Are RV Spaces becoming harder to get?

We use them on the RAM one for each wheel, great traction in the wintertime .

 

Some of you may wonder how my significant other puts up with me all the time. Others may ask why she puts up with me all the time. I'll tell answer both questions. Because she loves me and wouldn't have me any other way. She likes that I am an old guy on the outside and a 6 year old on the inside. Says I keep her young at heart also. So now you know why I "yam like I yam" cuz I was born a ham......

Thanks guys and gals, you are all great folks. Hope to meet up with a few of you (heck I'd settle for just one of you) someday in some RV park along a path we've both taken and decided to drop the anchor for the night or a few days and nights at.............

Regards, BankShot..............(aka Terry)

 

Don't change. Life is too short eat dessert first.

 

Well, I have been rving for decades now and have had 6 different RVs. My last RV was 42 foot and yes we had a few issues getting reservation if we went spur of the moment. Now being under 30 foot and flexible on the 50/30 amp I called and got a reservation in a campground last weekend when they were booked up for bigger coaches and I called and got reservations last week for Yellowstone and Jackson and also got the last prime spot in Cour D lane ID on the river and lake. So, I think it depends on size and since most of my life I have had FORETRAVEL's and they were all large class As, I always planned ahead and found a place but this new little coach fits everywhere mostly and is great to live in. SO, I have not found what you have stated currently. Time will tell though.

 

Try getting a spot now for next winter in one of the more popular Florida state parks, John. You won't even find a tent site now in some of them. They often fill up within seconds of the 11 month reservation window opening. That said, thanks to a cancellation, we did get a spot in a NY state park on fairly short notice for the 4th of July week. We've been RV'ing since the late 60's, and it has definitely gotten harder to get good spots on short notice over the past few years as RV sales have taken off. Even long date reservations have gotten harder in some popular areas.

 

Interesting information as I do not snowbird yet so I have not had an issue getting a site. I know I have visited friends in their coaches in FL and AZ and TX in the winter and have been able to get sites in their parks for the most part or very close by. I would think that close by does not cut it on the wintering part. I got reservations for Yellowstone and Jackson hole two weeks out without any issue so it must be some combination of things.

 

The more costly private parks in popular snowbird areas are more likely to have some short term spots available depending on the location. Finding spots for a few days stay is always much easier than a two week or longer stay. Even the popular state parks often have sites available for a night or two, and if you don't mind "site shuffling", you may even be able to stay longer by changing sites every day or two. That does take some of the joy out of your visit though.

 

One thing that does bug us is as follows. You make a week's reservation at a given park and make it several months in advance so as to have a good spot to enjoy your stay, etc. You are told that the specific space is available for those dates. You call back a couple of times prior to arriving just to check that all is still okay. You arrive only to find out that your reserved space is now not available and that someone else is in it. You ask what happened and are told that a group of several RVs arrived a few days prior without reservations and asked for all the spaces they needed to be together. So some "shuffling" had to be done in order to accommodate them. I can understand a park not wanting to turn away 7 or 8 RVs and would favor them over our one single RV and yet why couldn't the park have called us and told us what was going on so we could choose another space perhaps or simply go to another park? I ended up having a nice little talk with the owner of that park and he did move the coach in our reserved space to another one a couple of spaces away but still okay with "the group". So it all worked out fine after I told him if he didn't give us our reserved space that we were going to leave and go to another park in the area and would never come back to his park. And that our review of his park would not be a good one either due to how we had been treated. That has never happened again thankfully but I know it happens to others and to me it is not a good business practice and certainly not the way to hold onto returning customers, etc. We have "site shuffled" once and once only. To get all settled in and then have to unhook, load everything back inside and move to another space is not something we will do unless of course there was some kind of emergency where we had to move..................

BankShot................(aka Terry)

 

Many parks include a disclaimer in their reservation systems to the effect that while they do try to honor specific site requests, they do not guarantee them.

 

Ok folks, here's the next million $$ idea. A website that scalps reservations to some of the desirable RV parks and sells the reservations at a profit. Just like StubHub and other ticket sites work.

Chris G.

 

When I started reading your million dollar idea about scalping for profit, I instantly thought of Reserve America.

 

Hmm, sounds like a scam to me Chris..................

Terry.............(aka BanShot)

 

Sorry, I don't see the connection. RA charges campgrounds a fee for their services, and it's up to the campgrounds whether to pass all or part of that fee on to the customers or not. For years, the Florida State Parks for instance, had no reservation fee on RA. Until they started passing part of the fee on to the users as a defacto rate hike a couple of years ago. The campgrounds decide what we pay, not RA.

 

Dutch,
In Florida State parks you are still paying for their service one way or the other. FYI, it's $7 to reserve a campsite in an Oregon State park through RA.
Sure RA provides a service, but in Oregon, ALL advance reservations must be made through them. So, while it isn't "scalping" in the same way as Fitzjohnfan's Stub Hub example, but the "event" is sold out and the only way we can attend the event is through RA. Legalized scalping?

 

Hmm, sounds like a scam to me Rick. Oh, wait a minute I already said that didn't I.............

 

Rick, every reservation system has a cost related to it. How individual parks choose to cover that cost is up to them. The bottom line is that we're paying for the service even when we walk into a park office and rent a site directly when the fee is not paid separately. RA doesn't decide how that fee is paid, the parks do. I don't see RA as the "bad guy" at all, but rather a convenience to both me and the individual parks that contract for their services. If I don't want to use RA, then I'm free to choose parks that don't use RA's services, just as I'm free to choose parks that don't use the KOA reservation system. That one isn't free either....

 

We left on April 17th on our big trip this spring (51 days but did not know how long we would be gone originally) with only reservations for the 1st two nights (2 different places) and then later in the trip for 3 nights at Colter Bay in the Grand Tetons. Stayed in 29 campgrounds along the way, some for more then one night and one campground two separate times, all without advance reservations!!! Guess we were lucky We did manage to extend out visit at Colter Bay by one extra night after being told to talk with the manager first thing when she came in on a Monday morning -- she said originally no we are full but sit down and then worked at her computer for about 2-3 minutes and said well you can have one more night. I am sure that a couple of the places we stayed at in Utah would not have been able to let us extend our nights if it had been closer to summertime.

 

On long trips we generally make reservations only a few days in advance once we are sure that we will be leaving where we are. On some occasions we have not been able to get a site at our next destination on the day we wanted to arrive. But being retired and not on a schedule we have always been able to work something out. Once or twice we have extended where we were for a night or two with no problem, or we have changed our route and gone to a different park/town where we could get reservations, but this really has not happened very often. There was one time that we were in a park that was going to be completely full (as were all the other parks in town) because of an upcoming city-wide event, so we knew we had to leave by a certain day. In the early morning of the day we were supposed to leave we had a medical emergency which involved a 2 day hospital stay and then some recuperation time before being able to drive. Walmart was looking pretty good, but when we explained the situation to the park staff, they allowed us to stay in a new area that they were building, and we even had hookups. We were very appreciative, and we were able to get something worked out in a completely booked park.

 

For short term stays, we've found parks can be much more accommodating in finding room for a walk in or stay extension, particularly when there are extenuating circumstances. Even with reservations, situations can arise that call for a last minute change. With a previous Class A, we were once towed into a crowded park where we had a reservation, only to be told at check in that there was no way the tow truck was going to be able to park us in our assigned back in site, and there were no more suitable sites available. I asked the clerk if she had any suggestions for another nearby park that might be able to accommodate us, and she went to ask the manager about it. A couple of minutes later, the manager came out and said to give him a few minutes and he would move his own coach off of his full hook up storage site next to a maintenance shed, and the tow truck could easily pull through and drop us off there. It worked out perfectly, and the site actually turned to be very nice, very private, and very easy for the tow truck operator to navigate both initially and when he came back a few days later to haul us back to the repair shop for a transmission replacement. We were very pleased with the "above and beyond" service!

 

It's amazing the difference in "management styles" displayed in the various parks and campgrounds. As Dutch stated, the manager of the park they had the tranny problem in went "above and beyond" to be of assistance. To me to move his own coach so the tow truck could maneuver, etc. was really over the top. And yet in the next park down the road you run into some wingnut who hasn't a clue what customer service is. Thankfully we've been at this RV thing now for enough time to have weeded out the wingnuts and have our favorite parks picked and chosen in all the areas we travel in. I know that one of these days we are going to crawl out from under our west coast and desert rocks and venture further east and will no doubt be meeting up with another wingnut or three along the way. But until then we be happy campers and are getting prepped now for our upcoming trek up I-5 to Washington state where we plan on sampling a craft beer here and there leaving a couple of bucks at one of the Indian gaming casinos/RV parks we really enjoy staying at. No wingnuts there, just a friendly and helpful tribe of normal folk..................

Watch out Washington, here come the Californians...........

BankShot...............(aka Terry)