Colorado River Resorts membership?

Just go in with your eyes wide open, not saying they are a bad deal,but Memberships can be very costly depending on how often you use them verses the yearly cost to belong.

There are several nice Parks in the system. We have only stayed at Emerald Cove just across the river from Parker, AZ. We have friends that stay at several of the Parks using RPI. Some Parks will limit you to just 7 nights using RPI.

If really interested, you can find a resale a lot cheaper than buying new. Also, if you go in on one of their sales promotions, I was told that you would have to wait a year before you could transfer a resale.

As others stated look at what they have for parks, are they in places you will use? Do you want to go there on a regular basis? For us they don't work because the lions share of parks are on the Colorado river and we are not into the river. KQ Ranch near Julian is nice and we liked it but at the time we toured it several years ago it was a 6.5 hour drive on a Friday night that wasn't a holiday weekend or during the summer when Fridays are crazy so we passed. We currently have a western zone pass for TT and use it a lot so it works for us.

Your camping preferences will dictate how worthwhile a membership is, as someone else stated also check resales. Not sure they can enforce the 1 year waiting period after a tour but do you want the hassle. Resale will be 15-40% of what they want at the tour but some features may be dropped on transfer.

"Resale will be 15-40% of what they want at the tour..."

Many of them go for 5-10% if you look around.

Its very hot in that area in the summer time, think twice about a membership, I am a free bird myself, go where I want and when ever, never pay a membership just to have fun.

One sore point......
Some of these membership resorts have a 'lock out' period.....meaning IF you go to their presentation/tour and don't buy from them you can NOT purchase via 'resale' for a 2 yr. period. Course one does not find this out until afterwards and only IF you question "What about resale memberships?"

Buy directly.....high priced
Buy Resale..........pennies on the dollar.

We travel full time so we bought a membership with C2C and RPI affiliate programs for $950 total.
We have stayed at several Colorado River Parks over the years using our C2C program $10/night. Lake Havasu, Yuma Lakes, Cherry Valley, KQ Ranch.

But we travel weekly and use a lot of CGs--parks etc. so for us a membership works. Especially across the US

Not a ft traveler.......we wouldn't have a membership as we wouldn't want to feel like we had to keep going to same places just to get our monies worth.

If you accept the freebies from CRA and then want to purchase you are locked out of buying a used membership for I believe it is two years. So a three day two night free camping trip could end up costing you several thousand dollars.

Have spent two weeks at Emerald Cove....its a BIG place(over 800 sites) and not much more than a Parking Lot But with that being said, there is a ton of stuff to do here. This is our first time here using RPI preferred(10 bucks a nite for two weeks) and we have had a ball. As to purchasing a membership.....if it works for you, go for it(resale first, of course).

bdpreece wrote:
If you accept the freebies from CRA and then want to purchase you are locked out of buying a used membership for I believe it is two years. So a three day two night free camping trip could end up costing you several thousand dollars.

Yes, be very careful. Research that...

Stayed there a few years ago and took the tour and sales presentation. The sales people were very aggressive and took offense when we told them we would like to talk it over and would get back to them. The sales man actually threw a coupon at us and told us we needed the free meal since we could not afford the price of the membership. We have not gone back.