Lakeshore Camp Resort

This was our first stay at a Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park and we originally envisioned it as a KOA on Steroids. As we were traveling through the Midwest in midsummer, we were fighting a two-front battle against the oppressive humidity and a bored six-year old—we needed a pool and we needed it bad. With their reliably clean pools and mildly entertaining playgrounds, the KOAs had proven themselves a valuable ally. From the look of the Portage Indiana Jellystone’s website, we would have both and then some…a KOA on steroids! Well it was definitely a park on drugs, but not steroids…more like meth. If gang-bangers and a distinct 1970s-era, run-down trailer park ambiance is your thing, then I highly recommend the Portage Jellystone.

There had to be over 1,000 sites on the property and 99.99% of those appeared to be permanently occupied by parked “trailers.” This was obviously the vacation mecca for the greater Chicago area. Our site was situated well inside the tight, maze-like layout of narrow “streets” and was incredibly difficult to maneuver our trailer into. Luckily, we quickly had a large contingent of residents, Bud Lite Lime and Newport Menthol butts in-hand, grading my backing prowess. Now I’m a very competent trailer-backer-upper, but getting our rig into this site was freakin’ horrible! Very little room to swing our truck around and the back-half of the site was a coagulated mess of mud and what I can only guess was sewage from the previous day’s rainstorm.

While not paved, our site was a wonderful combination of two-parts gravel and one-part cigarette butts and beer bottle tops. The site was not level and I’m still trying to get my Lynx Leveling blocks clean from where they sunk into the muck. The sewer hook-up was a piece crap (pun intended) and made our ingress/egress even more difficult due to its location. Our 30amp electrical (50amp wasn’t available) was pretty shady, but still managed to run one of our air conditioners, so thankfully we didn’t have to endure being serenaded throughout the evening by the slow-roll, golfcart DJ and the regularly scheduled freight trains.

The trees hadn’t been pruned for a while and luckily the branch that fell on us during the night was small and didn’t do any damage.

A pool and a pond, but the pond would be good for you…Jellystone Portage has both a pool complex and a pond that claims to be e-coli and bacteria free! We tried out both and the good news is that none of us has got sick, so the claims must be true!

This was, without a doubt, the worse campground we have ever experienced. Stay away. If there were negative stars, we would given it - 5!

SAVE YOUR MONEY! In my opinion, this campground does not even deserve 1 star. We had read some bad reviews for this campground, however we had also read some good. So we decided to give this place a try. I really wish we would have gone someplace else. We ended up cutting our trip short and leaving early. We were offered a free nights stay and decided it was not even worth it. In my opinion, this campground should not even be affiliated with the Yogi Bear brand. I was sorely disappointed with so many aspects of this place.

First of all, it seems as if this park is mainly seasonal campers and permanent residents. There are many RVs and trailers that are unkept and lawns unmowed.

There are no family bathrooms or family showers. Which is only a con for me because we have small children.

The lifeguards at the pool take a break every half hour and make everyone get out of the pool until they are done.

The playground was full of liter.

The beach (if you can even call it a beach) was littered with cigarette butts and I even found a piece of broken glass laying on the sand! From that point on I would not allow my children on the beach.

Quiet hours are 11pm on weekdays and 12am on weekends. Which may be okay for some people; however, I have small children who go to sleep a lot earlier than that.

There was very loud music being played well past midnight. By loud, I mean it sounded like a full band was playing! Could be heard throughout the entire campground.

Half of the arcade games were not working and there were no refunds.

If you do win tickets, they are "taxed" so you don't actually get all of your tickets.

We did not see Yogi Bear once our entire time there!

I do have to mention that we did have a decent camp site and the bathrooms were kept nicely clean. The staff also seemed friendly. However, this is not enough for my family to be returning.

I do not recommend this campground at all! If you are looking for a Yogi for family fun, check out the Yogi In Fremont, IN!

Make no mistake, this is a trailer park.

I read the reviews online and thought people were being a tid bit dramatic. NOPE! I was 100% wrong.

This begins when you pull of the main road, to rows of broken down trailers and old pre 90's unkept trailer parks. When we pulled up to the "resort" there were kids everywhere unsupervised on go carts. We pulled into the park and noticed a large number of park models that were landscaped and others that were old and unkept.

I went into the office and while the staff was friendly the interior of the office reminded me of the set of every camp themed horror movie I've ever seen. Wood paneling, yellowed resin countertops and everything was sticky. The check in process was easy, but signs were up everywhere saying that there were no refunds on early check out.

When we pulled into the park the spots were so close to each other we had to be careful not to hit the fences, and the TENT that was parked behind us. Once we got into our spot we didn't want to leave the travel trailer. Kids were everywhere driving around blasting music. Adults were walking around drinking. It felt very unsafe. Security was driving around beeping a horn at times, but it didn't seem to be clear why exactly.

We connected power and water just fine, although the park models parked next to us had hoses running near ( but not connected) the water spicket. Ants were everywhere so we had to pop in and pop out so we didn't get bit.

Behind us was a tent and as we stayed there longer it was clear the people lived there. They were nice but they kept adding things to the space as we were there. It started with two tents with a refrigerator and an a/c inside plus an outdoor stove. When we left there were 4 tents there.

I've never seen so many people crammed into a pool except in a movie. The family pool is 3 pools monitored by 2 lifeguards. There were clothes, and trash all around the area and kids coming and going on golf carts non stop. The "game room" is attached to the pool house and it smells like pee, there were condoms around the outside and someone's boxers. We didn't swim there.

They have an adult pool which looked nice, but we didn't get in it since we were there with our child.

The only saving grace for us was the lake. It was a nice reprieve, it seemed to be managed well and we appreciated the lifeguards there. We felt it was clean and we swam in it nearly every day.

I didn't use the laundry facility, showers or anything else because it was terrifying. If you are reading this and are there, go the the Route 22 laundry across the street it was really well kept and wifi worked perfectly.

We stayed for the 10 days because we had commitments in the area, but we were thrilled to leave.

If you are looking for an RV Resort this is not the place for you. If you are expecting to have an experience similar to a KOA stay away.

This is not only a campsite you can visit but it looks like people live here also! Has I lay here now at 10:41pm listening to a regular that stays here party with all his family/friends with little regard to anyone else! Not only that, yesterday the power went out from about 1030/1100 till about 8/9 this morning! This is just flipping crazy that the staff would let this happen! Don’t stay here!

We were tent camping and between the trains, I94, and the kubota golf carts going all night, we didn’t get much sleep. Campsite was okay otherwise. Some trash left from previous campers. Restrooms were clean, showers had great pressure. Prob would have been better in an RV.

If you're looking for a place to relax while you visit nearby Indiana Dunes State Park or National Lakeshore, this probably isn't it. This "resort" is stuck in the middle of a light industrial area, surrounded by rundown mobile home parks, expressway noise, at least two rail lines, and a trash-burning powerplant. The numerous mentions that there are no refunds for early departure should have been a red flag.
The overwhelming majority of the sites are seasonals (our local contacts believe most are permanent residents and not campers), with all the "landscaping" and assorted things laying around their sites. Our site was up against the entry road so we got to hear every vehicle that entered or left the property and all the adjoining properties. Freight trains rumbled by at all hours of the day and night, and actually made our trailer bounce on at least one occasion - and we were on the opposite side of the park from the tracks!
On the "up" side, the sites are all full hookup, which was important for us due to limited grey and black tank capacities.
We left the morning after arrival, gladly sacrificing two nights' rent to move to better conditions farther from the parks we came to visit.

There was a lot of freeway noise and the place had a very strange vibe. We left early the next morning since we couldn’t really sleep.

The other reviewers said it all. I would avoid this place. It's very run down and there were garbage behind my site. The sites are packed very closely together and there are A LOT of sites. The campground is literally next to a major interstate.

I wish I was more thorough with my research. If you look at other websites there are many poor reviews on this campground/RV resort. This used to be a jellystone; however, their affiliation was revoked. I am guessing from how bad it is here. We only lasted 2 hours at this facility. There are signs posted everywhere that there will be no refunds for leaving early. This must happen often. It is a trailer park that is not well kept up. There are about 700 sites, but only 5-10% of them are for RVs. The sites are about 200 feet from a major, 4 lane highway and about 500 feet from a railroad track. We saw 5 trains that short time we were there. I had to yell just to hear my family 6ft away from me. The site next to us was basically underwater and unusable. I did not feel safe and after we left, I read many reviews about items missing from trailers who did stay. The pond was closed due to staffing issues and the pool overly crowded. We have never left a site early before, but was happy to leave this place. We were lucky to find a place 20 minutes from here that was safe and met our needs. The photos are deceiving. DO NOT STAY HERE, if you are an RVer or looking for a family atmosphere. I would give it 0 stars if I could.

This place has potential to be nice, but it is in fact a trailer park with permanent residents. It was clear upon arrival that we were outsiders wedging our RV between two trailers with busted out windows and makeshift porches adorned with topless cigarette-smokin men. We decided to head out within an hour of checking in because we didn’t feel safe. This should be either a trailer park or an RV resort. But it can’t be both, the two groups are not the same in the sense that they are not seeking the same WAY OF LIFE.