How we ended up fighting our way into the Florida RV SuperShow with two nudists
We made a strict deadline of when to arrive down in Florida, mostly due to the fact that we wanted to go to the Florida RV SuperShow for the first time. This is arguably the largest RV show in the country, with manufacturers showcasing the latest RVs, as opposed to dealers. It's run by the Florida RV Trade Association (FRVTA), which hosts a few shows in the state each year, but the SuperShow is like the Superbowl of RV shows, with hundreds of thousands of spectators, prospective buyers, and media influencers flocking to the displays.
We had plans to write a blog post about attending as first-timers, offering tips and highlights for those who plan to go in the future. As such, while we could have applied as media, we instead bought our tickets and attended as visitors. Little did we know that, in doing that, we would come away with a very unexpected story – one that, unfortunately, left a bad taste in our mouths about this RV show in general.
It all began when we went onto the FRVTA website a couple of weeks before the show to buy our tickets. Advanced tickets cost $13/person, as opposed to $15 at the door. There is a lot of controversy on this idea of charging spectators money to go and be sold things. Why don't the vendors and manufacturers pay more for their booth spots so that visitors can roam for free? For some RV shows, they charge in order to weed out the less serious buyers. This is not the case here, as the majority of attendees go without planning to buy. My guess is, they charge because people keep paying! Attendance numbers, though down slightly from 2023, are still enormously high.
But I digress. Back to the story. We're on the website, trying to find the option to purchase tickets. The website is not well-organized, and the area to buy tickets was very small, to the point that we almost didn't see it at first. Once in, I added 2 tickets to the cart and proceeded with checkout. Then, at the click to purchase, I got this error message:
Clearly something wrong on the back-end, since that seems to be some kind of program talk, but I still went back and made sure all my information was accurate. I even tried using a few different credit cards, and Anthony tried on his computer in case it was an incompatibility with my device. No luck, so we decided to give it a rest.
A few days later, we tried again, but the same error message kept popping up. We decided to give up and just pay the extra money at the ticket booth.
In the meantime, the website boasted an interactive map of the show, where we could flag the vendors we wanted to see and it would highlight them on the map for us. I was excited about this because I had heard stories that the show is insanely difficult to navigate. I went into the map and found ATC, our trailer manufacturer, and gave them a star. Only, back on the map, nothing was highlighted. The interactive map wasn't working. It would have been helpful had it worked, but instead, we'd be left to navigate the show only with our printed map.
The show ran from Wednesday, January 17 to Sunday, January 21. We went on Thursday, late morning, which turned out to be a great time because the traffic getting in was not bad. We heard that earlier in the mornings, traffic can be backed up for miles because everyone is getting to the show when it opens. We were parked in our spot about 15 minutes after we entered the fairgrounds. There were plenty of staff members directing vehicles, but it was still rather confusing. Our parking attendant began filling our row before the row before ours was filled, and he stood in a place where people couldn't see him, so lots of people just went their own way and found their own spot.
Even though we arrived a couple hours after the show opened, our walk to the gate was not very far, only a few minutes. Two ticket booths were open, and we got in line at one of them that had only a handful of people in front of us.
We chose the wrong line. The people in front of us were taking forever to get their tickets, and we have no idea what was happening. We waited several minutes, watching longingly as the other ticket line moved at a normal pace. We saw a few people come in with their online tickets, getting to skip the line altogether. I asked them "Wait, you were able to get online tickets?!" Evidently some people did, so whatever was happening with our transaction, we'll never know.
Some people grew impatient and opted to use kiosks that were over to the side. The first guy to try seemed to be unable to make them work, but a few people after him successfully got their tickets. Anthony decided to give it a try, while I continued to wait in the non-moving line. A few minutes later, Anthony came back over to me and said, "Well, it took my payment, but didn't print the tickets." What the actual heck?! Now we had no choice but to wait and hope that one of the workers could help us.
We finally made our way to the ticket booth and told the lady that we tried to pay at the kiosk, but it ate our money. She needed to call her supervisor, who was God-knows-where in the fairgrounds. So we waited for her to come. Then we waited some more. Annnnd some more. 20 minutes went by, and we went back to the ticket booth. We asked why the supervisor couldn't just authorize her to give us tickets, and the lady said she wondered the same thing.
I went to use the bathroom, and when I came back, Anthony was standing over at the kiosks with two other people. The ticket agent told Anthony that, when the supervisor arrived, she'd meet him at the kiosk. When Anthony went back, he met this couple who also had their money eaten. They were not happy. The guy looked into the machine and noticed that the tickets were getting stuck. There was a whole pile of them, and we wondered where these other people went after they couldn't get their tickets. Did they just pay again? Because there was no way I was about to pay $30 to wander an RV show. The four of us decided that now we had strength in numbers. We called one of the workers who was scanning tickets over to the kiosk. He looked at the kiosk to see if there was anything he could do, but it was literally riveted shut. We waited some more, letting everyone know that, whatever they do, do NOT use the left kiosk. So at least we could perform an act of service to keep everyone else from getting into the same predicament.
At this point we had been at the gate for probably close to 45 minutes. With no sign of the supervisor, we eventually all decided to go back to the other worker and ask him if there was any way he could just let us in. Anthony even had proof on his credit card app that the payment went through, so all we were missing were the tickets themselves. The guy was very nice and told us that he would let us in. The only problem was, the tickets are good for two days of admission. If we went back the following day, we'd have to find the same worker, remind him that we were the kiosk people, and he'd let us in. Fair enough. We doubted we'd be going back anyway, after this whole debacle.
The four of us victoriously walked through the gates. On our way in, we got to chatting about our RV lives, and the couple told us that they were staying over at Cypress Cove, which is a nudist resort. How we kept our reactions from being jaw-dropped shocked, I'll never know, but props to us for playing it way cool. Granted, we had heard of nudist RV parks before, but we had never met people who have gone to one...or at least people who announce that they've gone to one. It's not our style, but we were intrigued by how these types of resorts function, and so when we got home, we went onto the website to do some research. You can read about it for yourself, if you so wish. We actually really enjoy hearing about how other RVers camp. We are huge proponents of "camp your own camp," whether that's boondocking, staying at swanky RV resorts, or doing something niche like this. It's pretty cool how many varying opportunities there are for us to make RV life our own.
Once into the show, we bid farewell to our new friends and went into the first building, which held several vendors. It was absolute chaos, despite not being super crowded, as the photo shows.
The biggest problem is that the vendor booths are all squeezed in, it feels disorganized so you can't find what you're looking for, and the soliciting is out of control. We have been to plenty of shows before that are set up similarly, but never have we had so many people yelling at us to check out their booth. It was overwhelming, given that we had just arrived. We wanted to check out the RVs first anyway, and so we walked through the building and out the other side. And, just when we made our way out the door, it started raining. Getting our 45 minutes back would have done us some good, because we could have perused the RVs while staying dry, but instead, this is what we got.
Nothing we could do about it now, so we decided to shake it off and try to have a good time. We went around to several of the RV displays, and yes, we will agree that the show is very hard to navigate. Some RVs were grouped together nicely. For the most part, we found all the different brands together in one place, with a few exceptions. What most people complain about is that, instead of grouping by brand, why not group by type of RV? That way, people interested in trailers can go find all the trailers. People interested in motorhomes can go find all the motorhomes. We didn't really mind that they weren't grouped this way because we were there to get a taste for all the different RVs, not a specific kind, but for buyers, this show must be a major pain. Our biggest issue is that the fairgrounds, in true Florida fashion, have a lot of lagoons, and so it's never a straight shot to get from one area to the next. We felt like we were constantly circling around lagoons, which made getting from place to place take twice as long.
We certainly didn't see anywhere near all the displayed RVs, but we narrowed our search down to a few that we thought would be of interest to us, mostly the more rugged adventure rigs. We enjoyed seeing the tent full of nuCamp teardrops and envisioning a life of feeling like tall giants in our RV. One thing we can say for sure, is that ATCs are definitely tall-people-friendly, and we're grateful for that. We cannot count how many rigs - even full-sized ones - we have not been able to stand in, or whose kitchen counters go up to our thighs. (Anthony is 5'11 and I'm 5'10).
We gradually made our way across the lots to visit ATC, who had a fantastic display of several of their rigs, including their newest releases. A few updates have been made since we bought our 2021 Gamechanger Pro. The ATCs are slowly becoming more homey, which is something that many buyers have requested over the years. They also have some upgraded equipment, like new ways to listen to music. Move over, Jensen! JBL is in town and he takes up way less space. Oh, and he actually works! ATC has also begun adding touch screen panels for monitoring tanks and overall functioning. This is interesting because many RVs have reversed course on this and are reverting back to buttons. The latest trend is that RVs are becoming less fancy, going back to the bare bones with less added frills to make them more budget-friendly. Customers like this because they can put their own stamp on their rig, adding what they want and leaving the rest. Sound familiar? That's the thing we like best about our ATC. We really got the bare bones, to the point where we renovated the entire inside to fit our lifestyle. When we ordered our trailer, we told ATC we didn't even need any of their stock furniture, because we were going to take it out anyway. ATC remains true to their vision, creating rigs that are reliable, sturdy, and functional. If you're hauling toys, you can expect a high-quality ramp, ventilation, and easy cleaning. If you're living the home-on-wheels life like us, you can outfit it as you want. Now that we've built our rig out residential and were able to put in our own choices for furniture, I can't see ourselves ever wanting an RV with stock furniture. We'd probably opt for a renovation each time. And as for the new touch screens? As long as ATC chose good ones, I'm all for a touch screen. Call us modern, but we don't like our buttons.
We ended our day with a visit back to the vendor buildings and a meetup with two of our favorite YouTubers and podcasters, RV Miles. By the end of the day, we were completely exhausted. Those SuperShows really take a lot out of you!
I know there was a lot of complaining in this post, but we keep things real here on the blog. I doubt most visitors to the RV SuperShow would have the same issues that we did, but the most important piece of advice we can offer is, keep your expectations low. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that, if you have certain rigs you want to see, give yourself plenty of time to find them and check them out, and prioritize those rigs, because you simply will not be able to see everything, especially if you're only attending the show for one day.
In our opinion, is it worth going? If you're serious about buying, have done your research, and think you know what you want, then you could get a killer discount because the show prices were really reasonable from what we saw. Many people were buying RVs right off the show lots. If you want to see new innovations, this show is where they are unveiled. This year, because of the "no frills approach" with most RV brands, we were not privy to newfangled, crazy technomagical expositions, but in previous years, the Florida RV SuperShow was where rigs like this are showcased...for whatever that's worth.
For everyone else, we think that the draw of the show is similar to that of an open house. Sometimes you aren't in the market to buy a home, but you might pop into your neighbor's open house to see "how they lived." At the show, you can look inside all the RVs that you see on the road or at the campgrounds, and you get to see their layouts, features, and decor. Basically, it satisfies intrigue. So if that appeals to you, then 100%, you cannot find a better opportunity to browse than at the Florida RV SuperShow.
As for us? We've done it once, and we probably won't to do it again, unless we have a particular reason to go. We've always said, if ATC wants us to attend and show people the possibilities of outfitting their rigs for residential living, we'd be all for it. If someday we have a specific blog post to write, we would apply to go as media, so that way we could get in without the ticket hoopla and we'd be able to go on Industry Day, before the show opens to the public. Though I will say, we've heard from other influencers that half the booths weren't even fully set up yet on industry day, making it hard to people to get their stories. This must be incredibly frustrating for those whose jobs depend on their visit to this show.
Overall, the SuperShow has a lot to offer. There are also lots of areas where they could do better, but because the show draws in the numbers (and money) each year, I suppose they don't feel like they have to fix what ain't broke...even though so much of it is.