Winter Garden RV Resort - Thousand Trails

We really enjoyed our stay here! Winter Garden RV Resort is an Encore property. It is included with our Trails Collection upgrade.

The best part was the friendliness of the staff, campers, and residents. We enjoyed the gym, the speed of the free wifi in the lounges, the clean bathrooms, the level campsites, the dog park, the laundry facilities, and the proximity to Orlando.

On the down side we paid for the wifi upgrade and it was very poor. Although we received a refund for the poor service, we had high hopes for it working at our camp site.

We would stay here again!

The park is located multilane highway, you must be going West up to the park to make a right hand turn into the park. Turn at the "sports complex" sign.

This park is physically farther from Disney than the Thousand Trails, but the roads between are highway without stop lights (toll) and you can zip back and forth from the parks really well.

The RV park is very tight, on top of each other tight. The lanes between the sites are also very tight. The pools are great, the fitness center has good equipment in it and the WIFI is not available at the sites but in the rec buildings. They are an Encore park and are now part of the 1KT Encore package. The bathrooms were clean, but there was a lot of peeling paint on shower walls, etc. They make you sign for bathroom door codes, but they are never locked. Package handling was done well, long term residents can get first class mail too.

AT&T 4G LTE is good here, not too much latency and bandwidth up and down is OK during the normal work day. The service does get overloaded in the area late afternoon. Verizon voice is good, data was good as a backup when AT&T was lagging. WeBoost is helpful but not required.

The West side of the park is along the busy road by Aldi, the Northeast side is closer to a fire station. Over all for being in a very urban environment the park is very quiet.

Not the worst park we've been at but it's got some serious problems. It's a muddy mess when it rains even a little and it stays that way for days. Our site is a lake right now with muddy ruts where we park our toad. Plenty of traffic noise but thankfully that's drowned out by our neighbors that carry on outside our bedroom until 4 am. Sites are very close together both side to side and back to back. Lot's of annual residents too, many of whom aren't 55+ retirees.

The good? It seems clean and well kept enough. The pools look nice. The best parts? We stayed as part of our Thousand Trails membership so the nightly price was $0 and it's about 20 minutes from the heart of Disney World. Those are the only reasons we'd stay here again.

We arrived at this park in December, 2019. It is located between 2 busy roads. One a multi lane road. (The plus is you are really close to a Publix and an Aldi.) Our site was pretty level but on the tight side. In fact most spaces were narrow. The park was well maintained. The pool, work out room, game room and activity center were all well maintained. (The bathroom/showers were under renovation so we did not see those.) We did not have any rain like Dan and Jen talked about, but I could see where that might be a problem. The laundry has to have a card you buy at the front desk and then load with $. If your not planning on using the laundry a lot, I suggest your save money buy going to a laundromat.
The people at the park were very friendly and helpful with advice about the town. We ended up exploring the town, local food and shops which were very cool. The bike trails were awesome! For these reasons, we will definitely be back! We give the park 3 stars, but the location of the park and town makes it a 4 star.

Paid $55 for a single night stay. We're Thousand Trails members but they didn't have any TT availability so we paid the full price minus our 20% TT discount. Site 126 is towards the back located in the middle of a bunch of permanent residents. They were all very friendly but it felt strange to be parking in the middle of a bunch of trailers when there are RV sections in the park.

Full hookups (50amp, water, sewer) but a couple issues. The water and power were located at the back. Not bad, but a long stretch. The water was shared with our back neighbor who was using a Y valve to split water to 2 sources. When we connected our water, the pressure was very low as you would expect with 3 hoses from a single spigot.

The sewer was located uphill near the back of our unlevel site and took 2 hoses full stretch to reach. It was pretty much impossible to get the hose elevated enough to let gravity do its job. That meant we had to manually lift and hold our stinky slinky in our hands to allow the stuff to go downhill. Not the most exciting evening exercise.

The front desk service was abysmal. Probably the worst we've had in a year of full-timing. We arrived 5 minutes before approved check-in and we asked "we know we're a couple minutes early, but is that ok?" to which she responded "no, that's not ok and you can't wait out front. You'll need to leave." Whaaaat? Luckily another employee was nearby and informed her that all the guests that needed to exit had already left so she begrudgingly let us go in. She cussed multiple times, informed us that she hated guests like "us" (what does that mean?) and slammed the paperwork down without giving us instructions. Probably just a bad day, but wow! Take a chill pill!

The playground is pretty worn down but the pool was fine for letting the kids swim around for a bit. Worked for an overnight stay but we're glad we didn't choose this "resort" for a longer stay.

The location gives the most benefit here. The park gives a bit of an oasis in a busy suburban area. We found the staff helpful and efficient--we had some issues with our original assigned site and they quickly gave us another that worked very well for us. A lot of traffic noise, but to be expected along a busy highway (Colonial/Hwy 50)--location has its plusses and minuses. We drove a bit (15-30 minutes) to the Lake Apopka North Shore Wildlife Drive. Free with a great many birds, gators, and one croc who seemed particularly...interested...in us. We also enjoyed the downtown area. Good restaurants and a great bookstore, and also close to Mt. Dora which we enjoy for the same reasons.

So we really like the campground. Place is great. However the Manager is not a nice person. Every time we went in to office she was snapping at someone. Always acted like we were interrupting her. I know here job can be stressful but she needs to be nicer to the customers. Starlink was ok here

the location is awesome, downtown winter gardens is a tourist attraction and awesome, very crowded at night, we get out of there by 10pm. so we did good. but the camp ground is another story, the manager don't care about the guest, saw her once and she didn't even say hi, the sites are so close together its sad. i had to pull in between 2 trees and it was close, i hardly had room to park my truck yet alone for 1 guest. its a Hugh rv park, we went for walks and alot of OLD rv's. looks like a big laundry room, but all the way to the other side. kinda in the back. the place is more set up for the long term rv's. not the daily or weekly, don't think they care about us.they park us so close together its terrible its a shame.the guy next to me complained that my LP gas heater was to loud, that shows you how close together we are, we are in a 35ft 5th wheel sry cant to anything about that lol, they did have 2 pools that needed cleaning big time. the roads or paths i should say are very narrow, the main rd is good size, but not the rd you pull out of, so like i said before, its tight all the way around, we saw a 42ft class A pull in down from us ans it was funny, not for him of course. he barley fit on the path and had to back in and out to fit.33. but on the web page it say big rig welcome. i was parked on top of roots. and you can go there and see them. i will never go there again. cable tv was good, no wi-fi.

We stayed here for 5 nights between Christmas and New Year while we spent time at Universal Studios. The campground was a 25 min drive to the park. Overall the stay was nice. Check in was virtual and we didn’t need to stop by the office at all. The pools were both nice and heated. The laundry rooms were good but the one in the back is bigger and busier. It is all accessible via an app so you don’t need change or tokens but there is also a kiosk that takes a card. The other residents/guests were nice and were very quiet. I would estimate 70 percent of the sites are permanent with a few mobile homes. The pedestals for electric and water are probably due for an update bud manageable. Overall we liked our stay and would stay again.

Our neighbors arrived last night and put their slide out to be actually three feet from our front door stairs. See photos.

Called the office and they confirmed that the campers aren't allowed to have a slide-out in that spot and that they are too close to us, but the office can't (won't) do anything about it. They accepted this booking and then just let these sites cram full of people. I'm not even sure we will be able to leave the spot because they are too close for us to turn onto the road.

If you book here, do NOT get a value spot. They say in the park rules that you aren't allowed to encroach on other camp spots, but they DO NOT enforce this.