Seeking guidence and advice on campground memberships....anybody have any experience with or knowledge of Choice Camping Inc.?

One man's personal opinion, and some experience.

For me, campground memberships are restricting. In most cases, you make an investment for which you only receive a conditional right to use a facility, if the company has a facility, and if a vacancy exists for you where and when you want to use it. You feel as though you must use that facility since you made the investment, even though it might be more convenient to stay somewhere else a few miles down the road.

Several camping "clubs" were established in the '60s and '70s that were little more than Ponzi schemes, since they relied on the sale of memberships to finance the purchase of campgrounds. When the market was saturated, they began to fail, and only a few survived, most with higher fees, and fewer campgrounds, with fewer services than they advertised to start.

Most clubs offered freebies to listen to a high pressure sales pitch that skirted truth when you asked them what you actually bought when you put your money in.

There are brokers today making a living selling campground memberships, usually at a substantial discount from the original price.

I owned a lot in an RV condominium for 17 years. I could have put my money in the bank instead, and been money ahead by renting, for the time we spent there.

Today we go where we want, when we want, and rent when we get there. No hassles with up-front investments, no dues, no assessments, no other fees.

There are certain places in the U.S. where, at certain times of the year it is hard to find a good rental unless you reserve ahead, but that's still less trouble than tying yourself down to a specific park, or parks.

There must be many people who find campground memberships enjoyable. There a still several out there, with plenty of members.

You pays your money & you makes your choice. But read the fine print.

I notice that Choice Camping does not have a life time requirement so you can just let it drop. That seems like an advantage to me.

Here's my bottom line on the thing. If you find a campground which you really love and you plan on going back to that one place regularly over a long period of time. Then a membership might make sense. But then remember that if they are a Coast to Coast park then you want to find a C2C park that is the cheapest. There was a park in Minnesota who was selling memberships for something like $12K. I found a C2C in Idaho for $2K. I could have bought the Idaho and then could have gone to the Minnesota for $6 per night, (or something like that, I don't recall exactly).

There were some memberships in Canada about five years ago that were sold aggressively. It included a membership in Coast to Coast and the home camp ground was near us so we paid a high fee and joined. We camped there once and found it deplorable - not even finished and few of the amenities that had been included. The yearly fees which were not included in the membership were not fixed so the rates kept going up. We were supposed to be able to go to many campgounds in USA for a reduced rate also. When we tried to access some of the member member campgrounds between Canada and Florida, we were turned away often as the number of sites alloted to 'members' were already taken, and many of the campgrounds had opted out of the plan and wouldn't even let us in as full pay campers and some others treated us as if we were less than desireable because we had presented the membership to get a site. In the end, we gave up and found it easier not to even mention our membership so that we could access the camping facility. We basically threw away the thousands of dollars we paid for the 'life membership' and chalked it up to an expensive learning experience. We have since heard that the home campground near us has changed hands many times and doesn't honor memberships now either. I imagine that some memberships were great and worked out well, but ours was not one of them.

We belong to Coast to Coast and AOR.The cost was about 4,000.00.Our home park is in N.C.The cost per year is around 400.for Coast to Coast,AOR,Home park.We stay in a park 6.00 per night plus 2.00 per night elect.We have about 10 nights free at home park per year.Folks who are full time R.V. go park to park.We don't stay in the parks that must a year.We hope you make the right move,and best of luck.Jay:

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br2409