Choosing Not to Join Thousand Trails

There are quite a few ways to save money at RV parks. The widely-known ways are to be a member of KOA or Good Sam. These memberships are pretty cheap and save you 10% off at member parks. I think KOA costs something like $40/year and Good Sam might be $100 (we got Good Sam included in our 5^th wheel purchase). KOA is only good at KOA parks (duh), while Good Sam is almost the industry-standard and good at many, many more places. If the average nightly rate is $40, these memberships save $4/night. That means it takes about 10 nights to break-even on the cost for KOA and 25 nights for Good Sam.

Another well-known option is Passport America and its copycats. This group of discount is good for 50% off at participating parks and costs about $40/year as well. Unlike Good Sam and KOA which have almost no restrictions in terms of time-of-year or length of stay, Passport America is very hit-and-miss. In Florida, P.A. is only good outside of the winter (peak) season. In other locales, it’s the opposite because their peak season is opposite. Each member campground has different limitations in terms of maximum/minimum stays and when the discount is valid. Again, Good Sam and KOA are good for 10% off the nightly rate all year. At an average nightly rate of $40, it takes just 2 nights to make P.A. worthwhile.

A neat way to save money that we learned about out on the road is called Thousand Trails. For a large annual fee, you get to camp for “free” at member campgrounds. The idea of this was very appealing to us, so we did some research. Here’s what we learned and why we ultimately chose not to do it:

Thousand Trails has 81 campgrounds around the country. They break it into 5 “zones”. For the base annual fee of $575, you get one zone included. Each additional zone is $49. There’s also the option to add Encore’s RV Resorts to your pass for $199.

The biggest selling point of Thousand Trails is the “camp for free” aspect. What you’ll learn after some digging is you can only stay in a member campground for up to 14 consecutive nights after which you must be out of a member campground for at least 7 nights. Or you can stay up to 4 nights without the need for any time out. Also, after 30 nights each year of camping, you must pay a $3/night fee for any additional nights.

Also, there are upgraded memberships that have different restrictions. There are hundreds of different options, and it gets sort of complicated, but the gist of the upgraded versions is that for a one-time fee of $2,000-6,000 plus an annual $500-900 cost, you get to stay longer at member campgrounds without the need for the 7 nights out annoyance. I think the most common upgraded membership allows up to 21 days in a member campground before you can/must move to another member campground with no “out time”. For full-timers and slow-travelers, an upgraded version can save money.

The specific Thousand Trails membership we were considering was the base level with 2 zones and the Encore upgrade. With a 20% discount code, it would have cost us $700. We would need to stay at a member campground for about 30 nights to justify the cost. While that’s not too bad, the other negative was feeling like we would have to stay at member campgrounds. That means we’d be compromising the location and amenities just to ensure we got our money’s worth for the membership. We decided it wasn’t worth that trade-off for us. But we know some full-timers who more than make their Thousand Trails membership worth it because they can afford to spend time at non-ideal locations as their trip has no expiration like ours.

Anyhow, we wound up staying at a Thousand Trails campground in the Houston area on Lake Conroe. Even though we’d decided not to be a member, we still felt like we had to know what we were missing. The place did not disappoint. It was clean, had a great friendly vibe, and we could totally see staying there for a few weeks. Best of all, we got to use our Passport America discount for 50% off the nightly rate. For $100, we spent 4 nights and got to see if and what we chose to pass up.

Despite a great experience at a Thousand Trails campground, we’re happy with our decision not to join. But can definitely see the benefits of membership under different circumstances. Who knows? Maybe we’ll reconsider in the future.