Campgrounds for large families

SDcampowneroperator wrote:

I'll chip in with a simple concept. Say the camp has an extra fee amenity, be it waterpark, paddleboats, mini golf pick your fun. Along comes a mom and asks ' why cant you make it free?'
Our reply is how could we make it free, we would have to raise our rates to cover the cost which would not be fair to those who do not use that amenity, in effect having them pay- subsidize your family.

I wouldn't expect anything like this to be free. In my experience, if those are covered at all, they fall under the "resort fee". I'll use Monroe Co KOA as an example. They have a giant outdoor chess board, a waterslide, mini golf, playgrounds, pancake breakfast every morning, etc. All of that is included in the resort fee. So when you're somewhere like that where you are getting wristbands in order to use attractions, I'd fully expect you're going to pay for each additional person who comes with you. We had 7 kids with us that weekend, I think we paid something like $85 a night.

Now if the waterslide had an extra wristband, mini golf was $3 per game, breakfast was not included, etc, and everything is pay as you go, that's when I start to wonder about the extra fees for extra people in my trailer. If we pay according to what we use at the campground anyway, then it seems to me like those fees cover the actual use of the attractions, and the extra $5 per night for putting people in all the beds in my camper feels unnecessary.

I also wonder about campgrounds that do not have any of those amenities but still want the extra fees. I can understand the worry about taking over the bathhouse, so maybe it partly depends on capacity. I'd wonder if that is more common for large groups spanning multiple sites than for single families though. For us, we have a lot of little ones, so only my 2 oldest sons use the campground showers. Everyone else showers (or baths) in the camper, including my wife and I. Same to an extent with the restrooms. I haven't actually noticed any times when the restrooms were full or long lines for the showers when we've camped, so I couldn't say. If others have had those experiences, specifically with large families like mine and not large groups that occupy more than one site, then maybe there is something to that.

If all there is to offer families is a playground and maybe a pool, I have a hard time believing that my big family requires an extra $20-$30 per night of maintenance to those facilities. I highly doubt we do significantly more damage to the grass, or require significantly more chemicals in the pool, or wear and tear on the playground. The general impression I am getting in this discussion is that families like ours are a significant burden, or that we lower the enjoyment value of the campground to others. Like I've said, I know we get the looks sometimes when we roll in and people worry that we're going to be out of control and overrun with all our kids. But if 4 kids are "allowed" on a site, I just have a hard time with the idea that 8 or 9 are proportionally that much more of a burden on everyone else.

For you campground owners, it's your park and I get that you might rather not deal with us, and that's totally ok. I'm not even saying you should or shouldn't do it that way. I'm just looking for the ones who sell their sites for all family sizes, the ones who figure that if we are one family only using one camping unit and we're comfortable in it, that is good enough.

As to the trailer question, we used to do this in a 3 bunk hybrid. It's amazing how many you can sleep in one of those things, though it doesn't leave room for anything else and it definitely limited how often we went anywhere. But this summer we upgraded to the unit in my signature. It has an opposing slide bunkhouse, and when the bottom beds are folded out they are almost king size. We can sleep 3 kids on a king size bed, plus the 2 bunks back there give us 6-8 easily in just the bunkhouse. We can get a couple smaller ones on the couch too, or one on the couch and one on the dinette, then of course mom and dad up front. Pulling it with a 1 ton 15 passenger van, so there's room for everybody in both tv and rv.