Clubs/Orgs ?

[Wild Horse]

Being fairly new to this, I was wondering what clubs, etc. folks thought were helpful, i.e., Good Sams, Coast to Coast, etc.

We'll be doing a fair amount of traveling, but probably not too much.

[boylanag]

WildHorse, you started out with the best club for Montana RVers here with the MOC. Any questions can be answered right here. Good Sam is also a good one to have. 10% off at their parks. GS also has a good Emergency Road Service that covers, not only your rig and tow vehicle, but also your other family vehicles. Passport America is also a very good one. 50% off at their parks. We belong to Coast to Coast and Resorts of Distinction. The cons of C2C and ROD are the big initial payment but then most of their parks are quite nice and the nightly price is right. We joined them when I was younger and earning so that when I retired, we could really take advantage of them. We are retired and use them now quite a lot. This is a start so best wishes on a long, enjoyable journey through RVing with your Montana. - Jim

[Bill-N-Donna]

We are a member of Good Sam club and we have the Good Sam’s Emergency Road Service. This has been a very good service for us. We have had to use them on different occasions and it has probably more than paid for itself over the past few years. I wouldn’t want to travel without it.

[Art-n-Marge]

There are other camping clubs that are not as expensive to join and offer great discounts for overnighting. Passport America and Camping Club USA are two very popular ones. PA is very popular amongst the MOC memberships.

Here is a link with many of the clubs I have heard of and joined. I am a member of 1000Trails which gives me access to Resorts of Distinction, Enjoy America and others. When I start RVing more often I will probably get PA (Passport America).

http://camping.about.com/od/campingc...ping_Clubs.htm

Click on a link and it will take you to more details about the club.

FYI - I believe 1000Trails, Good Sam and Camping World are connected to each other in some way. You will find this might be the case with many other organizations. I bring this up because I experienced some "bashing" between each club when trying to find information and they tried to make others look worse off than what I found out, then I found out about these business relationships and figured this was the reason.

The MOC is not tied to anything and therefore you should get a pretty open-minded set of replies without any underlying politics.

[exav8tr]

Wild Horse, I belong to 1000 Trails (BTW if they are connected to Good Sam or CW, I am not aware of it, nor is my sister who has been a 1000 Trails member since 1979). They have a large buy-in (unless you can get a transfer membership), a relatively small annual fee and no charge for nightly camping. They have several affiliates also. They are mostly rural preserves and do not have as many preserves as we would like. We also belong to Good Sam (Emergency Road Service also) and Passport America. We are also member of Resort Parks International (RPI). We can stay three weeks at a time at 1000 Trails and move from park to park without any "out" time. The others I have mentioned have individual rules that sometimes only allow their use if you are there weekdays, or very short stays, or out of season. One really has to look closely at these clubs and where they are located before making a decision to plunk down a bunch of cash. Of course, PA and GS are all over. We have not used the CW Camp Club program as I feel it is too restrictive for my type of living.....As with anything else, it is buyer beware.........

[ols1932]

As exav8tr says, buyer beware if you are buying someone's camping club membership. I wish we had been able to buy someone's Thousand Trails membership when we joined. We are now almost giving our membership away due to less travel therefore less need.

Orv

[Parrothead]

Art
You should be sure of information before posting. Thousand Trails is not connected to Good Sam or Camping World. Look up their corporate history.
Happy trails.......................

[Art-n-Marge]

Hi Parrothead,

The corporate history I have in my possession from my membership booklet from 1000Trails (TT) described that Joe McAdams was the CEO of Affinity Group until he bought a private firm called Privileged Access LP which wholly owned 1000Trails who bought NACO and Leisure Time Resorts. Affinity Group owns the brands, Good Sam, Camp Club USA, Coast to Coast, and even Campingworld RoadCare Platinum amongst many others. Even though Mr. McAdams was not with Affinity Group anymore, as part of our TT purchase we were given a one year membership to CampingWorld (because they explained they had a business relationship at that time that allowed them to do that), and memberships to RPI, Enjoy America, Resorts of Distinction for free. When we mentioned we had also been contacted by CRA (another membership we considered), the TT salesteam proceeded to "bash" that upstart company, but what's ironic is that the accompanying memberships included the CRA campgrounds (at a discount, lol). Since both CRA and TT met our needs we selected TT because they had more to offer including some of the things I just mentioned. And we have since stayed at two CRA campgrounds for $15 per night.

I BELIEVE (this means it's not a fact but something to check if so interested) that since then, TT is now owned by someone else and Joe McAdams is now the CEO, but don't quote me, because with so many changes in the RV industry so many times you just never know what's going to happen tomorrow. I expect the corporate history was changed to remove references to some of their competitors - if you can point me to the corporate history you saw, I'd appreciate it because I couldn't find it.

Many years ago, I had a Coleman trailer and when I went to CampingWorld to look for some new hoses, two different sales personnel told me to go elsewhere because "their stuff is non-standard" and "we don't deal with Coleman stuff, you need to contact Coleman". I ended up buying these standard hoses at a more expensive RV shop, so I didn't renew my CW membership until several years later when I bought the Montana. This was back when Coleman was not owned by Fleetwood. I think it's changed again. An example of another bash.

I hope these long stories will emphasize that I brought this up because as part of the "buyer beware" that some others had mentioned, one needs to find what's really going on with each club when making comparisons. You might end up associated with the similar clubs and memberships even though they offer the same things at different prices.

and Happy 1000 Trails to you all......

[Wild Horse]

lots of great info, which I'm finding is commonplace for this site.

Planned on Good Sam, and we were looking at Passport America. I'm looking into expanding my AAA, and will weigh it against the Good Sam Emergency Road Service...but will still get the Good Sam membership regardless. I was already looking to expand my AAA to cover the m/c.

Thanks again !
Bill

[KiwiRVer]

I have noted on other forums that a lot of people rave about the Coach Net ERS service.

On clubs, I am also going through the process of trying to work out which ones are going to best to join. It seems to me that for the relatively low cost it is almost worth joining them all especially if you are longtiming or fulltiming as it only takes 3 or 4 nights to recover the cost of membership from the likes of Camp Club USA http://www.campclubusa.com, Passport America http://www.passportamerica.com, Recreation USA http://www.campingandcampgrounds.com and Happy Camper http://www.camphalfprice.com/

All of these are 50% clubs and there is a lot of overlap between them but as far as I can tell there are also quite a few differences so depending on where you are travelling it is probably worth investigating all of them.

I have also looked at this scheme which enables you to book some of the more resort type campgrounds at a reasonable price and looks an interesting option for some areas that might be harder to get a reasonably priced spot in such as Bar Harbour, Maine: ReadyCampGo http://www.readycampgo.com/index.asp

Cheers, Craig