By now, it’s no secret that we LOVE Lazydays RV Resort just outside of Tampa, Florida. In January/February of 2018 we stayed there for a spell, left for a single night before cancelling the rest of that reservation elsewhere and returning. It is that great of a place! It was the first place we chose to stay on this holiday trip to Florida. And the obvious last place to stay on the trip.
In the last year, we’ve spent an entire month – 31 nights – at Lazydays RV Resort! That’s pretty incredible considering we believe the ideal amount of time to spend in any large-ish city is about 4 nights, but more on that later.
We were talking about our favorite RV resort the other day. It’s obvious to us (and maybe you) that it’s either Sun-N-Fun or Lazydays. Sun-N-Fun was the first real “RV resort” we’d ever stayed at. It is a magical place to spend Christmas. It holds a special place in our hearts. But there’s just something about Lazydays. See, Sun-N-Fun has full-time residents and “park model” homes filling about half of its 1,000+ sites. Lazydays is 100% travelers. They don’t let anybody stay longer than 6 months, and in our experience nobody exceeds 3 months there. Because of that, Lazydays tends to be mostly people on vacation. Carefree and happy. Nothing at Lazydays becomes de facto property. There’s no HOA committee or whatever else happens when groups of people live in a private community. Sun-N-Fun lets their long list of rules (mostly) slide during the weeks between Christmas and New Year’s…but there’s sort of a feeling that rules are being broken. Certain looks from the residents and staff for too many people in the hot tub or splashing in the pool. At Lazydays, splashing is almost encouraged. Running around the pool is ok. Kids can use the hot tub. It’s just a happy, easy-going place. If you can’t tell, we agree that Lazydays is our favorite.
The Lazydays pool is possibly the warmest in Florida. We spent 6-8 hours there each day during our Jan/Feb 2018 stay. This stretch was no different. We’d eat breakfast, have a few hours at the pool. Eat lunch and do Emerson’s nap before more pool time in the afternoon. Then dinner and collapse before doing it again. Seriously, the best way to relax and take advantage of the warmer than normal weather in Florida.
You’ll notice Adelaide got goggles. She’d been opening her eyes underwater at Sun-N-Fun and by the end of our stay had red, puffy eyes from the chlorine. She was really excited to get goggles and fix that problem…because having closed eyes underwater isn’t an option.
The other great thing to us about Lazydays is that their pool is where Adelaide learned so many skills. Last year, she got over her fear of going underwater. She learned to jump onto a noodle from the pool deck. This year, she got very good at swimming underwater. She can now jump into the pool and swim back to the wall. I can throw her and she comes up and swims to the wall, ladder, or stairs.
Emerson remains unafraid of water. He jumps/falls into the water from wherever we ask. But try to swim? Forget about it. He comfortably floats in the water waiting to be rescued. No panic. Just relaxed as can be in the water.
Feeding her “crying” baby. 
Tiles aren’t lining up. Whoops!
We managed to get off the Lazydays property a few times to eat Mexican food and grab groceries. Did you know that smoking in the outdoor section of a Florida restaurant is still legal?!? We didn’t. We moved tables because folks next to us were smoking up a storm. I counted 3 cigarettes before dinner, 1 during, and who knows how many afterwards – we booked it out of there!
Below are a few pictures of the Lazydays “Rally Center”. It’s obviously where rallies are hosted, but home to a small arcade and the “Exit 10” restaurant – the giant RV you see in the back of the picture.
So that wraps up our time at Lazydays for now. We put the RV in storage nearby. We’ll pick it up when school gets out and start our May/June RV trip at Lazydays, obviously. Emerson helped me get the internals of the rig ready for storage while Karissa took care of cleaning.
We dropped Karissa off at the airport for her 9pm flight and settled down for the night in a nearby hotel. The long drive home begins tomorrow. I hope to find something fun for the kids to do along the way, but we’ll play it by ear.
