Camping Clubs...?

Storage Man wrote:
Does anyone belong to Thousand Trails, Passport America, or one of the others?

Is it worth it to belong...buy into...one of them?

If so what are the best two or three to look at?

We've had RVs of one kind or the other for years but have always been working and had no time to use something like that. We have retired early and pick up our new motor home tomorrow. Looking at a few long trips and a bunch of short ones each year.

We traveled fulltime for 5 years and here are a few lessons/suggestions from our experiences. We used both Good Sam and PPA. Good Sam discounts generally don't have the restrictions that PPA has. Its a flat 10% with no time or season restrictions - MOST of the parks! PPA is great for shoulder and off-season discounts. As mentioned by other posts, read the restrictions very carefully. You will save your membership very quickly. HOWEVER, most PPA parks DON'T offer any discounts during their busy season, so you have to pay attention to that in their restrictions. Usually their discount is only for 1 or 2 nights. Some of the PPA parks can look pretty "sketchy" and there have been several that we just by-passed.

Several other techniques to use. Check out the weekly and or the monthly rates. Monthly rates are very often less than the daily rates and if you stay at least 2-2 1/2 weeks, you are then ahead of the daily rate game, even if you don't stay the entire month.

We LOVE our national park campgrounds, so by all means, get your Senior Pass for a one time fee of $10. It not only lets you into the national parks, monuments, etc for free, but if the NPS is operating the campgrounds you get a 50% discount. If the campground is a Zantac run campground, they don't honor the discount as a rule.

I would highly recommend against buying a campground membership for at least the first year or two, until you see what kind of traveling and parks you like to stay in. If you decide to go that route, there are many single home park memberships that you can buy into for under $300 that gives you access to Coast to Coast, RPI, ROD and several other groups at low yearly dues and greatly reduced nightly rates.

Also, look at your state park rates. Many states offer their "senior residents" substantial camping discounts.

Good luck and enjoy your travels.

Passport America, is worth it a few times and the cost is recovered.

Belonged to TT for many years but unless you camp a LOT, they're not worth it. You got to use them to get the value.

We have Passport America and Good Sam. We try to use PA mostly and just plan around their restrictions. We also use city & county parks, Cabela's and some fairgrounds. We are staying in Bishop, CA tonight at the Tri County Fairgrounds $25 full hookup and a few sites with shade. Not busy at all, fairgrounds usually have easy access. We prefer to use PA, usually under $20 except for really popular places like Gettysburg. If I were going to consider any other membership it would be Coast to Coast, you can get a deluxe re sale membership for under $1,000. They have parks all over the country. As an example look at Treasure Lake in Branson, MO. On their website they list the resale memberships and the costs.

I would give passport America a try. For the $44 it's worth a gamble. Especially since you will be able to take advantage of their restrictions which most of what we have seen is that they only let you use it sun-thur. If we had time we could take off during the week, we would definitely use it. I'm gonna keep it in mind for making plans for our vacation next year. It might be worth it for just a week, depending on where we go.

Take your time in buying any expensive memberships. We had Thousand Trails for a few years because it came with a campground membership. We never used it because we were never near a Thousand Trails park. Annual dues were high, like $250/year? Anyway, I said I wanted out, but they said no, I had to pay the dues and couldn't just quit. Turns out I had one of the earlier memberships that allowed me to do just that, and I did. Others have to sell the membership to get out from under the annual dues, so you can find them pretty cheap.

Same thing with campground memberships. We paid something like $6K for ours and have to pay $250/year for upkeep. We haven't used it in several years but are charged annually for the upkeep. We need to either sell/give it away or start using it.

Just don't be quick to jump into anything costly or long term.

The last 2 winters we have joined both PPA and Good Sam. We have saved more than the cost of membership several times over.

PPA ..while it is true that EACH PARK can set it's own restrictions, i think it is worth every penny. There are clinker parks in that system, as any group i have belonged to, but if you look at the park reviews BEFORE you drive there, an look at them with google earth, you won't get burned. I only once ask to be excussed from our reservation because of the condition of the park, and they did just that ..without penalty. go to their website (don't have to belong) and search the parks listed...AND CHECK the restriction section of EACH park.

Passport America is great. Easy to save the cost with just a few overnights.

We have been looking at PPA. Stayed at one last week. OK but I suspect they are parks that lack business & need the extra help from PPA. Good for over night. I would have saved $15. JMHO but it was a $15 park. Not a $30 park. I would have passed it up but only park in that area.