What is it with campgrounds nowadays?

rockhillmanor wrote:

PackerBacker wrote:
We primarily stay at KOA's when traveling. I've never been turned away or experienced the 'only site left' phenomena. We've even been accommodated in overflow sites twice while stopping overnight on long weekends; both campgrounds were filled to capacity.
Maybe we've just been lucky.

X2

I have been on the road full timing 6 years and have NEVER made a reservation. Just pull in. Even after hours when they are closed.

All CG's have several sites 'set aside' for RV's traveling and pulling off the road for the night. AND in all of my travels if I decided to stay an extra night I have never been refused.

So to the OP the open sites you are seeing are the ones set aside for traveling RV'ers. Usually it's the front row. And sometimes several in the back row for large rig pull thru's.

Not all parks set aside sites for the traveling public. We sure don't. We would reserve every single site a decade in advance if we could. We have already turned dozens of rigs this year due to us having no available space. And we were unable to extend several other guests, due to having the park reserved to capacity. We are probably the exception, but there will be times there is no room at the inn.
There can be numerous reasons why a site would go unfilled. Maybe you checked in for two weeks and the site you are wanting was reserved starting a week into your reservation. After you checked in, the guy who had the site you wanted had to cancel. It happens.
Maybe the site you are watching is already paid for and the people aren't using it the time you are there. Maybe the site you are watching has some issue that is rendering it unrentable. We had several sites we took out of the rental pool early in the season since we freshly sodded them and wanted to give the grass time to root. Maybe it is like SDparkowner pointed out, you requested a site with specific parameters and that is the site you got. Maybe you got so involved in your vacation that you forgot to Mrs. Kravits the site for a few days and it was occupied, you just didn't notice.
Managing the logistics of a park, keeping all the past, present and future guests happy, honoring requests and preferences for different sites, honoring the time that people made their reservations (best sites for earliest reservations) etc is very involved. It is much more chess than checkers.