It's been a while since I've been in the site. I'm having some difficulty navigating. When trying to find places to go, (like cities), I'm getting one. (Elkhart, IN for example, shows 18 ,but I can only access 1.) What am I doing wrong??
I just looked and I get only one there also. Maybe someone from admin will see this and be able to explain why that is. At least you can know you haven't done anything wrong.
Dinky, You're not doing anything wrong. I always get that. If you click on different things long enough the other campgrounds will ultimately show up. The whole thing is confusing and counterintuitive. Half the time I give up before finding them and go to the Good Sams site. solo on the road
I was going to bring up this very thing some time back, but didn't. This happens with many cities I've clicked on in a given state. The city in the scroll down listings for that state will say, for example that there are 8 RV parks/campgrounds listed for that city but when you actually go to that city it shows only one or two, or more often than not, far less than what is shown in the scroll down listing. Not complaining here, just curious as is the OP as to what is going on with this..........? Regards, Bankshot
It's a known bug that is on the list of things to be fixed. Thanks for making sure we were aware of it.
This is one of the bugs we have, but this is the biggest discrepancy I have seen so far. Usually the count is only off by one or two numbers. The admins have reported this to the programmers. We are just waiting for it to be fixed. However, I assume you got to the listings for Elkhart by clicking on the state and then the town name in the drop down menu. The interesting thing is that if you search a slightly different way, you get the 18 listings for Elkhart, but most of them are for the surrounding area. To find these 18 listings follow these instructions: From the Home page, click on the GO button beside the search box on the menu bar. On the next screen type in the name of the town in the (long) search box. DO NOT enter the name of the state here. In the drop down State box, click on the state the town is in. You can indicate a distance in the drop down Distance box, but for this search, I left it blank. It then defaults to 25 mi. Click GO and the system will display two sets of results: The first set is “Suggested Cities” which is a list of cities that may have a similar name (or search term) to the one you have searched. This search only lists Elkhart IN 18 parks The second set lists the parks. They are listed in increasing distance from the chosen city. Notice that on the left side of the screen are all the filters you can use to indicate what amenities you would like the park to have. As you check amenities, the system will display only those parks that provide what you have chosen. I assume that the 18 parks listed in the cities menu on the Home page is the same 18 displayed in this search, so it appears that the Home page number includes near by parks. But when you click on Elkhart, only the one park with the Elkhart address is displayed. I agree that is confusing. We understand that the search function needs some work, and we are hoping this will be fixed soon.
Apparently, even though some of the admins were presidents of Fortune 100 companies, they have no idea why the counts are increasing. Well, this stupid ole park owner, who doesn't know she ought from shineola, is going to crack the code for them. It has nothing to do with how many parks and cities are within whatever radius is selected or anything as complicated as that. What is happening is ever since the new version went online, every time a review is posted to a park in whatever location you are viewing the count of the number of parks in that location increases by one. So if you have a city with two rv parks and there has been 5 reviews posted to those parks since the new version went live, that city will now show a count of 7. They system is counting every review as a new park. You would think a problem like that would be easy to solve. It has to be as simple as putting in good wifi into an RV park. But hey, they are "working" on it.
Interesting theory but I just tested it for two cities in MT and the math doesn't add up. Great Falls MT shows as having 11 parks in the list on the left side of the state page but there are only 3 parks listed. There have been 11 reviews posted since the new system went online late in 2014. By your analysis that should result in the city showing as having 14 parks, not 11. I also did the analysis for Helena MT and the results are similar. If you have a more detailed analysis of this issue feel free to send it to us.
I agree that your theory is not holding up. I used Elkhart, IN, as the example to test what you have proposed is happening. The new site was launched in November 2014. Prior to that, Elkhart, IN, had one campground listed for it, and it still has only one. Since November 2014 we have posted 15 reviews for the park listed in Elkhart. Based on what you have said, that would total 16 parks listed- 1 park in Elkhart prior to Nov. 2014 plus 15 reviews added since Nov. 2014 equals 16. I even checked the other 17 parks you get listed in the surrounding area to be sure there were not 2 more reviews added to one of them that got counted. I discovered that since Nov. 2014, we have added 29 reviews to the 17 other parks so that does not add up to 18 either. It would be great if what you have said was the very simple solution, but I don't see that it is. However, if I have misunderstood your theory I would appreciate your further clarification.
I just looked at one of my towns, and one new review has posted and lo and behold, the count for the town increased by one. Surely, you can look at a town and see the count before you post a review to that town and then look at the count after that review has gone online. That is what is happening. I don't know how the base count got started, I wasn't on the site the first day and didn't pay much attention to the site during the winter, since all the parks that interest me are closed, so no reviews are going to be going up. But I do know that all I have to do is look at my towns and if the count has changed, that means a new review has posted for either me or my competitor.
Thanks for your further explanation. The previous tests I ran did not confirm what you reported. Those tests involved counting the reviews that have been submitted for the parks in a town since the site launched. BUT after reading your last post I decided test this a different way. So I chose a city and in the drop down menu on the left side of the home page, it had 13 parks listed. I chose a park in that city and added a review to it and OMG the home page number went up to 14. I tested with a city that had only one park in it and with a city with 7 parks in it, and each time the number beside the city in the drop down box increased. I am absolutely stunned. We knew the counts for certain parks were off, but I don't think anyone had even suspected that adding a review was causing it. This has already been reported to our programmers, and now that we know what is causing this, hopefully they will get it fixed. Thanks for pointing this out. Looks like you know quite a bit about "she ought" and shinola after all.
Because you had a particular interest in a few specific towns you were focusing on them more closely than any of us have the time (or interest) to do. As a result you saw repeated changes in the park count and did an excellent job in correlating them with an event. Thanks for having reported this; it has probably saved our programming team a lot of effort. Don't be reluctant to report other bugs to us if you find them. This is a complex website and it's impossible for us to exercise it through all the possible combinations of commands so user reports have been essential to getting it fully debugged. Thank you for your help.
Westernparkowner, It appears this is now fixed, but we'll keep an eye on it. This has been a problem for months, and no one realized what was causing it. As docj said, you were concentrating on just your city and because you obviously check on the reviews you get, you could see what was causing the park count to go up. Thanks for "cracking the code."
