amandamaryroberts

Don’t get Catfished by the beautiful website. This is my first negative review of anything ever. I usually leave glowing reviews and enjoy promoting places I’ve been. This is by far the least nice campground I’ve been to which wouldn’t necessarily warrant a negative review if it weren’t such a gross contrast from what it advertised. What does call for a negative review is the hot headed, rude & incredibly unprofessional couple that work the front “office”. My premier water front site had been moved less than 24 hrs prior to my arrival to a tiny interior site & I was charged the same as they said “you can still see the lake”. My friends behind me were told that if I was not in front of them & the site was empty that they too would be charged top dollar. Mind you this is across the interior road & three sites in (#27). I asked the man from the office who walked up as I was looking at the site why I was moved & he said the people who got there before me “pitched such a fit & raised all kinds of hell” so they were moved to my reserved site but if I didn’t like it I could talk to the lady up front. I said ok as I had spoken to her on the phone on the way in & she assured me this was an equitable site & seemed relatively pleasant. As soon as I walked into the office, I was met by her yelling about another guest to the man I had been speaking to. She was quite loud about a guest being “stupid” & not listening about taking their dogs down by the water because of the gators that would surely get the dogs. (Confirmed by someone else who said it had happened there before) I was grateful for the info since I have dogs so it wasn’t what she said but her yelling & acting kind of crazy in front of a first time guest. I barely got any words out of my mouth about not liking the reassigned site before she cut me off and started yelling, “I don’t know why you’re all bitching about that site, you get put on sites of MY choosing, NOT YOURS! There’s nothing I can do about it!” Shocked at her aggressive reply & refusing to engage, I just put up my hand up and said fine, I’ll stay & went to walk out. She continued to go on & I just said, “Thanks, I’ll note that in my review.” This all occurred over probably less than one minute. This was supposed to be my birthday weekend and we were going to Smoke on the Water to cheer on a buddy who was competing. Not a great start. As I was almost back to my site, I look behind me & there’s the man again. As soon as he saw me turn around he shouted, “If you’re gonna leave a bad review JUST LEAVE.” (Which I have since seen in similar reviews about this couple, wow) I just said, “Fine” & kept walking to my truck. Mind you, I don’t live far so it’s no big deal & definitely not worth this level of harassment by staff. My friend & her husband walked out as the man continued on shouting about how I “wasn’t gonna talk to his wife like that & leave a bad review” which was funny because I barely got 10 words out to the lady before she went off & I never raised my voice or anything. I then added how it was ironic that their response to someone not being happy about their site being changed to a little interior site was to kick them out so they “couldn’t” leave a bad review. I said I would add being kicked out, thanks bye. He noticed my friend and her husband were with me & changed his tune. I wholeheartedly believe him chasing me back to my site and threatening to kick me out was an attempted intimidation tactic as I am a single female traveller. Fortunately, I remained unbothered & unimpressed. Loud stompy men don’t scare me & I would’ve been happy to leave. My friend’s husband responded to the man very politely explaining what had happened and the man said he’d refund me but my friend didn’t want me to leave. In the end, I stayed (mostly because I had a work conference call due in 2 minutes) but the man stayed and kept yelling and arguing for several minutes very unwilling to just let it go and walk away as nobody wanted to engage with him or his wife. He said they would do something about the price I was charged & adjust it down from a premier since my only lake view was between the huge busses in sites 15 & 16. That never happened & I was charged full price after being attacked. So, onto the park review. It’s very small and directly off of a noisy major road (US highway 92) & directly across from the Winter Haven Regional Airport. Both of which proved to be very noisy. I do see where they cater to aviators for whom I’m sure it’s very convenient. The wifi was nonexistent which, to be fair, isn’t entirely uncommon. There seem to be a lot of full timers there with crowded patios full of personal belongings which was my very close view out of my big window along with the very large electrical poles and meters directly behind me. I had to move some abandoned equipment (fresh water hose and what I believe was a wheel chock) before I could back in. I have probably the smallest grand design on the market & was lucky my truck just barely fit with my trailer. My friend and several others had to park in a separate junky area that was part grass lot, part old picnic table graveyard. We had good electric and water while we were there & the view from the dock is very nice but that’s credit to Florida’s natural landscape, not the campground. There is a trailer park directly to the side of the campground & at night you can hear fairly loud train horns from nearby tracks. The loud traffic, ambulances, small aircraft from the airport across the street etc made it impossible to sleep even over the tv trying to drown out the noise. There were a lot of smokers & “smokers” which I wasn’t sure if they were friendly neighborhood hippies or criminals since I read other reviews about drug dealing activity. I’m not a fan of brightly lit campgrounds but this is just the opposite. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face which is a safety issue for sure. I wouldn’t have known where to walk my dogs if not for the ambient light from people’s trailers. Speaking of dogs, I didn’t see one doggy station, no bags, no garbage cans but lots of abandoned poo piles. I just saved mine in their baggies overnight outside and tossed them in the 2 big dumpsters that are crammed directly between the “premier” sites on the lake (63 & 14 I think). There are no fire rings that I saw but there is a nice fire pit with chairs down by the East dock. The road that goes thru the campground is pretty tight & the curves would be challenging for larger rigs due to parked vehicles etc. The sites aren’t marked very well & I struggled to find my site. Later I did see numbers on most of the electric boxes but the spray painted numbers on the street side are very worn and mostly invisible on most sites. The plastic picnic tables were very sun rotted and my friend’s wasn’t just super cracked and brittle but had holes broken in the top. There is no security gate, no code needed to get in and the entrance is very poorly marked from the highway, easy to miss. People regularly cut thru & between sites to get where they need to. The best part of the stay was that the super professional office duo left the property when we arrived and said they wouldn’t be back until Monday. The lady texted my friend’s husband and said something like “I’m sorry your daughter is unhappy” which was pretty insulting because he is not that much older than me (I’m almost 50) and NOT my father lol. She never texted or apologized to me nor did her husband & I’m certain I’ll never see a dime of that price adjustment he promised. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have been back to this campground anyway but they sealed the deal. I have a LOT of camping friends and coworkers & I feel they deserve to be warned & get an honest & fair review. This campground may be good enough for some and from the reviews I’ve seen, the good ones never had to speak to the highly unqualified management and those who have left similar reviews.