Why do a lot of reviewers complain about "Permanent Guests"? I think this is just pure snobbery!!! I have permanents who are very good guests,more so than short term guests, i.e. School Teachers, College Professors, Policemen, Senators & Congressmen, just to name a few. The permanents are always very good neighbors who clean up after their dogs(pets) & keep there sites very nice, will maintain their own yards & enjoy being able to add their own beautiful landscaping, where the short term guests let their children & pets destroy trees & other landscaping & think it's my responsibility to clean up after them & their pets. I screen my permanents very carefully, I do not rent permanent space to anyone I think may be a problem to me or other guests! Unfortunately I would go bankrupt soon if I only rented to short term campers, especially in this economy! I would like to know how other RV Park & Campground Owners feel about complaints about "Permanent Guest"! B)
I'm only speaking for myself, but I've done sixty-some-odd reviews and have only complained about "permanents" once and that was in a park that had trailers in it that looked like they just might have dead bodies in them...and the live bodies that were hanging around the trailers were not anybody I cared to be within a mile of. It wasn't their "permanence" I was unhappy with; it was their alcohol and drug consumption and the volume and late hours at which they enjoyed the afore-mentioned consumables. I stayed in another park that had the most gawd-awful assembly of permanent trailers (including one made out of part of a van and one that consisted of an old pickup camper sitting on a flat bed truck which also had a 'guest house' that was a pickup cap topper sitting on the same flatbed) and I had absolutely no problem with that as the residents were quiet and friendly and kept their sites clean. I personally don't feel that that reporting a park is "mostly permanents" or "lots of seasonals" is necessarily a criticism. It just explains the "nature" of the park. I've found that a park with a lot of "permanents" tends to be quieter than a park filled with weekend partiers. I've never met any unfriendliness or hostility from permanents. On the contrary, I've found that "permanents" tend to be friendlier than my fellow "passers-thru". I'm glad to know that you carefully pick your permanent residents; I'd be glad to stay in your park. However, many rv park owners aren't that careful.
I guess this would be one of my replys to permanent tenants in an RV Park. I do know many have good permanent tenants. Keep them in a seperate area like a number of parks I have seen. A friend has an RV Park and the permanent tenants are his bread and butter but they do keep their sites nice. I like to know if there are a lot of permanent tenant and if they are well kept. If the reviewer doesn't say it is not helpful. But here is what many of us are talking about. BC
We are not a destination park here so pretty much everyone here is permanent. We do get Winter Texans on their way to and from the cold country so other guests are here fairly often. We do not allow RV's to look junky, to have things piled underneath, loud noise or rowdy behavior. We do have over nighters that totally ignore the few rules we do have and think the campground belongs to them. We ask that they park only in their site but 7 out of 10 that unhook will park in the site next to them. I had told one man he could park across the drive in the shade but, instead, he parallel parked right in the driveway. To remind him of where he should park I parked my car beside where I had told him to park but he returned to the CG and parallel parked in the drive right in front of my car and blocked me in. The permanent campers know what we expect of them and what they can expect of us but so many over night guests think that because they are here only for one or two nights there is nothing we can do about them so they don't care what they do. We do have some great guests that come back each year as they travel and we look forward to seeing them. I have been to CG's where the permanent sites look like a "trashy trailer park" but most of the people that come here never know that almost every RV here is permanent.
If a RV park has a lot of trashy long term residents, I would certainly like it in the review. It they look acceptable, then there is no need to mention. It is just one of the factors in evaluating any park. I have stayed in some really trashy places and some seen some really great looking parks with long term residents. I evaluate each according to what I think and hope that others do the same.
I like to know if there are permanent residents as it gives me an idea of the flavor of the park. We've stayed in some parks where there were lots of permanents and their trailers were all run down but we were made to feel welcome and everyone was pleasant and helpful and we felt safe. At other times the trailers were all run down and the people were not so welcoming and once or twice downright scary. That's a situation we try to avoid. If something is giving us a signal that a place isn't safe we leave. Otherwise we tend to adopt a live and let live attitude. Sometimes the state of a rig is just an indication that that's all the resident can afford. Stuff around the perimeter of a rig is not an immediate turn off for us, but trash and garbage are. We've stayed in some immaculate "resort" type parks with arm long lists of rules and no long term residents where the people were snobby and unfriendly. That said, it's nice that if a reviewer mentions that there are permanent residents that he or she also describes the conditions as this gives you some idea of what kind of management a park has.
I've looked at that photo about a dozen times now and, although there's ALOT going on there (is that a coffin on the roof???), I probably wouldn't object to parking next to it or near it just based on looks. What bothers me is when the "permanents" seem a little frightening and/or make it known that they don't really want us there using THEIR laundry machines or complaining to management about their loose dogs or loud noise. So yeah, since you don't know when you're going to run into that, I like to know which parks have mostly permanents and plan only short (overnight) stays there. That said, does anyone know what kind of RV that is in the photo? Kinda cool looking.
IMO, the original posting pretty much describes the difficulty mixing transients and permanents in an rv park. Transients, when mixed with permanents interrupt the community routines, can be more work to manage, come and go with their noisy diesels at odd hours of the morning and night, and compete with permanents for facilities and amenities. Permanents tend to accumulate stuff, in many cases making a site look trashy, and personal landscaping and plants can range from gorgeous to a sick looking bunch of half dead tomato and pepper plants. They many times have to go to work and school early in the morning causing a lot of traffic and noise, and they view facilities like laundry rooms as their own personal domains. We have been told not to use laundry rooms on a certain day as one of the permanents worked six days per week and that was the only day available to her to wash clothes for her four kids, and denied use of a pool as one of the permanents had her multitude of grand and great grandkids visiting and she wanted the pool for themselves. Management tends, in many cases, to favor permanent guests in their dealings. In most cases they know one another, live in the same community, and are many times friends. Transients can many times sense that they are looked upon as necessary evils. Permanent guests present almost guaranteed cash flow, even if management does forget that if their spaces could be filled with transients that cash flow would increase dramatically. We tend to park in one spot for one to two months, so we often get mixed with permanent residents. We see both sides of the issue. Many places handle the issue by essentially having separate areas for transients and permanents. Others haphazardly mix the two. Some places have strict limits on outside stuff and control personal landscaping, and others just ignore the junk as long as the rent is paid. Some parks are lived in by folks with well maintained rvs, others have permanent residents living in duct tape and cardboard shacks. Some parks with a lot of seasonals and permanents have an atmosphere conducive to wanting to stay there, some have the atmosphere of a low rent trailer park. We mention all pertinent, to us, things about an rv park in our reviews. If the number of permanents is relevant, we mention it. If not we ignore it.
I don't know about "permanents", but regarding "seasonals", it is not "pure snobbery" at all for me talking about them, as I can't afford to have a seasonal site at a campground. And most seasonals have much, much nicer campers than I do (I have a 21 foot travel trailer). I am not sure how to tell permanents apart from seasonals, so if anything I might be a little jealous of seeing some of of those setups. That being said.... Seasonals can ruin a campground for weekend families. We've been to campgrounds that are essentially run by the seasonals, where management literally will not enforce campground rules regarding them. Also, money wise, seasonals do provide steady rental income for a campground, but according to some people I've talked to when it comes to the campground store and/or restaurant, the weekenders are the ones who spend money there. One campground manager said he rarely if ever sees any of the seasonals in the campground store - except for free coffee Sunday morning! And that being said.... One of our favorite campgrounds is easily over half filled with seasonals, but the campground has such a fun and laid back atmosphere that we always have a great time there. So there, I have to get back to work. I have no idea if this post really added anything to the thread!
As full-time RVers we are transients during some months, seasonals in others, and work-campers at other times. In all three circumstances our rig is the same although we definitely have more "stuff" out around our site when we are in once place for multiple months. We believe we think our site is always kept neat, but I guess some folks might consider it cluttered. Similarly, some other people might consider the lights I strung on the MH last winter to be tacky, but we thought they looked nice. Personally, I don't care whether someone is "permanent", "seasonal," or "transient". The terms themselves are broad generalizations and IMHO the concern should not be whether the person next to you is in one group or another. For example, I get concerned if there are sites with trash regardless of what "category" of camper is parked there. If that is the case, I would note that in my review and would hope that others would, also. These days long-term or permanent customers are a fact of life at many campgrounds throughout the country. From our experiences, if one tried to avoid CG's with lots of long-term residents it often would be extremely difficult to find places to stay. For example, we never would have expected expected the very high percentage of long term residents we found at the KOA's in Nampa ID or Salt Lake City. But in both cases the parks were excellently maintained and all the sites we saw were clean and neat. The same could not be said for the long term sites at the KOA in Laramie WY, but in that case the long term sites simply were indications of the overall poor condition of the campground. As far as I am concerned my reviews will reflect whether or not the CG is attractively maintained and will not worry excessively whether or not any poorly maintained sites are due to long term or transient residents. IMHO that is a more objective way to deal with the issue.
I like this discussion A LOT since we've run into this weird issue a few times. We are full time, stay in one place anywhere from 2-4 months depending on our situation. I have experienced the "snobbery" of some parks where other long-term snowbirds or retirees shun my family because they think we are going to stay too long in "their" park. It's silly. We are a quiet family that chooses to live this way and put away several thousand dollars every month as we wait to buy our dream property. We have a beautiful rig, keep our space neat and try to avoid the clique-ish nature of some locations. I can see both sides- I've seen some long term people who are downright trashing a camp but I've also seen caravans of hunters partying it up, being loud and destructive. They may only stay a few days, but their "footprint" lasts for weeks. This past summer I was at a park where we had to go on a waitlist for a certain spot. The couple who was occupying the space comes every spring for 6-8 months and she has apparently been landscaping for the past 10 yrs. When word got out that we were on the list for the spot, she came to me with a bag of grass seed, fertilizer and written instructions on the upkeep of the site, lol. This was not a park that allows any of that but there's a sort of silent code among the 55+ crowd who go there. Because we moved into the best spot in the park, we had a lot of people suddenly coming to us with questions about how long we would stay, our plans, etc...what seems like a normal private non-membership park is sort of like a secret little club. Our young, unfamiliar family was not exactly welcome when people realized that we weren't just vacationing. The manager/owner is not a resident, but the camp host seems to run that place like it is his own personal backyard. So, even though that park doesn't allow full-time residency, it happens in a passive manner and there's really nothing anyone can do. We got the hint, were tired of gossip and rumors, stupid stuff like that and went elsewhere. I do think it is important to put the vibe in a review for this reason. Just because a park has lots of pretty rigs doesn't mean they're not full of jerks.
My wife and I have stayed at many odd places. I was a long distance truck driver in my previous life (30 years ago) things where a lot different back then and I have no fear of staying scary places (I know not to smart) we do a lot of bon-docking and when I arrived at a Wal-Mart in Florida that no longer allowed ONP I found a county campground in the area (cheap) it was very scary looking but what the hell. We ended up staying and finding and talking to lots of poor unfortunate people who could not have been nicer. The moral of the story is don’t judge a book by its cover, r0n…. B)
I can tell you from camping close to one time a month some where that a lot of people do not have a shiny class A that are nice people down on there luck. And most on here better remember with this government and the economy about any one of us could be in there place. I know quite a few that were very well off till the idiots elected idiots to run the country and they lost every thing. Some of them work camp to get by and some have a little money for lot rent. Some have nothing but a tent but that does not make them a bad Person. No more than a slob with a class A and a belly full of beer makes him a good camper because he has a shiny RV. There are some camp grounds I would not want to stay in and some I can`t get in that are class A only or is a place to play golf or what ever that I would not want to stay at as I would not fit in. But it is there money and that is fine. In a review it is nice to know what to expect when you get there. But on the basest of safety and trash are important. So if you choose not to stay there you don`t waste your time.
