Sunshine Key RV Resort & Marina

Of the two Trails Collection campgrounds (Thousand Trails) in the Florida Keys, this would be my second choice, but it is still phenomenal and we’ve stayed a couple times over the years and will continue to return. You can’t beat the price if you are a member and the park is only about five minutes away from Bahia Honda State Park.

Main reason why it’s number 2 in my opinion, but still deserves 5 stars- the swim area at the beach is pretty shallow and the bottom is murky (Fiesta Key has a deep swim area with a sea wall at the beach). Fiesta Key also has trash pickup from your site which is a nice perk that isn’t offered at Sunshine.

We really enjoy staying here to go down to Key West and to explore the nearby area. The campsites are pretty big and all of the staff was super friendly. We also enjoyed the outdoor movie night during our stay. The campground has a laundromat that takes credit cards (super convenient).

AT&T plus the cell booster was how we stayed connected/worked remotely while here. Verizon did work, but upload was so slow and wasn’t sufficient for video conferencing.

We camped November 13-27.

Sunshine Key RV Resort in the Florida Keys exceeded our expectations. In this video, we provide a walking tour of Sunshine Key RV Resort Florida. Sunshine Key RV Resort is a premier RV destination and is part of the Trails Collection under the Thousand Trails umbrella. We stayed here for $20 per night using our Thousand Trails Membership with the Trails Collection Plus. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 2.14 Mbps download speed and 0.54 Mbps upload speed. T-Mobile cellular service clocked in at 5.69 Mbps download speed and 1.12 Mbps upload speed. Verizon cellular service clocked was one bar LTE and a speed test failed due to poor connectivity.

We have visited friends at this RV resort over the years, but December of 2021 was the first time we were able to enjoy a full two week long stay here in our RV. We are writing a short review here, and have a much more thorough review on our website at RVLove.com (link below)

Hurricane Irma damaged this park severely a few years prior, which closed the park for one season, but also allowed the opportunity to make some great improvements to the resort. Being located on Big Pine Key, it is very close to the middle of the Florida keys which makes it a great base for exploring all of the keys. But we imagine that many guests spend the majority of their time in the resort itself, especially if they are paying full retail prices which are over $200/night, especially for the waterfront sites. These prices are pretty high for RV resorts, but are are not uncommon prices in the Florida Keys. Worth noting, they also have tiny homes, and RVs that you can rent if you don't have your own RV.

Thankfully we have a Thousand Trails membership with Trails Collection add-on which allows us to stay here for $20/night. You can also learn more about Thousand trails memberships at our website.

The resort is super easy to access, and most of the sites are very level being an island at sea level. Some sites are very close together, but the pull through sites in the section we were in were much more roomy by comparison. It helped that we were in a smaller RV (a 25 foot motorhome) on this trip. Sites are composed of small white gravel, and all appear to be full hook up. There are multiple bath houses/restrooms, and has very nice amenities in the center area. Sports courts and playgrounds were frequently active, and the social calendar seemed well attended during our stay as well.

If you have a boat or other watercraft, this RV resort also has a boat launch and marina, and you can launch paddle boards right from the beach. There is also a fishing area.

Being next to the overseas highway, there is a little road noise if parked on that side of the park, but elsewhere in the park the road noise is subtle and overridden by other sounds. Cell phone coverage is pretty poor here. Our Verizon didn't work, but we had one bar of T-Mobile. Campground wifi, including the paid service, didn't work well for us, but we heard from others that had a better experience.

Overall, we were very happy with our stay. The staff were excellent, the weather and location were amazing, and with only paying $20/night to stay here, it was amazing value for us.

Again, we have much more detailed information available on our website if you want to learn more. But wanted to be sure to leave a review here for others to enjoy and learn from.

https://rvlove.com/rv-camping/review-sunshine-key-rv-resort-and-marina/

Thank you,
Marc and Julie

Sunshine Key RV Resort and Marina

If you are looking for a park in the Florida Keys that is non-stop party time, then Sunshine Key RV Resort is the place for you.  The people in the office and the parkers on the carts were extremely nice.  Standard Spots maintain about 12 - 15 feel between rigs.  We did not have room to park our Dually that pulled our 5th wheel.  The neighbors on left and right use every inch of their site with Boats, tents, chairs, tables, grills, multiple golf carts, trailers, right up the line on the road or past.  It was very hard to pull out of the spot.  There is no speed limit in the park because most carts are going 40 or higher. 
 
They do have a guard at the gates, but they let rigs set up at all hours of the night.  We had people setting up right next to us from 11-1 at night.  No sleep that night.  If you walk around the island, the water has a strong stench to it.  The roads are just a foot on each side of the Fifth Wheel.  Pretty much all the roads are gravel, and the sites are too.  The dog park had two very large shipping containers in it.  I have to say they do have a nice marina.  A lot of the people come from Miami and stay from Thursday to Sunday, every weekend and leave all their stuff.  During the weeks get ready for loud music into the wee hours of the morning.  We asked to be moved and they said they couldn't accommodate us.  After 13 days into our 21 days stay, we just left.
 
The root cause of this resort is a lack of employee that are willing to enforce the rules they have in place.

This was a great place. You could tell it was more of a full timer, or longer term option for some of the residence. We only stayed a few days, and that was just enough.

we stayed 5 nights in site #423 waterfront site on the Gulf. We had beautiful sunsets from our site. The staff was so nice and very helpful. We have a 22’ Travel trailer and needed to borrow additional sewer hoses. The site we were in requires more then 2 so we had to borrow some. They could have put us in a different site yet we didn’t want to move.
There is a pool, 2 swim areas one has a nice swim beach. There is a marina which the side of it near site 423 has so much marine life. Tarpon, Nurse Sharks, Grouper, reef fish and Manatees. I walked over many times each day to see what was there. Lots of Iguanas too. There is corn hole, horseshoes, a game room, basket ball and volleyball. There is a gas station and small store too.

Lots of shore birds, it’s a sanctuary there near the dock. Green Herons, Egrets, Blue Herons, Ibis, and much more.

Close by on Marathon there is plenty of good places to eat. Porky’s, Keys Fishery Raw bar, El Ninas and more. There are 2 grocery stores, and anything you need shopping.

Heading towards Big Pine Key Bahia Honda State park is amazing and has a beautiful swim beaches. 3 on the Atlantic side and one where the Gulf and the Atlantic meet. The old Flagler bridge is a big part of history in the keys.

Big Pine Key has the No Name Pub (good pizza) and Trianos Taco truck by far the best Tacos ever. Open Mon-Thurs till 5. The small key deer are all over Big Pine Key. There is a Winn Dixie, 2 hardware stores, some shops, and pharmacy stores.

We are not a member of Thousand Trails so we paid high prices to camp. The price doubled in the pats few years.

Beautiful place

This was a nice campground. They had great service from what we experienced. I would text the host and they would have someone get back to me very quickly. You can ship Amazon packages on site which was a nice addition. They had kayak and jet ski rentals on site which was really nice. The Tmobile 5G gateway that we had got 400 x 100 download and upload speeds. Kept us very connected. Laundry on site was nice also. They escorted us try our actual site which we thought was very cool since this place is so large.

So everyone knows, or soon discovers after trying to book a campground in the Florida Keys, that you have two choices: super expensive private parks or praying there will somehow be an open spot in one of the state parks.

As for the latter, unless you literally book a year in advance, you're basically out of luck. The state parks are gorgeous, and snowbirds apparently wait on their computers until the very second new bookings are excepted, and subsequently snatch them up.

However, if you go to http://readycampgo.com and sign up for a membership, you can get a big discount here at Sunshine Key RV Resort.

Basically, it's $49 / year for a membership. That gets you 15 nights at any of these Encore (aka, Ready, Camp, Go and Thousand Trails) parks in the southeast (it works in other regions too, but an annual membership only gets you access to one region), and those 15 night only cost $20. Compare that to $80 - $100 regular rate at Sunshine Key, and you quickly can add up the savings. There is also a "resort" fee, $3 / day, but if you stay the full 15 nights (and again, it doesn't have to be at this one park), you end up paying $26.27 / night.

Which is a pretty fabulous rate.

Aside from all of that top secret info I just dropped, the park is a-okay. The sites are decently spacious, you definitely don't feel stacked on top of one another. There are a lot of longer-term and permanent residence, but none of them appear trashy or "trailer park" like. There's a small man-made beach where we saw dolphins, and a quick jaunt across US 1 (on foot, 5 minutes tops) to see the sun rise over a completely undeveloped side of the island. There's a gas station on site, including a convenience store with "Wings" style souvenirs, shirts, etc. but most importantly decent beer. It's maybe 2 minutes to drive to Bahia Honda, and 10 - 15 to Big Pine Key where you can hit up bars, restaurants, a grocery store, that kind of stuff.

We were here right before Christmas, and all of the more permanent residence had decked their rigs out for the holidays so it was really fun walking all around and checking out their decorations. Definitely worse places to stay!

Our RV dealer gave us a 14 day free trial to Thousand Trails. We used the last 9 days at Sunshine Key. There's nothing really bad to say about this park from what I experienced. We stayed at lot 42. Accessing lot 42 via Tuna drive was a bit aggravating due to the big bush on the corner that was planted by the permanent resident that lives on the corner but he helped to keep us from scratching our class A. Once we got to the site, we found it spacious. Showers were very close to our lot as well. Nice pool and café on site. Laundry was $2.25 a load as well as the dryers. Credit card is the only method of payment and clothes dried very well. Probably wouldn't use this method again. Over all it was one of the nicer sites that TT had to offer. AND no we will not be TT members after all.