Understanding memberships

[WildHeart88]

So during my research on the RV lifestyle, I came upon memberships. From my understanding, there are RV parks/campgrounds that offer memberships. If I plan on moving often, having this membership would be a good idea, right? At the beginning of my RV journey I do want to travel to different parts of the U.S., just to see where I’d want to eventually settle down. I haven’t traveled enough to really say there is one area I’d love. There is still so much of the U.S. that I have yet to discover. Not to mention, wherever my daughter decides to migrate to when she’s older, I want to follow. But I also don’t want to overwhelm her and be a helicopter mom. With that said, is there even such thing as a membership? Or is it wiser to just stay in one location? Are there parks/campgrounds that offer long-term stay for rv’s?

 

[jackiemac]

If you're travelling then there are several decent memberships that can give discounts depending on certain scenarios and on the RV parks themselves.

We have Goodsam and Passport America. We get decent discounts with them. However if you are staying for a week or longer the park may have its own discounts. Passport America parks may only give discounts on certain days or seasons so you need to check.

If you want a Passport America membership several of us can give you a code to get extra months. I'll check what it is on mine and let you know. When ready just post and ask if anyone has a code you can use. It normally benefits both.

You can also use State Parks although many require reservations.

If you can set up for boondocking - normally all you need is a generator and / or solar and then you won't always need an RV park so you'll save money. If you need the Internet though, this will need careful thought.

Good luck!!

 

[WildHeart88]

I didn’t even consider boondocking. By boondocking, do you mean I would just basically live off grid? As in I can live on a piece of land or park my RV anywhere (legally) & live off generator/solar power? And would you explain more what you mean by having careful thought when it comes to internet? Please and thank you

 

[jackiemac]

Yes. Off grid.

I just mean if you need very reliable Internet you need to consider both power and actual provider. Starlink seems to be reliable but you obviously need power if you are working for 8 hours per say. Some places won't let you run a generator that long.

There are several other ways to find places to stay and membership options.

Boondockers Welcome and Harvest Hosts - mainly for one night stays. However you may be expected to buy things from the place you stay if its a farm or winery for example.

Hipcamp and Campendium and many others give varying options for free and paid sites.

It's a lot to take in but you'll get there!

 

[Isaac-1]

There are a number of discount clubs, ranging from Good Sam and Passport America that cost around $25 per year, on up to multi thousand dollar campground based camping clubs that let you stay in member campgrounds for extended periods at very low rates, Thousand Trails is an example of this more time share like system. Thousand trails plans are a topic in to themselves, as there are many levels out there, and some almost mythical transferable no restrictions plans out there floating around.

Personally I think the 2 that we get the most benefit from are Passport America and Good Sams. Good Sams gets you 10% off of the daily rate at probably the vast majority of commercial campgrounds in the US, and even some public ones, though many of these same campgrounds will give 10% off for all sorts of other reasons, military vets, AARP, AAA, etc. Passport America generally gets 50% off, but at far fewer campgrounds, with some states only having a handful of participating campgrounds, and other states may have dozens. The catch is each campground comes up with their own exclusions, some are week day only, some are off season only, most are 1 night only , though some allow 3-4 nights. My wife and I are currently on a 3 week circa 3,000 mile loop trip from Louisiana to the Badlands of SD, yesterday we were in Iowa, and today we are in Missouri. On this trip we have used our Passport America membership 3 times, paying half normal rate, getting sites for $18-$22 per night, it would have been 4 times, however one place we spent a night had a no weekends exclusion for PPA members, so we had to pay their full price of $36 (Pioneer Village museum RV park in Nebraska).

 

[WildHeart88]

Yes. Off grid.

I just mean if you need very reliable Internet you need to consider both power and actual provider. Starlink seems to be reliable but you obviously need power if you are working for 8 hours per say. Some places won't let you run a generator that long.

There are several other ways to find places to stay and membership options.

Boondockers Welcome and Harvest Hosts - mainly for one night stays. However you may be expected to buy things from the place you stay if its a farm or winery for example.

Hipcamp and Campendium and many others give varying options for free and paid sites.

It's a lot to take in but you'll get there!

Oh wow lol that is a lot of information, but definitely helpful!

 

[WildHeart88]

There are a number of discount clubs, ranging from Good Sam and Passport America that cost around $25 per year, on up to multi thousand dollar campground based camping clubs that let you stay in member campgrounds for extended periods at very low rates, Thousand Trails is an example of this more time share like system. Thousand trails plans are a topic in to themselves, as there are many levels out there, and some almost mythical transferable no restrictions plans out there floating around.

Personally I think the 2 that we get the most benefit from are Passport America and Good Sams. Good Sams gets you 10% off of the daily rate at probably the vast majority of commercial campgrounds in the US, and even some public ones, though many of these same campgrounds will give 10% off for all sorts of other reasons, military vets, AARP, AAA, etc. Passport America generally gets 50% off, but at far fewer campgrounds, with some states only having a handful of participating campgrounds, and other states may have dozens. The catch is each campground comes up with their own exclusions, some are week day only, some are off season only, most are 1 night only , though some allow 3-4 nights. My wife and I are currently on a 3 week circa 3,000 mile loop trip from Louisiana to the Badlands of SD, yesterday we were in Iowa, and today we are in Missouri. On this trip we have used our Passport America membership 3 times, paying half normal rate, getting sites for $18-$22 per night, it would have been 4 times, however one place we spent a night had a no weekends exclusion for PPA members, so we had to pay their full price of $36 (Pioneer Village museum RV park in Nebraska).

Thank you for all the feedback. Your reply definitely helps me. It seems that I have to do more research on these different memberships you mentioned. I’ll look more into them for sure. Thank you

 

[JudyJB]

I would suggest that the cheap memberships are OK, but I would not spend thousands on any memberships until you have a few months of traveling experience. I have never had any memberships because i prefer federal, state, and county campgrounds. They tend to be cheaper that commercial campgrounds, and spaces tend to be bigger and farther spread apart.

The problem is that without some experience and actual checking out the RV parks covered by those memberships, you could spend thousands for places you don't like and that have a lot of restrictions, such as you can only use the membership discount on certain days and for limited days per month or week. Just remember that the salesman that tries to sell you one of those expensive memberships is making money on the sale, so might tell you things that are not quite true, so if you do decide to sign up, make sure you take time to read all the fine print. I would even pass some of them by a lawyer.

 

[Kirk]

If I plan on moving often, having this membership would be a good idea, right?

There are a lot of different kinds of membership. If you plan to live in the RV and travel all of the time, how do you plan to receive any mail and maintain your driver's license, vehicle insurance & registration, health insurance, and all of the other things that require an address? The Escapees RV Club membership would make most of those things available. Then there is FMCA, another RV club that has a different set of benefits. The Good Sam club is mostly a marketing arm for the Camping World stores but it does have associated RV parks that give a 10% discount so can be helpful if you use the right parks enough of the time.

 

[MN Blue Skies]

We have Good Sam, Past Port America, FMCA, and Elks. Of all the memberships we have the Elks has been the useful.

 

[Larry N.]

I don't see KOA mentioned. Many folks prefer to avoid KOA, even for one night, and they are a bit high on cost, but being a "member" gets a 10% discount plus "points" towards some free camping, and we find it handy on occasion, especially when we're running late in the day and there aren't any other parks near the road we're on -- granted that there are a number of areas where KOAs are few -- but few KOAs are much more than a place to park to spend the night, though a very few are almost resorts.

And though we've not had Good Sam for a long time, FMCA membership and being a veteran sometimes gets a 10% discount in many of the same parks that are Good Sam members.

We used to have Passport America, but the last few years we've not been near one of them when ready to stop for the night, so we finally dropped the membership. But a couple of nights' stay pays for the annual membership cost

I also echo others in that the Thousand Trails category should be avoided until you thoroughly check them out for locations, conditions, restrictions, costs, etc, and then only after you've had some road experience with which to judge.

 

[Lou Schneider]

The Good Sam 10% discount is an offshoot of the Campground Directory they publish annually. Good Sam sells advertising space as well as basic listings in the Directory and one of the requirements for a private campground to be included is they have to offer a 10% discount to Good Sam members.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

The key thing to remember about memberships is that they are only useful/valuable if you actually use them frequently enough to reap the benefits (discount pricing, access to a popular area, etc). That probably seems obvious, but many newcomers buy up memberships on the basis of discounts and then discover most (or even all) of the parks are in places they don't choose to travel. Or are only used for one-time visits. Maybe not a big deal if the cost of membership is low and renewable annually, but some attractive sounding deals are pricey or require long term contracts. Don't sign up for anything like that until you are sure what your style of travel and preferred locales will be.

For a newcomer, I would suggest only low cost memberships such as Passport America or Good Sam. The savings aren't huge but you only need to utilize them a few times to break even and it's a one year term, so not much at risk if it turns out you don't get much value.

 

[Isaac-1]

To follow up on this about Passport America, and its usefulness, a lot depends on where you are traveling, for example we were in Iowa yesterday, and there are only 4 Passport America parks in the entire state. The day before we spent the night at a Passport America park along I-90 in eastern South Dakota (we had been free boondocking by Wall, SD ( in the "national forest" grasslands just outside Badlands NP) for 4-5 nights so needed to dump tanks, refill water and do laundry, there are 26 Passport America parks in South Dakota, 8 in Nebraska of which we happened to stay at 2, one I had stayed at before in 2017 before we had Passport America, and one we did not find out was Passport America until we got there. There are 214 in Texas, but Texas is well BIG, 29 in our home state of Louisiana, but only 5 in Arkansas.

As to the cost of RV'ing a lot depends on when and where you travel and how creative you get, we are mostly self contained, have 80 gallon fresh water tank, 40 gray / 40 black, along with over 5,000 watt hours of Lithium batteries and 400 watts of solar panels on the roof. Which provides enough power to run computers, recharge phones, power as many LED lights as we need, run fans, furnace blower, everything except air conditioning as long as it is at least partly sunny outside. On this trip I have been semi actively seeking cheaper places to spent the night, particularly when we were just stopping and needing a place to sleep. The result is spending nights at Passport America campgrounds, city and local fair grounds RV parks (most around $15 per night in Kansas, Nebraska, almost in Iowa, but they had an event going on (car racing of some type), Free camping around Wall SD, The highest rate we have paid is right at $50 per night, where we are now at a touristy campground outside Hannibal, MO. This is low compared to our last trip to Arkansas and Missouri in September where we had prices around $65 per night a number of nights in tourist areas (note campground prices are way up since Covid, one place we paid $65 per night last Sept was $35 per night when we were there in 2018).

 

[John From Detroit]

KOA membership gets you a discount

Some Campground memberships like Thousand Trail (I'm not so hot on that one) and Outdoor Adventure Inc get you 2 or 3 weeks of camping then one week out..
These. however. all have issues. If you are interested in that type.. ask and I'll provide more info.

 

[Isaac-1]

John, there are some legacy transferable Thousand Trails premium plans with no week out requirements, though these are rare, they sometimes come up for sale on ebay, etc. These just require the owner to move from park to park every 3 weeks with no out of park in between. Though personally the whole Thousand Trails, and regional park package thing sounds a bit too much like a time share scam to me.

 

[John From Detroit]

TT was a good plan but the several of the parks got new management and though they are SLOWLY improving the parks physically.. I used to say they had the best staff... No more do I say that. Which is Why I dumped that membership fast.
My Outdoor adventures memberships (2 in one out) is still active as I've pre=-paid a few years dues.