Campground Review: Daytona Beach RV Resort

Florida RV parks are notorious for being hard to come by, especially in the busy season. We lucked out when we found a 10-night stay near Daytona Beach for March, right around Spring Break. When we realized our ongoing issues with our water pump, we needed to sit down and do more planning in order to ensure water hookups until we could get our situation checked out. We had a gap of time between our stay near Columbia, SC and our South Florida reservations.

Making our South Florida reservations is a big deal. These are the first round of reservations we had made for Launch Plan A, when we thought we were departing on New Year's Eve. When we got delayed for 2 months, we canceled/rebooked all our campsites up to end of March. I had decided that we could try and play catch-up, making our way down to Koreshan State Park (Estero, FL) for our reservation on March 29. The plan was to spend about a month in the area so we could visit Anthony's parents at their Florida home in Bonita Springs. Squeezing in a month's worth of reservations wasn't easy, and I didn't want to have to pass those up too. So this left us with Launch Plan B -  to travel from MA to Koreshan in a little over a month, instead of the 3 months we had initially planned to take. Super easy and not rushed at all, but because we're full-time, we'd rather slow our travels way down and spend more time in each area. We haven't been able to do that yet, but once our repairs are done on the rig, we can start planning our travels the way we really want.

So there we were, at Jordan Lake State Park in NC, figuring out where we would head after SC. We loved visiting Daytona on our East Coast road trip, and so I thought that would be a good destination. One quick search for Daytona-area RV Parks, ideally near the Ponce Inlet region because Ponce is AHH-mazing and I love lighthouses...

...and Daytona Beach RV Resort came up. It looked pretty typical of what we would expect from Florida RV resorts, and to my pleasant surprise, the online booking search turned up 2 RV sites still available for 10 days. That would bring us straight to March 29, when we had our Koreshan reservations. The only sites remaining were "super" sites at a lofty $70/night, but we were doing so much planning at that point, I didn't feel like researching further. We booked the site for 10 days and were happy to have our schedule filled out until we caught up to our Plan A reservations.

Turns out, the super site is very beneficial for a toyhauler. Unlike the standard sites that are parking lot-esque and back up into one another, we backed up to a beautiful grassy area. You know what this means: PATIO TIME!

Besides a couple of humid, stormy days, we had fantastic weather. Exactly what we'd hope for in Florida in springtime. We even got to set up our Alvantor Sun Tent for the first time!

Our super site also meant it was gravel and quite wide compared to the other sites. Once we were backed in, we appreciated the space, but we're starting to get used to needing to park our truck in precarious positions in order to fit, no matter how big a site is. We have a really big truck! We don't call him the Beast for nothing!

Our biggest difficulties getting into the site were 1, the very narrow RV park roads, which left little room to maneuver into our site (lots of back-and-forths needed to happen), and 2, the fact that it looked even but was not. It was fairly level (we only needed to raise our driver side an inch), but the site itself was nowhere near square. So when I tried navigating Anthony to be even along the business side of the site so we could reach our hookups, we looked completely askew on our pleasure side. That just wasn't going to cut it because I hate when things aren't even. So I had poor Anthony pulling in and out of the site for way longer than we needed to, just so I could feel relatively secure with our evenness. We didn't end up perfectly straight, but I guess I'm going to have to deal with it. When it comes to positioning in a site, sometimes we have to settle for good enough.

Once parked and unpacked, we took Tanner for a walk around the campground so we could get our bearings. This is when we started forming our pro and con list:

Pros:

1. The neighbors are very friendly. There are a lot of stationary homes and long-term residents here, and they are so welcoming to the campers who are just passing through. We were greeted with a whole lotta "howdys" as we walked around the park. During the nice weather, the place was bustling with people enjoying their outdoor spaces, but at night it was really quiet. A perfect combination!
2. The park is clean and well-maintained - surprising considering we also noticed a major con that could cause this place to be a mess (see below).
3. It's close to all the shops, restaurants, and activities. We got a lot of errands done while we were here, including getting Tanner groomed at PetSmart, which is less than 15 minutes away. He was so happy to get rid of his winter coat! We also made it over to Ponce Inlet, which was a beautiful experience that deserves its own blog post.
4. The hookups were seamless. Sewer connected really tight, electric and water worked right away - and for the water this was a plus because we had had so many issues with leaking the past couple of parks we stayed at.
5. The amenities, for the most part, were as described. They offer just enough to keep people occupied, and since this is a park geared more towards adults, the amenities do too. The park has a beautiful pavilion with a grill, tons of seating, and a gas firepit table (though when we tried it, it was out of propane, so small con there). Next to the pavilion is a cornhole and shuffleboard area on one side, and a pool/jacuzzi on the other side.

Inside, the park offers a fitness center, which is still small but at least has some weight training equipment and space to put down a mat.

Next to the fitness center is a billiard room, which also has some lounge furniture, TV, DVDs, books, and puzzles. I challenged Anthony to a game of pool, which basically means an hour of laughing at ourselves and declaring ourselves the worst pool players in history. I technically won, but let's face it, we were actually both losers in this situation.

Cons:

1. As I mentioned, the park was nice and clean overall. However, we had a real issue with the layout, mainly the fact that there were only 2 dumpsters for 250+ sites, and they were located clear across the resort. They really are only convenient for maybe 20 sites tops. Everyone else is out of luck. Normally we'd just shrug and say we'd take out the trash when we know we're leaving to go somewhere, but this posed an issue too, because the dumpsters were actually past the entrance, so even driving it over would mean needing to double back to leave the park. Furthermore, there were two dog waste pick-up areas. One was near the dumpsters, so again really inconvenient for us. The other took us a week to find because it's next to the entrance - somewhere we never walk because we aren't leaving the resort when we walk Tanner. It's also not convenient because, like the dumpster area, it's neglecting the entire back half of the park. This really leaves no one any choice but to keep their trash bags and doggy bags outside their rig until it's convenient to bring them to the disposal...
2. ...which was a choice some people took too far. Our pleasure-side neighbors had a bag of trash sitting out back of their rig the day we arrived. It was there for days. Imagine the stench that can emanate from a trash bag that has been sitting through heat, humidity, rain, and sunshine. Needless to say, we didn't use our picnic table at all, and the situation certainly put a damper on our patio use. We spent a few days debating whether or not to knock on their door, when on the 6th day, we had more than enough reason to go a'knockin. The landscapers came by and weedwhacked the grass around our sites, and shortly after I noticed that they had sliced our neighbor's sewer hose! Anthony went over to alert them, and while he was there, mentioned the trash. We try to be kind neighbors and in this case are glad we were. Turns out the whole family had been sick and they hadn't been able to run all the way to the dumpsters. They were also very grateful that we noticed their sliced sewer hose. This just goes to show that, as frustrating as these situations can be, it's best to be gracious because we never know what's going on with other people.
3. Speaking of graciousness, I'll put this as a con, but the first part is actually a major pro. Most of the staff we interacted with were very nice. Even the maintenance man who checked up on our neighbor's sewer hose offered her a new one and also told her he'd have a word with the landscapers. I was really impressed with the customer service, until our final day at the resort. Anthony and I went to play a quick game of pool while doing laundry, and one slip of a pool stick sent one of the balls flying. It made a loud noise, which prompted a woman from the office (whom we hadn't yet met) to come in and reprimand us for our "aggressive" playing, telling us that if we didn't knock it off we'd be asked to leave. Frankly, I was extremely put off by this level of disrespect and have full reason to believe it was ageist. We are extremely courteous campers and certainly aren't rowdy youngsters "abusing our privileges." I tried explaining to the lady that it was purely an accident, but she wouldn't listen. This pretty much ruined our perception of the staff, and that lady needs to check herself on her discriminatory attitude and give us "young people" the benefit of the doubt. Anthony said he hoped by his mid-30s he wouldn't have to worry about being taken seriously. Unfortunately, we've thrust ourselves into a world where most people will be older than us, and I fear this won't be the last time someone views us as rabble-rousers, when all we really want is to represent the RV community in a respectful way.
4. The first couple days of our stay, we had good connectivity, but then our internet was horrible the rest of the time. All our connectivity in general was shoddy, with lots of our devices quickly depleting their batteries, and even our cellular internet was extremely spotty. We never expect campground WIFI to be good; it's just a pleasant surprise when it is. Given our distance from the office, we knew we'd likely rely on our cellular internet for most of the week, but when that stopped working too, we had some frustrating days of trying to get our online work done.

Our overall perception of this RV park is positive, and I think we will remember our time here with fondness. Is it a place where we're raring to come back? No, but as with many other parks we've hit on our way south, it fulfilled a need. By the end of our 10 days, we were ready for a change. As we move into our next phase of travel, where we can plan out our trips the way we want, we will hopefully find campgrounds that are more fitting to our way of life, but until then, we will accept the mediocrity of the Florida RV Park(ing lot).

Campground:

Daytona Beach RV Resort, Port Orange, FL

Site 70: Super back-in site, gravel, grassy area behind it, picnic table, FHU