New RV Park Reviews website is now online

[docj]

The new and improved RV Park Reviews website has gone live. Spend some time exploring it. Additional features will be added over time. Please let us know of any bugs you encounter; we can guarantee there will be some! :B RV Park Reviews

[Veebyes]

Revconguy wrote:
Nice but I don't trust the reviews. I always had problems getting negative reviews I submitted posted. Positive ones were no problem....

As before you have to take some of both the negative & positive reviews with a grain of salt.

I came across one, a recent post, on a SP which I am very familiar with. The poster gave it a very low rating simply because there is no handicapped parking, no parking at all, right outside the bathroom. He also grossly exagerated the walking distance to the bathroom from his site.

Well it just is not so. Short term parking to use for the bathroom, though not designated 'handicapped', not designated at all actually, is not far away. There are sites that happen to be very close to the bathroom.

Everyone has their rating method. Mine starts at 10, then points are deducted per item starting with value for money in consideration of ammenities provided & what is expected for the type of CG. I don't expect WIFI at a SP. I do at a private CG. The private will lose a point if WIFI is not available.

[Teamfour]

Nice job!

[Jim_Shoe]

I noted that one thing I liked about the old site that has been continued in the new site. The reason why a reviewer gave the CG a good or bad score. I think that for most of us, some things are important, other things, not so much. I don't care if it has a pool, playground or dog walking area. For others, those things are important. But WIFI, FHU and cable are important to me.

[Duck]

I like the new site. My only complaint is with the listing of new additions. On the old site I would look down the listing to find post that were near the area we want to visit. The new site makes it a lot harder to scan the listing by area or state.
Don

[tpi]

How could a camp be reviewed fairly on these many factors they have no control of?

Because it is part of the customer experience. I certainly don't hold campground responsible for cell service any more than the weather, the local attractions or the flying insects. But all those things have some impact whether I'm staying in the area. If you had excellent cell service in your park would you have a beef with this?

I think it goes without saying phones vary. But some info is better than none, and a line or two in the review isn't going to overcomplicate it for someone else.

Just an example we had a party of 5 in Zion River Resort last summer and all 5 had intermittent reception with Verizon. It is weak there. This data point is very much in agreement with the few posted reviews which mentioned VZ service.

I was in Wonderland RV Park Torrey UT. VZ voice and text strong, no data. It's easy and quick.

[Bigdog]

Is it really necesary to have all that stuff? It just makes the site more difficult and if someone wants to say that they had good wifi or cell reception,let them do it. I actually don't care one way or another. If folks need all that stuff bad enuff,let them start a directory for it. Lord knows,there are too many directories out there now.
I really like having a simple review site and the new one here is great. I would just like to see folks make reviews of where they stay because sometimes there are more rv parks in an area than are reviewed.

[SDcampowneroper]

I've discussed the cell phone issue with the site owner. I wish it could be made as simple as 'this works, that does not'.
There have been reviews of our camp that say cell service was great, with this carrier, the next its not, same carrier.
In a hilly camp like ours, signal strength varies greatly if you are under or on top of the hill. Carrier seems to make little difference as much as the phone itself, as the carriers here have reciprocity on thier towers.
I do not think there is any fair way to travelers or camps on rvpr to place this in a simple box, just like wifi, There are too many variables of equipment, some camp responsibility, some carrier, some weather, some provider, some yours within the walls of your unit. Research 'faraday cage' to learn of this limitation in your unit.
How could a camp be reviewed fairly on these many factors they have no control of?
Max

[docj]

I think that is a sensible suggestion that we could live with. Since this is Day 2 of the new website, you can imagine that we're trying to stay afloat identifying and fixing bugs. :B But we are compiling a fix of "additional features" that we'd like to add at a later date and I will put this one on that list. Thanks

[tpi]

How about buttons for the major carriers and data and voice? With a sentence adding any unusual conditions (amplifier, roaming, poor data rate, etc) be relegated to comments if they desire. Just that level of info alone would be valuable to me.

Or even a sentence above the comment box suggesting comments about cell service at the location.

I agree it should be simple-this is not a in depth review of cell service at xxx location. Any info would be useful here.

[docj]

tpi wrote:


My one suggestion is to have a category for cell/data service. Could be very simple, each reviewer quickly list carrier and reception quality. Not looking for in depth review of function, just a quick go or no go approach to data/cell service.

We've discussed this among the staff several times. The problem is that we'd have to have "buttons" for all the major carriers (at least Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-mobile) and would have to have both voice and data entries, since one can have good voice but poor data, etc.

Then you get to the question of assessing "good, average, poor" performance. Does that mean signal strength or download speed (measured how)? Should we have separate entries for 4G and 3G? What about if the reviewer is using an amplifier, should that be noted?

As you can see this is not such a simple question if the objective is to get meaningful data. Just marking "yes" to a cell phone service question won't provide much real benefit.

If you can think of a way to simplify the topic, we'd appreciate the suggestion.

[tpi]

Looks great. When I'm on the road I'll often use rvparkreviews as campground directory.

My one suggestion is to have a category for cell/data service. Could be very simple, each reviewer quickly list carrier and reception quality. Not looking for in depth review of function, just a quick go or no go approach to data/cell service.

[dieharder]

Played around for a few. Like it! Good job!

[jeb5]

I liked the old format. I like the new format better. This is a big service to those of us that are visiting a new area.

Keep up the good work.

[docj]

agesilaus wrote:

docj wrote:

SH wrote:
I guess I am the "stick in the mud." So far, I don't like it. Maybe I need to spend more time with it. Not as easy on the eyes for me and the ads are annoying.

I use AdBlock on Chrome; it is available for FireFox also. I never see ads on any site. There were ads on the old RVPR site, but I never saw them.

AdBlock has a huge memory footprint. A lot of the complaints about FF being a memory hog were in fact caused by AdBlock. I'm using AdGuard on Chrome right now.

Thanks for the tip; I switched. Does seem like faster page response.

[agesilaus]

docj wrote:

SH wrote:
I guess I am the "stick in the mud." So far, I don't like it. Maybe I need to spend more time with it. Not as easy on the eyes for me and the ads are annoying.

I use AdBlock on Chrome; it is available for FireFox also. I never see ads on any site. There were ads on the old RVPR site, but I never saw them.

AdBlock has a huge memory footprint. A lot of the complaints about FF being a memory hog were in fact caused by AdBlock. I'm using AdGuard on Chrome right now.