After reading one of the topics from a Campground Owner, I thought I'd rant a little also. Please feel free to add to it. Dear Campground owner: 1. IF you offer FREE or pay WiFi, in an effort to entice me to use your park, it should work. I should not have to spin on my head and spit nickels to get a signal. I shouldn't have to walk to the closed office and be forced to sit outside to get a signal. If it doesn't work properly, don't advertise it. 2. We drive LARGE vehicles. Trim your trees. They grow each year, so trimming once every 5 years doesn't cut it. 3. When you advertise large spaces, that's on all sides. Not just front and back. If I can't put out a slide or have to park strategically to get the slides out, it's not a large space. If you only have 2 actual large spots then don't advertise Large spots or big rig access. 4. Big rig access. Figure it out or ask someone who knows what that means. When I pull in and find out the trees are low and the turns are too tight to make it, then you don't have big rig access. 5. When you offer concrete or paved pads, make sure you have more then 3. If you choose pavement then maintain them. It's hard to level when a jack or tire is stuck in large pot holes. 6. Maintain your roads. These are not off road vehicles. While it's fine to have a gravel road, going through deep holes and large bumps is not what these things are made for. 7. Hire a dang electrician. 110 Volts means 110, not 90 volts. Wiring the pedestals your self is just plan wrong. I should not have to change spots because your pedestals are wrong, nor should I be the one informing you that your pedestal is wired wrong. Buy a $15 tester and test your pedestals. 8. When constructing a site be aware that fluids don't run up hill and RV makers don't normally put the sewer connections on the rear bumper. 9. Enforce your quiet times. If kids are riding ATVs through the campground at 2am don't make me come to find you to do something about it. 10. If you put a huge billboard with AAA on it, then honor the discount. Don't say, "Oh, we're just in their book we don't give the discount". 11. I don't care how good you think I drive, a 38' RV will not fit into a 28' spot. 12. Full Hookups mean just that........ Electric, water AND SEWER. Driving to a dump station or waiting for your honey wagon is not FULL hookups. 13. When your billboard says 2/10th of a mile off the highway that does mean 4 miles off the highway. Well that's a good start. ALL these are actual events that we have experienced.
Creeper I do not believe it is time for you to turn in your keys. Just like the RV park owner that posted you have made valid points. Hopefully somewhere in the middle the rv owner and rv park owner will meet. Meaningful dialogue can only help. We can both learn from each other - hopefully.
QUOTE(creeper @ Nov 27 2008, 12:00 AM) [snapback]14152[/snapback] After reading one of the topics from a Campground Owner, I thought I'd rant a little also... Welcome aboard Creeper! I too was tempted to capture some of these after reading the Great Rant from WesternParks... Your list is great...well done! Naw... won't be trading in the RV for a house anytime soon... just enjoy a good chuckle from sharing similar events with others. Cheers! B)
Unfortunately, we have all seen the examples in your posting. Thankfully not all at the same park. There are many things you can do to protect yourself from these items. Number 1 is get a WiFi antenna. This will help in almost every park. Uncouple at the office and drive the toad back to the site and if it isn’t acceptable for your rig, then get another one. If you anticipate problems, drive through and pick a site before paying. I think Gilda, by telling RV’ers to get out of the sport is slowly running herself out a job. There are all kinds of RV’er and in business, you have to be able to deal with all kinds. If you don’t, you can not be successful long time.
Good list and something to remember for all us park owners. Just have two objections. The wifi issue has been covered many times and it will always be a bone of contention. I wish I had a cure, but I don't think one really exists. As for sewer connections, please be aware that most parks try to do the best they can at locating these connections. However, it seems that the RV industry feels that it is ok to sprout the sewer connections anywhere it is convenient to stick them. If it was consistent, it would be easier to fix the problem. Unfortunately, popups and Travel trailers tend to have them in the rear. After you pull the tow vehicle forward, the connection should ideally be in the rear quarter of the site. Motor homes tend to dump from the center. When you have a long rig with a long towed, ideally the dump should be in the front third of the site. Then we have fifth wheels. The logic here is to place the outlet anywhere on the left side of the rig. Heaven only knows where a dump connection should be on the site. Then lets tow the rig with a 30ft long dually and maybe have a triple rig with a 20 ft boat behind. This type of rig runs 75 to 80 feet in length (generally about as long as the longest rv space) and this is the customer who complains he only has a short sewer hose (it was ten foot long, but it broke and now is only about 6 ft in length.) My suggestion, invest a couple of hundred dollars in a macerating pump system and forget all your worries about where the sewer connection for the park lies. My rig has one and it is one of the greatest inventions ever. I can dump uphill, downhill, crosshill and even shoot a stream of raw sewage at pesky kids (just kidding, though tempting) I can pump through 100 feet of hose, into a toilet in the house if necessary. It is right up there with automatic leveling jacks and sliced bread. Please continue to rant on, sometimes we forget what is important to our guests and feedback like this is what we need. Thanks
well, I was going to start a new thread but I think I will add mine here. PASS THE KETCHUP! I'm staying at an RV park I have stayed at many times. The slots at this park are pretty close together, but each time, the occupant in the slot next to me didn't have a slide out. This time, the occupant next to me (a travel trailer) has a slide out. My slide out bedroom window is three inches from the next occupants slideout! PASS THE KETCHUP! I think this park was built a long time ago, before slide outs were invented. Can't fault the park in that case..... I've stayed at other parks where it was literally "pass the tartar sauce...." JJ
QUOTE(Lindsay Richards @ Nov 27 2008, 06:53 PM) [snapback]14163[/snapback] Unfortunately, we have all seen the examples in your posting. Thankfully not all at the same park. There are many things you can do to protect yourself from these items. Number 1 is get a WiFi antenna. This will help in almost every park. Uncouple at the office and drive the toad back to the site and if it isn’t acceptable for your rig, then get another one. If you anticipate problems, drive through and pick a site before paying. I think Gilda, by telling RV’ers to get out of the sport is slowly running herself out a job. There are all kinds of RV’er and in business, you have to be able to deal with all kinds. If you don’t, you can not be successful long time. A couple of points. 1. They won't allow you uncouple a large fifth wheel, plus it's just a pain to do so. 2. I do have a wifi antenna. Recently we stayed at a campground and their big advertisement was FREE WIFI.... Since we parked right next to one of their many antenna reception wasn't a problem. The problem was that it went down every night after the office was closed and that was it. No one to reset it. It was a very nice system, throttle back excessive users, professional spot beaming all over the park and antenna everywhere. The one fault, it was done 90 percent of the time. The problem is that it occurs at way too many parks. If I pay for $60 a night to camp I expect things to work.
QUOTE(westernrvparkowner @ Nov 27 2008, 07:03 PM) [snapback]14164[/snapback] Good list and something to remember for all us park owners. Just have two objections. The wifi issue has been covered many times and it will always be a bone of contention. I wish I had a cure, but I don't think one really exists. As for sewer connections, please be aware that most parks try to do the best they can at locating these connections. Western Park owner here are a few suggestions for you campground owners. The Wifi issue is pretty simple to take care of. Make sure the people there know how to do a simple reset. 9 out of 10 times it's a reboot. I've rebooted systems for campgrounds and showed the people how to do it. You should also have someone available after hours to at least 11pm. Doesn't mean they have to be in the office, just on call. I find most campgrounds don't have a person. It always strikes me strange how most campgrounds shut down at 5pm and the run out the door. As far as the sewer connection goes, I'll just give you and a recent example. We pull into a spot after the office closed. We called at 4:45pm and they were out the door at 5pm. We took one of their brandy new spots. The sewer connection was located at the entrance to the spot and at the highest point of the campsite. It was of course about 20 feet from the electric pedestal. The only camper that could use this sewer connection and the similar ones in our row, was campers with the sewer connection on the bumper. The odd part, in the next row were older sites and lower then ours and the connections were placed correctly. For the person that said hang up the keys, get real..... When we find a great campground we let the owner know it. We also put it in our book and will use them again. This is a great site and we used it on our most recent 7400 mile trip. The reviews were spot on.
One thing some rver's seem to forget is MOST campground were built a long time ago.....well before the super size rv's came about. I bet when camping was first invented they didn't have eletric available at each site. We need to remeber that RV's have changed alot over the years and campground are TRYING to catchup with the times and be able to service all of the "super sized"rigs be it a pup a 25 ft TT a 30 + ft TT to a 33+ ft 5ver or a Small class C or a BIG RIG. I believe that most campgrounds are trying to fit all needs be it full ups or just eletric or WI FI etc.......
Gilda, where do you work or which park do you own cuz I sure in the heck never want to stay there and would recommend to other to avoid you like the plague. You are the type that give rving a bad name. Creeper, a list well done, thanks. I too have run across at least half of those if not more.
QUOTE(creeper @ Nov 28 2008, 01:26 AM) [snapback]14169[/snapback] Western Park owner here are a few suggestions for you campground owners. The Wifi issue is pretty simple to take care of. Make sure the people there know how to do a simple reset. 9 out of 10 times it's a reboot. I've rebooted systems for campgrounds and showed the people how to do it. You should also have someone available after hours to at least 11pm. Doesn't mean they have to be in the office, just on call. I find most campgrounds don't have a person. It always strikes me strange how most campgrounds shut down at 5pm and the run out the door. As far as the sewer connection goes, I'll just give you and a recent example. We pull into a spot after the office closed. We called at 4:45pm and they were out the door at 5pm. We took one of their brandy new spots. The sewer connection was located at the entrance to the spot and at the highest point of the campsite. It was of course about 20 feet from the electric pedestal. The only camper that could use this sewer connection and the similar ones in our row, was campers with the sewer connection on the bumper. The odd part, in the next row were older sites and lower then ours and the connections were placed correctly. For the person that said hang up the keys, get real..... When we find a great campground we let the owner know it. We also put it in our book and will use them again. This is a great site and we used it on our most recent 7400 mile trip. The reviews were spot on. Hey Creeper, you are correct about not closing at 5PM, that is not good business, but I suspect that is done mostly at small mom and pop operations or possibly during the way off season. I can't conceive how a campground bigger than about 30 or so sites could operate that way. I don't find your list to be a list of whining or petty complaints. Though I do have a question as to what the standards should be to call a campground "Big Rig Friendly" or call the sites "large" I feel if you can get the biggest rigs manufactured (45 ft RV or 40 ft 5er) into the site without having to make multiple attempts, it is a big rig friendly site. I also feel justified in calling my park big rig friendly even if all my sites are not. About 50% of my sites fit that criteria and a few others are big enough, but do require a little extra manuvering. I think a good criteria is at least 25% of the sites being big rig friendly to state the park is big rig friendly. (this is Trailer Life and Woodalls standard). I have no idea what the standard for a large site should be. Trailer Life uses 30 feet between hookups, which can be a very big area in some parts of the country, but can also feel sardine tight elsewhere. And should we penalize a park if the sites are 29 feet wide, not thirty, but are 100 feet long not 60? As for rebooting the system, It CAN temporarily fix a connection problem, but it cannot be done without consequences. When you reboot the system you disconnect everyone who is on with a good connection. (does the complaint" the system keeps shutting down and knocking me off" ring a bell?) We reboot only as a last resort when we have several complaints. We can check the system and see if traffic is flowing across the connection. If a lot of traffic is flowing, we generally choose not to reboot and inconvenience those customers on the network. The reason rebooting works is often that it closes down a high bandwidth user (stops an internet phone conversation, cancels a video download etc.), or it takes 20 users off line to allow the one user to connect. Some people have suggested the solution is to add repeaters across the campground. This is actually counter-productive since each repeater doubles the traffic on the system (It is called a repeater because it repeats the traffic). Believe me, my head is full of WiFi. Not because I like it, but because it is the albatross of the campground and I reluctantly must battle it every day. Maybe I should change my name to Don WiFi Quiote since I feel like I must tilt at the wifi windmill every day.
QUOTE(gilda @ Nov 28 2008, 01:46 AM) [snapback]14171[/snapback] Nope, complainers like this....stay away, please! Fortunately those like you wishing to force their children on us are a very small minority. What would you think if the local shuffleboard club came in and dominated the Chunky Cheese bothered all the kids. You do not own RV'ing and need to getover this thinking that your rights trump everybody else. The market has dectiated a need for over 55 parks and just leave them alone. Glad you are not in a job that trotinely meets the public.
To westernrvparkowner, As far as Wifi I'm not talking about a slow connection, I'm talking about no connection. Rebooting gets the connection going. This is NOT a rare occurrence. 5pm is the NORM not the exception as we've experiences. We've stayed in small, large and medium campgrounds. Most close the doors at 5pm. Some had great directions for night checks in some did not. One of our favorites was after pulling into a campground in a area with very few campgrounds, the sign in the window said , "BACK IN 10 Minutes". 30 minutes later we pulled out. Big Rig friendly should be no special maneuvering, able to put out all the slides without having to move the RV so you don't hit the neighbor. We recently got put in a BIG RIG friendly 40Ft spot. We only could put out 2 slides. We have to fit our tow vehicle on the site and after we squeezed in the camper and the truck the bedroom slide would hit the truck. We were also 12" from the camper in the site next to us. Big Rig friendly is a pretty new thing. The bad part is that the older campgrounds are using the same sites they had for years and calling them big rig friendly. If you want to see what big rig friendly is take a trip to Nova scotia. There standard site is what the US campground owners would call big rig friendly. If you have problems with your Wifi, then don't support it and don't advertise it. If you're going to use it as a perk to get people in, then it should work otherwise people feel they were scammed. IT's not all that hard to keep a wifi system up and running. The problem is campgrounds either have no knowledge or cheap out, with either equipment or internet connection. I've seen dozens of campgrounds that offer free Wifi and it's nothing more then a Linksys router and a 3 meg consumer internet connection. If you have bandwidth hogs then you should throttle them back. Just made a reservation at a Campground and heard something I never heard before. They gave me the Campsite and cell # of the winter manager. Said if I had any problems to call him.
QUOTE(creeper @ Nov 29 2008, 12:07 AM) [snapback]14194[/snapback] To westernrvparkowner, As far as Wifi I'm not talking about a slow connection, I'm talking about no connection. Rebooting gets the connection going. This is NOT a rare occurrence. 5pm is the NORM not the exception as we've experiences. We've stayed in small, large and medium campgrounds. Most close the doors at 5pm. Some had great directions for night checks in some did not. One of our favorites was after pulling into a campground in a area with very few campgrounds, the sign in the window said , "BACK IN 10 Minutes". 30 minutes later we pulled out. Big Rig friendly should be no special maneuvering, able to put out all the slides without having to move the RV so you don't hit the neighbor. We recently got put in a BIG RIG friendly 40Ft spot. We only could put out 2 slides. We have to fit our tow vehicle on the site and after we squeezed in the camper and the truck the bedroom slide would hit the truck. We were also 12" from the camper in the site next to us. Big Rig friendly is a pretty new thing. The bad part is that the older campgrounds are using the same sites they had for years and calling them big rig friendly. If you want to see what big rig friendly is take a trip to Nova scotia. There standard site is what the US campground owners would call big rig friendly. If you have problems with your Wifi, then don't support it and don't advertise it. If you're going to use it as a perk to get people in, then it should work otherwise people feel they were scammed. IT's not all that hard to keep a wifi system up and running. The problem is campgrounds either have no knowledge or cheap out, with either equipment or internet connection. I've seen dozens of campgrounds that offer free Wifi and it's nothing more then a Linksys router and a 3 meg consumer internet connection. If you have bandwidth hogs then you should throttle them back. Beg to differ with you. Until everyone's computer connects the same way, and everyone's security settings are the same and everyone accepts the limitations due to some campgrounds having a limited bandwidth available for their use and everyone actually knows how to operate their system, WiFi connectivity will be an issue at campgrounds. It would be great if my campground was flat as a pancake, didn't have big RVs made of metal blocking signals, didn't have guests with powerful on coach wireless modems broadcasting conflicting wifi signals and I had a couple of dedicated fiber optic broadband connections feeding my access points and routers. Unfortunately, my campground is on the side of a granite mountain, RVs are made of aluminum, iron, steel and who knows what else that block line of sight radio signals. The best available internet portal is a 250mbs wireless ISP. (250 mbs is under optimum conditions and actual speeds are almost always considerably less) People still want to use internet phones, play online games and download countless gigabytes of video. 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. 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. I believe site requirements very widely depending upon the primary function of the park. Sites in an overnight park need to be the easiest to get into, but can be the narrowest. Sites in parks that serve as staging areas for major destinations where a guest would normally stay a couple of days to a couple of weeks (My Park) need to be moderately easy to get into and have a reasonable amount of space to be comfortable on a picnic table but not necessarily big enough to play baseball between sites. Parks were you stay all season long can be harder to get into (you only have to do it once a year) but probably should be a little larger to maximize privacy and keep you and the neighbor off each other's nerves. I advertise both WiFi and Big Rig Friendly and will continue to do so even if an occasional guest cannot connect or someone feels my sites are not as big as the sites in Nova Scotia.
I am a HUGE user of wifi when on the road. I also love my satellite TV, convection oven, microwave and multitude of other toys. I have to stop and laugh at myself - and others as well. If we NEED all these things, why are we CAMPING???? We should stay at home where they are common. Camping implies enjoying the outdoors with family/friends/each other/alone etc., in an environment where none of the above niceties are needed. We've gotten so spoiled with toys that we've forgotten what camping is meant to be. CAMPING today is done primarily by backpackers and tenters; the rest of us are simply temporarily (and in many cases permanently) tranferring our homes from one place to another. That being said, I'd hate to take my RV and not have all the bells and whistles. I normally am gone for 3-9 months, but I'd hate to be without any of the above for even a couple of days. When I stay anywhere that doesn't have wifi, I simply take my laptop and find a hot spot.
QUOTE You'll have to explain this post. I don't understand it. If you didn’t understand it the first time, any additional explanation would be wasted.
