out the RV's farther.

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Hi Gilda,

You need to read Western's comment more carefully. He suggested that a tent site beside an RV site was the worst situation possible.

I do not understand why this is so--I don't deny it may be so. It is not within my realm of experience.

Gilda,

If I am understanding you correctly you have an interesting fee structure. You are saying that if someone stays in a tent you charge them the same amount as you would if they were in a 40' motorhome. Most places we have stayed had a rate for motorhomes, 5th wheels, and travel trailers and another rate for tents. I'm not sure where pop-ups and some other units fit, but it doesn't matter. My point is that I thought the type of RV you had made a difference with regards to your rate. Wouldn't a big MH or 5er use a lot more utilities than a tent camper? Course I guess big RV owners use their on-board facilities while the tenters use the camp bathrooms, but that still doesn't seem like it evens out. So you charge strictly by the site and that works?

Also about tents next to an RV: Do not get me wrong. I am not putting down tenters. A lot of really nice people like to camp in tents. My relatives do. However, as an RVer I am used to having a vehicle between me and my outdoor activities and the next person and his outdoor activities. I sit under my awning between two RV. The RV blocks the neighbors noise and gives a little more feeling of privacy. In truth we have rarely had tents next to us--maybe once or twice. But I do remember one time where the tenter was right under our left side windows. I felt like there was no privacy for either of us. I felt like I could see everyththing they were doing, and I did not like that. If this had been an RV I still would not have liked the close conditions, but at least there would have been some walls there that we could not see through. I know others have no problem with this, but that is why I would prefer not to have a tent next to me.

I'm not Parkview, but in the seven years we have been full-timing we have parked next to tents in a few places. In general, tenters are younger and noisier than us geezers in our Bulgemobiles.

I saw an apropos tee-shirt on a young lady in a campground once: I'm Not Noisy. You're Just Old!

She was probably right.

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tex, some of the campgrounds have differant locations. the one i stay at has a tent area, a water and electric area and full hook up area. the site fees are differant for each area.
if a tenter wants a full hook up site he will pay that rate.

Hi again all,

As a relatively new park, we allowed tents in the past, but we no longer do. The issues we had were several as follows:

1) At the time we allowed tents, we charged by the site, tent or RV same price. It was not a cost issue, it was a supply and demand issue. We are fully booked in the summer, and if a tenter didn't want to pay the rate then we just rent the site to an RV. Our rules for tenters was that they had to pitch the tent on the RV pad itself in order not to crowd their RV neighbors next door. Inevitably, many would still pitch the tent in the yard between sites, because it was softer and use the pad to park cars. This caused numerous conflicts with RVers.

2) We also had a policy that an RVer who had a site could pitch one tent on the site in addition to an RV for an additional fee of $10.00, but the tent needed to be behind the RV, not in the yard between sites. Same problem, in spite of our policies, most of the tents would wind up between sites, crowding the RV next door. Additionally, as stated earlier, the tent was usually for the kids, who, according to parents, were always just little angels. These angels would roam the park all night, sometimes stealing beer from coolers left outside, play music or party loudly beyond quiet hours, gather and loiter at the lighted bath house, etc., all while the parents were blissfully asleep in the RV.

3) People would pitch the additional tent without telling us at checkin time and argue with us when we told them that there was an additional charge for the tent.

4) The reason that we waited 5 years before doing away with tents was that tenters spent much, much more money in our store than RVers. They were profitable. But we finally came to the conclusion that the extra profit was not worth the extra headache and complaints from RVers.

5) If I had additional space for a dedicated tent area, I would not hesitate to allow tenters, but I have no additional land for such an area. Mixing RVers and tents in the same area just does not work well for either.

We have no problem with popups or any other type of RV because they are always on the parking pad, not the space between sites. Hope this helps with some of the questions.

Doug

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I'll start this post by mentioning the old adage about walking a mile in the indian's Moccasins. One really needs to be in the moccasins of the C/G owner, host, work camper or volunteer postion to appreciate why the rules or procedures exist.

I'm hosting at a public facility where all types of camping is allowed from motor homes to sleeping in the van. I'm the host, baby sitter, info specialist, enforcer, fireman, handyman, pseudo-game warden, and apparantly a shoulder to complain and cry on. It's one of those things where I'm at the wheel of the train without the power to blow the horn or steer it, but will catch hell if it jumps the track.

This is not my first rodeo so I've managed to figure out what works most of the time to control issues mentioned in other posts and still have fun doing the work.

None of those mentioned in the first paragraph can please everyone all of the time so we're going to do what works most of the time. Try to reasonably please 99% of the customers. That's pretty easy because that's the percentage that are the nice ones.

doug, i can see your problem with the lack of land. i got spoiled at my campground. it is about 340 acres and they are only using about 1/2. most of the sites are pretty big. that is why they have all the different areas. after awhile they will turn the w/e into a full hook up and run e/w somewhere else. that way they keep adding sites. they put 20 across the street, over looking the lake, with winter water and electric.

bob

What I was talking about was using the Lawn space between two RV sites to pitch the Tent. The RV sites would be filled with RVs like normal and the lawn space between the RVs are used to put up tents. Like Parkview said, the Tenters with the RV want to put the tent on the Grass, not the RV pad. It is literally like putting a site between each existing site. A 30 foot wide site becomes two 15 foot sites. It crowds the campground. We also do not allow tents to rent an RV site and then pitch a tent on the RV pad. It is unsafe, Unsightly, and does not give a good experience to the tenter. We cannot offer everything to everyone.

I am not surprised some people expect the most when they were promised the most. I just recently bought into 1000 trails after owning Outdoor World for over 25 years. I was surprised what the salesman offered us compared to what we are now being told we are really entitled to according to our contract. We are traveling across country from east coast to west coast and were disappointed. No we didn't read all the fine print in the contract and yes we should have and we did with Outdoor World. We were excited about our traveling across this great USA that we figured we would at least get most sites 1/2 price. We also found out the actual structure of this campground group. The sales person will sell you anything you want to hear.