QUOTE(westernrvparkowner @ Nov 29 2008, 01:05 AM) [snapback]14196[/snapback] . Throttling back everyone's speed makes everyone upset. I know because I hear it all the time. This will not change. I do not operate on the cheap, my wifi equipment cost well over $10,000. To top it off, I used to run global customer service for one of the big Computer Security software companies. I understand WiFi and computers. That being said, I did not go into the campground business to be an internet repairman. If most of my guests are able to connect to the system, I consider it to be working. The failure of one guest to connect does not render my system a failure. And as I stated earlier, I cannot just keep rebooting the system, knocking everyone off, to try and make an individual's computer connect. Please remember I am trying to connect 50 people at a time, not one. Okay you either ignoring my statement on purpose or not paying attention. I'm not talking about rebooting a working system with users on it. I'm talking about rebooting a system that is down. AGAIN, a recent example. WIFI is DOWN PARK WIDE. No one available for a reboot. EVERYONE has to wait till morning when they come in and then a reboot if they know how. AGAIN, you seem to ignoring or intentionally changing the facts to fit your position. I didn't say throttle back the entire camp, throttle back the individual user who uses too much bandwidth. SO SUM UP. 1. Reboot not working WIFI and have people availible to reboot the system when need be. 2. Throttle back the bandwidth hogs and not the entire park. It's very odd how my favorite library has 6 floors , hundreds of users and I have never seen any down time. It works flawless every time I'm there. Same goes for our local college, etc... QUOTE As for site size, I am not able to just up and go to Nova Scotia, sorry. I am sure the parks are large, but I am also quite confident there is real estate available at a sem-affordable price around the large parks you are referencing. Where my park is located, an acre of land will bring $500,000 (US) plus. I must make optimum use of all land to come close to justifying an RV park and 50 or 60 feet between sites is not optimum usage. As I stated before, if you can get a big rig into the site on the first try (pull thru or back in) and the slides can all be put out, the site is big rig friendly. IF you think I'm buying the notion that you paid 500K an acre I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. While VERY FEW park owners may have land that is WORTH 500K and acre, there is VERY CHEAP land to be had in the WESTERN US. Did you happen to build on Las Vegas BLVD? Hmmm, Less then 500K
I think Linsay accidently posted on the wrong thread. Maybe he meant to post that here: https://www.campgroundreviews.com/invboard/inde...?showtopic=1908
QUOTE(creeper @ Nov 30 2008, 06:52 AM) [snapback]14223[/snapback] Okay you either ignoring my statement on purpose or not paying attention. I'm not talking about rebooting a working system with users on it. I'm talking about rebooting a system that is down. AGAIN, a recent example. WIFI is DOWN PARK WIDE. No one available for a reboot. EVERYONE has to wait till morning when they come in and then a reboot if they know how. AGAIN, you seem to ignoring or intentionally changing the facts to fit your position. I didn't say throttle back the entire camp, throttle back the individual user who uses too much bandwidth. SO SUM UP. 1. Reboot not working WIFI and have people availible to reboot the system when need be. 2. Throttle back the bandwidth hogs and not the entire park. It's very odd how my favorite library has 6 floors , hundreds of users and I have never seen any down time. It works flawless every time I'm there. Same goes for our local college, etc... IF you think I'm buying the notion that you paid 500K an acre I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. While VERY FEW park owners may have land that is WORTH 500K and acre, there is VERY CHEAP land to be had in the WESTERN US. Did you happen to build on Las Vegas BLVD? Hmmm, Less then 500K
Actually creeper, My property IS worth in excess of $500k an acre. Just like RV property on the Florida coast, California Coast, Vail Colorado, Jackson Wyoming, Sun valley Idaho, etc. Look up what the KOA in the Florida keys sold for, or maybe the RV park at Lake George New York that sold about 3 years ago. There is a California coast RV property currently listed at $22,000,000 for 33 acres. There are many campgrounds selling out to condo, resort and high end housing developers. These parks, Mine included, are some of the premier larger undeveloped tracts of land in the country. 5000 square foot lots in my town sell for $150,000+ depending upon views. Lots sell within days of being put on the market. My property is in town and unquestionably has some of the best views. It is also multi-tiered, so a greater number of view lots can be carved out of it. With road frontage on two sides and cliffs on the other two, the property is prime. I have done the engineering to divide my six acres into 28 residential lots, you do the math. I have not sold because it may be worth even more as a resort development. Five years from now, my property will NOT be an RV Park. I would pretty much bet the farm on that. As for the WiFi, I understand you mean to reboot when the system is down, but I also know if you came into my office and said you could not connect and I told you "well others are connecting to the system, tough luck" you would probably throw a fit. When the system doesn't connect for even one guest, it is down for that guest. I cannot marginalize that guest and do nothing. It sounds like you are smarter than me, so what would you do if there were multiple guests connected to the WiFi system, yet your machine would not connect? You control the whole system, what is your solution? By the way, comparing a library building in a city where there is surely large amounts of bandwidth available to a compround spread over several acres in an area where bandwidth is severely limited in not a fair comparison.
QUOTE(westernrvparkowner @ Nov 30 2008, 04:21 PM) [snapback]14237[/snapback] Actually creeper, My property IS worth in excess of $500k an acre. Just like RV property on the Florida coast, California Coast, Vail Colorado, Jackson Wyoming, Sun valley Idaho, etc. Look up what the KOA in the Florida keys sold for, or maybe the RV park at Lake George New York that sold about 3 years ago. There is a California coast RV property currently listed at $22,000,000 for 33 acres. There are many campgrounds selling out to condo, resort and high end housing developers. These parks, Mine included, are some of the premier larger undeveloped tracts of land in the country. 5000 square foot lots in my town sell for $150,000+ depending upon views. Lots sell within days of being put on the market. My property is in town and unquestionably has some of the best views. It is also multi-tiered, so a greater number of view lots can be carved out of it. With road frontage on two sides and cliffs on the other two, the property is prime. I have done the engineering to divide my six acres into 28 residential lots, you do the math. I have not sold because it may be worth even more as a resort development. Five years from now, my property will NOT be an RV Park. I would pretty much bet the farm on that. I said WORTH for a reason. Not many paid that. For those big dollar resorts you mention, those are improved businesses, not lots. Those are the minority, not the majority of RV Campgrounds. IF you want to have big rig access you're going to lose a few spots if you are updating an old park. If you are building a new one, you should plan ahead. The point was, don't use your old sites and call them big rig access because they are long. What your property is worth today is not what it was worth 5 years ago or 5 years from now. Don't count your chickens. QUOTE As for the WiFi, I understand you mean to reboot when the system is down, but I also know if you came into my office and said you could not connect and I told you "well others are connecting to the system, tough luck" you would probably throw a fit. Well of course I'd throw a fit. You would have to be much more diplomatic then that. I would certainly know my coverage area and inspect it. I would also take a laptop to the area in question and test it. If it works then the guest wouldn't have much to say would they? Would take all of 5 minutes. It's kinda like when the cop shows you the 70 on his radar gun when you swear you were only doing 55... Most people shut up right there. IF you show them the wifi is working then there is no complaint. QUOTE When the system doesn't connect for even one guest, it is down for that guest. I cannot marginalize that guest and do nothing. It sounds like you are smarter than me, so what would you do if there were multiple guests connected to the WiFi system, yet your machine would not connect? You control the whole system, what is your solution? By the way, comparing a library building in a city where there is surely large amounts of bandwidth available to a compround spread over several acres in an area where bandwidth is severely limited in not a fair comparison. You don't marginalize the guest, you check with your own laptop. If you show the quest yours works at their location they won't say anything. You can have a simple print out of possible causes. You also show them your screen and show them how many users are connected. Most people like to be shown, not told..... So you feel an open air environment is harder then a building with steel, electrical , mulitple floors, over a city block, dozens of close users on the same frequencies and various interference from dozens of other radio devices... That's interesting. You said you have a 250mps connection that's a LOT of bandwidth. Most of us are using 6 mps. If you have spent 10K on wifi and yet you don't have the ability to throttle back individual users or limit the amount a guest can use, sounds like you bought the wrong stuff. 6 acres is not a lot of area to cover.
QUOTE(creeper @ Dec 2 2008, 02:44 AM) [snapback]14276[/snapback] I said WORTH for a reason. Not many paid that. For those big dollar resorts you mention, those are improved businesses, not lots. Those are the minority, not the majority of RV Campgrounds. IF you want to have big rig access you're going to lose a few spots if you are updating an old park. If you are building a new one, you should plan ahead. The point was, don't use your old sites and call them big rig access because they are long. What your property is worth today is not what it was worth 5 years ago or 5 years from now. Don't count your chickens. Well of course I'd throw a fit. You would have to be much more diplomatic then that. I would certainly know my coverage area and inspect it. I would also take a laptop to the area in question and test it. If it works then the guest wouldn't have much to say would they? Would take all of 5 minutes. It's kinda like when the cop shows you the 70 on his radar gun when you swear you were only doing 55... Most people shut up right there. IF you show them the wifi is working then there is no complaint. You don't marginalize the guest, you check with your own laptop. If you show the quest yours works at their location they won't say anything. You can have a simple print out of possible causes. You also show them your screen and show them how many users are connected. Most people like to be shown, not told..... So you feel an open air environment is harder then a building with steel, electrical , mulitple floors, over a city block, dozens of close users on the same frequencies and various interference from dozens of other radio devices... That's interesting. You said you have a 250mps connection that's a LOT of bandwidth. Most of us are using 6 mps. If you have spent 10K on wifi and yet you don't have the ability to throttle back individual users or limit the amount a guest can use, sounds like you bought the wrong stuff. 6 acres is not a lot of area to cover. You are right, I didn't pay $500K an acre when I purchased the park. I did pay $400,000, and have since put several hundred thousand into the infastructure. As for them being "developed resorts" that is simply not true. They are being bought, plowed under and replaced with Condos and Hotel resorts. They are no longer RV parks for a reason, the land value has exceeded any value that can be created by an RV park. I still feel justified in stating the actual value of the property has now exceeded any value an RV park can justify. I MUST use every available inch of space to continue to operate profitably. Contrary to many, I do not consider profitablility to be immoral or illegal. I conduct a very complex balancing act between site size and site costs. I can remove sites and make other sites larger, but that requires raising prices on all sites, not just the renovated sites to maintain revenues and profitability. Combining two sites into one does not allow me to double the price of the new combined site. Also, removing a couple of 25 foot wide sites does not allow me to add 5 feet to 10 other sites. Widening sites is very expensive, you must relocate all the parking pads, utilities and then resod the entire area. I am glad you believe that WiFi in a campground is simple, and campgrounds install systems that are inaccessible to RVers just because they wish to advertise they have the service and not really provide it. I personally believe most park owners are not that nefarious and actually try to make their systems work. I don't know if you consider me crooked or just plain stupid, but I have nothing but headaches with my WiFi and most every other park owner I know experiences the same problems. I sometimes do take my laptop up to a guest's site to check connectivity. When I can connect, the guest usually believes I have tricked them or have some special sign-in they don't have. It doesn't solve the problem. The only thing that satisfies a guest needed wifi is a connection. If I cannot provide it they are unhappy. It doesn't matter if it is my fault or theirs.
We are parked during the summer in a resort type park in Michigan that has a outstanding wifi system. In all of our travels we have never found a signal as strong as we have in this park. There are approximately 25 rental sites out of the 94 in the park, so we get a constant turn over in guests. Each guest is given a suggestion card as to what we can do to improve their stay with us. It is unbelievable that people suggest we need a better wifi system. My wife went to the aid of at least 4 people this past summer who could not get on, they were positive the system was down, or that we were hiding the password. It was 100% their issue, not the parks wifi. I'm not going to say people are dumb, but some folks just don't know much when it comes to their computer.
Excellent post, Creeper. You state with clarity many of the deceptions, false advertising, and problems we've experienced over the past 8 years of RV travel. Yes, overall, we've had wonderful times and stayed in many good parks. But we've also stayed in some that were far less than good......and you capture many of the problems we've encountered. And, Gilda, let us know where your RV park is and I promise never to stay there. Thanks for putting this out on the public forum, Creeper.
Westernrvparkowner. I am sad to hear that your park will be having another use at some point soon, as your comments have demonstrated over the years that you possess the near perfect skills to be a RV park owner operator. I was looking forward to staying at your park and I’ll have to hurry. A wise person always uses his property in the highest and best use and you certainly can’t be blamed for that. I have done it myself and am reaping the rewards. If I was you, I’d keep an active eye on the current changing political situation and climate, upcoming capital gains changes, and upcoming changes in estate taxes (not that you are old or anything, but it pays to be aware.) Gilda, you don’t have to actually name your park for me to stay away. Just tell me the state you are in and I will avoid the whole state.
QUOTE(Lindsay Richards @ Dec 3 2008, 12:51 PM) [snapback]14301[/snapback] Westernrvparkowner. I am sad to hear that your park will be having another use at some point soon, as your comments have demonstrated over the years that you possess the near perfect skills to be a RV park owner operator. I was looking forward to staying at your park and I’ll have to hurry. A wise person always uses his property in the highest and best use and you certainly can’t be blamed for that. I have done it myself and am reaping the rewards. If I was you, I’d keep an active eye on the current changing political situation and climate, upcoming capital gains changes, and upcoming changes in estate taxes (not that you are old or anything, but it pays to be aware.) Gilda, you don’t have to actually name your park for me to stay away. Just tell me the state you are in and I will avoid the whole state. Wow, is this dump on Gilda forum??? Why condemn the whole state of ??? when we don't even know which state it is? Besides, she can say any dumb thing she wants - I do. Serving in the Army for a zillion years has given me thick skin and I can take it. Some people can't.
QUOTE You were in the state not that long ago and I met you and your wife in FL. at "HO HUM". We actually had quite a long conversation. I don't remember having a long conversation with anybody at the Ho Hum. It is a great old Florida Park and I wrote a great review on it as I remember. I do remember talking to a lady there that recomended a nice local seafood place, but she wasn't mean and telling everybody to leave. Could that have been you? We had a spot facing the water about 3 or 4 down from the pier. Our Ho Hum Photos
