Membership Parks-Thousand Trails,,,,Escapees etc

State Parks.....sure, check out the prices for a State Park in Calif, its not cheap. If you get a full TT membership, you pay annual dues generally amounting to roughly 500.00 per year and of course your original up front cost( on the resale market, you can get deals). That affords you unlimited nights in TT Preserves, with my contract, I can stay up to 4 weeks at a location. Try staying at, lets say Tahoe Valley for 4 weeks and see how much that cost you...I stayed 3 weeks last year for a 50 amp full hook up site for Zero/nada. At a minimum of 30-40 dollars per night my 100 days would cost me 3-4 thousand dollars a year....as I said, if you use it, it can't be beat. IMHO....your mileage may well vary!

We have been members of Thousand T for 35 years. It is not as good as it was 20 or 25 years ago but it is still better than most of the rest of Camping Clubs.
My dues are $275 a year and I can stay 14 days then go to another TT for another 14 days then back to the first one again for another 14 days. I can stay every day in a TT Park if I wished for the $275 dues for the year. We use about 150 days out of the year. We stay on the Oregon, and Wash Coast for the last 20 years
for several months. That is hard to beat. Never have a problem getting a res.

???

TT has two programs.

The Zone Pass is intended for short stay folks who don’t travel much. For $400 - 500 a person gets 30 nights free camping, can only stay 14 nights at a park, and after 4 nights, must stay out of the TT system for 7 nights before they can go to another TT / Encore Park. After 30 each year, the person must pay $3 per night for TT parks.

A Membership allows unlimited free nights per year, 21 or 28 day stays, can go direct from one park to another.

Some TT parks do charge a utility fee for 50 amp power.

Over the past two years, I’ve found about 1/3 of the TT parks from Texas to California to Washington have sewer hookups almost always available.

We used to be state park / COE senior pass campers as full timers. I find TT comparable to most SP & Federal campgrounds. Some better, some worse.

Reservations in highly desirable areas are often much easier to get at TT than many state parks. I cannot get SP reservations in Florida or CA, but the can at TT parks in those states.

I love Arkansas and Oregon state Parks. Best game n the country in my opinion.

But as with anything, you get what you pay for. A “club” that advertises ‘free camping’ is not going to compare favorably with $50 per night private resort campgrounds.

Coast to Coast and RPI are reciprocal programs. If there are empty spots at another campground in the system where you want to go, they are good. If the campgrounds are full, you have to find something else.

Colorado River and Ocean Canyon Properties are two regional membership campground companies. If your goal/ travel plans are not national- they might be good choices.

But most important go to a campground of the group you are considering and talk to people who have been with that company for several years.

DO NOT buy on your first visit. Resale memberships for all the campground companies are available at a much reduced price.

Lastly, we find Passport America very valuable when traveling across the country. We never use PA for more than a one or two night stop.

For only the price of the initial membership, you can do a LOT of State Park camping! After the initial membership price, you still have to pay for campsites and annual fees. Why not use ALL that money and go anywhere, be anywhere, do anything, and if you travel to an area where there is no TT, you won't feel guilty for loosing money.

If your looking for a "Resort" type membership, forget Thousand Trail's but if you want reasonable campgrounds spread across the US, then I wholeheartedly would give TT a look. We've been TT members for close to 10 year's, we are not full time although because we live in So Calif, we have a good choice of Reserve's around us.... so in a word, we stay at TT campgrounds, on average, about 100 plus nights a year(generally more like 150 nights). By no means is it prefect ...but if you use it to it's full potential, you can't go wrong! IMHO

There is one other CG membership park... Coast to Coast. Which we do NOT recommend to any one. We have been "members" for 15 yrs, and have been trying to sell our membership, seems most are aware of them and stay away. We are also members of T/T and have a lot better luck with them, we were Full timers sveral years ago, and will start again in 3 more years. There are good and bad points in all parks and clubs. The only way to find out is to listen to others and judge for yourself. Good Luck and Happy Camping

Escapees parks are not "membership parks." Escapees is an RV club with many benefits for members other than staying at their parks. (We use Escapees for our legal domicile and mail forwarding service). The club has two kinds of parks: 1) Rainbow parks - normal "come and go" parks where Escapees members stay for extremely low rates; and 2) co-op parks where one buys into a co-op (cost depends on the park location and amenities and ranges from around $10,000 to a little over $30,000). With the co-op parks, you are assigned a "permanent" space but do not own a deeded lot. There are many advantages to this setup. The club also offers discounts at a network of commercial parks across the country that do not belong to the club. The discounts are typically 5 - 10%. As you can see, this is quite different from Thousand Trails. We are also members of Passport America and use it whenever possible. PA stays usually save us 50%, but are sometimes limited to two or three nights or restricted to weekday nights. A good deal, though, considering the low cost of joining. Personally, I would not consider Thousand Trails and it would not work for us.

Rob

Passport America may be a good deal.

Membership parks require a careful look at the rules--pages and pages of if, but, then. If you feel you must buy into a system that works in a similar manner to a time share--at least buy used. A Philadelphia lawyer would be useful for interpretation.

I prefer freecampsites.net

We belong to TT. not all the parks are 1 or 2 stars but we have found it a good deal for us. You can buy a used membership for about $2000 + yearly dues if you are full timing , that makes the nightly rate pretty cheap.. Search the internet for Thousand Trails Resales. if you buy makes sure to get 21 days in and park to park.

We have had a Thousand Trails membership for many years. This year we are seriously considering giving it up. The parks have become more like low income rental lots than family parks. Almost all the nice sites are occupied under yearly lease agreements. Many of the parks are in poor condition as maintenance is slow to happen. The last park we stayed in it took us three tries to find a site with working electricity and the site we finally stayed in had an open sewer connection from which the odor drifted into our coach. Save your money and camp some place nice.