Missed reservations

[New2RVing]

Hi all, i am relatively new here, with a lot to learn. I am an accomplished tent camper, and a mechanic, so i feel an rv will not be much of a challenge...but remember, this is a newbie speaking! Haha!

my question revolves around rv reservations. I am planning a long trip, where i am moving almost every day. I intend on making reservations way in advance. However, things happen. When they do how does an rv park handle the original reservation? That is, do rv parks reserve a couple spots for delayed arrivals, or will i start at the beginning of the process?

in other words, if i have a res at a park for say monday, and find i cant make it until tuesday, how does the average park handle the request?

 

[Neemer]

Here is an answer you’ll get used to: it depends.

If you are staying multiple nights, no problem.

If staying only one night, it will depend on how booked the campground is. In my experience, most will work with you until it no longer makes sense for them.

 

[lahad1]

Hello, I am also new this sort of thing, so will be watching for your answer. However, I have been planning our first big trip for the fall of 2022 and I have been looking at a lot of CG's. Seems most of them have a cancelation penalty if you don't show up on time. I'm used to traveling by car and booking hotels, which are usually cancellable up to the day of in some cases. Most of the CG's I've looked at aren't that generous. We are meeting family in Colorado Springs in June and I bypassed a CG that looked great, because they wanted 25% up front and it was completely non refundable.
I'm guessing that in this day with the high demand, it's probably not easy to take the "wing it" approach.
Best of luck
L

 

[AbdRahim]

If it is just for one night, you may have to loose your deposit and stay at a Walmart or truck stop. Unless I have been on the road for several days, I don’t even do one night stays at campgrounds. Moving that often would wear me out and take away all of the fun.

 

[New2RVing]

Here is an answer you’ll get used to: it depends.

If you are staying multiple nights, no problem.

If staying only one night, it will depend on how booked the campground is. In my experience, most will work with you until it no longer makes sense for them.

Thanks neemer. Your reply makes sense. Most of my stays are single nights, so i guess i will have to plan carefully for locations that fill up months ahead.

 

[BGMAC]

Many trips that I go on I am not sure where I will stop at. Most cases I do not have a reservation on stops along the way. When i do get ready to stop. I just get on google maps and search for RV sites or “campgrounds”. Call them to see if there is a site available. Many along common routes have overnight sites.

 

[lemondrop9344]

On long distance trips, we try to avoid a specific itinerary unless we need to be somewhere at a specific data & we make reservations accordingly. I would much prefer to stay at something like a WallyWorld as opposed to trying to get the RV & toad into a campground after dark. NextExit ( a yearly book) provides an abundance of information for locations close to interstates. It's not about the money, but, the convenience. A lot of the RV parks are not conveniently located for travelers.

 

[New2RVing]

Many trips that I go on I am not sure where I will stop at. Most cases I do not have a reservation on stops along the way. When i do get ready to stop. I just get on google maps and search for RV sites or “campgrounds”. Call them to see if there is a site available. Many along common routes have overnight sites.

Thanks bgmac, your comment is reassuring. National parks may be the exception to your observation, though. It seems those spots are reserved quickly

 

[bpaikman]

If you’re reserving during ‘low season’, and the campground le half booked, I’d say don;t reserve at all. And if you plan to stay multiple nights, book one day at a time. We had a bad experience with 2 places when we had to cut our vacation short one year, and both places charged us for our cancellation , despite being less than half full! I will never stay at those 2 places again. If we’d simply paid day to day, we’d have been fine. I have no problem with paying missed reservations when parks are busy, but early October/late september? 1/3 full??? Mountain View in Creede, Colorado, and the one at the top of Raton Pass (cruddy place)
On the other hand, a very busy park in Lake City Co - Elkhorn.... and Centennial Park near Montrose cheerfully and sympathetically cancelled our reservations. You never know.
(Why we cut short? Mechanical issues that cost $$$, and refrigerator kept failing - we lost lots of food, and had to eat out constantly... we still fondly refer to that as ‘the vacation from hell”. ??...) At one point, we just decided to cut our losses, and then the extra charges just rubbed salt in our wounds).

 

[FL-JOE]

Here is an answer you’ll get used to: it depends.

If you are staying multiple nights, no problem.

If staying only one night, it will depend on how booked the campground is. In my experience, most will work with you until it no longer makes sense for them.

This is spot on for 90% of the commercial campgrounds. Some want your credit card info in advance, some will just wait until you arrive and actually charge you. Most will not charge you, or refund your card if you can't make it, but there are a few that will refuse to do that and maybe offer you a free night in the future.

Generally speaking I think most people make advance reservations. Where you will have the biggest issue is making a bunch of consecutive one night reservations in a row. When you do this you open yourself up for possible issues. Example: you have seven one night stays booked and on the second day out you experience a mechanical delay which causes you to miss the next campground. Now you have to try to adjust your reservations at five places. What we generally do is mix in a one night stay with a two night stay, or a 400 miles travel day with a 250 miles travel day. In other words we build in a little buffer just in case.