Membership Parks-Thousand Trails,,,,Escapees etc

When looking at the memberships, you need to check on how you get out of the membership when you are no longer getting your funds. Also make sure you research you home park carefully as that can greatly affect you cost. When calculating your cost per night in membership campgrounds, don't forget to add in the cost of memberships.

You should also consider how you travel to ensure the membership is right for you by having parks in the type/location settings you want to camp near.

Personally, I'll never join a membership like Thousand Trails type membership. I prefer to camp in state, COE, county and Federal type areas along with boondocking. I don't need full hookups and love nature so these parks are just right for me. Between boondocking (20%) and the type parks, my average is under $15/night which is fantastic since that is all east coast camping, I still don't get the senior discount, and haven't begun hosting/volunteering.

So just be careful and make sure it works for you with a way to escape if you find out it doesn't.

Before investing money in any membership RV park arrangement, you should first get some time under your belt full timing. Until you do, you really don't know what will work best for you. You can buy a year of Passport America for $40 where you get 50% off member parks, since that is not enough money to worry about if you decide it doesn't work for you.

Thousand Trails is moving away from a membership park for campers to charging a yearly dues for membership and then renting or leasing out the choice camping spots by the year. Good for them but bad for you unless you want to go to the same place all the time.

We have used Thousand Trails for the past 6+ months without issues. We recently added their Trails Collection for $200/year which gave us about 100 more parks we can use (Encore parks). While we have experienced the issues that Gary above mentions in a park or 2 the good is outweighing the bad. Yea, there is maintenance that could be better. Yea, I've stayed at exactly 1 park (Washington State) that didn't have full hookup. I work from the road so I use cellular internet and it's true that the parks have $hitty wifi, but most parks regardless of who owns them have that.

As a full-timer we've been able to keep our nightly cost below $20/night using them and when we added the Trails Collection our "out" week became covered by going to one of the other parks. We saved the $200 on our first stay and have been using it all winter here in FL so it's paid for itself 2x over already.

Do the research and make the decision that seems right for you. For us TT pair off. Yea, we still use Passport America and Good Sams when we need to but so far for us the TT is working.

My experience with Thousand Trails parks is that they push quantity over quality. They frequently take large wooded tracts in inconvenient locations, cut rough, poorly maintained roads through them, clear huge numbers of narrow, off-level pads and furnish only water and electricity at them. An RV can provide those two amenities by itself. You are expected to use a communal dump station and while I generally do not complain about trees on a site, if a site is so heavily wooded as to preclude Sat TV reception, I expect cable TV. I do not go camping to watch TV but like to watch the morning news with my coffee. Wireless Internet is usually only furnished at the clubhouses. If I still wanted a primitive experience, I'd use state and national parks. TT generally does not assign a spot, you are left to your own to find a place to park without someone to guide you along unfamiliar wooded trails. I didn't spend what I did on an RV to be annoyed by poor service. Just my take on several TT experiences. The corporate attitude at most send me looking for a more friendly mom and pop park. Join Passport America. They will not disappoint!