Richmond North / Kings Dominion KOA Holiday — Hotel in Ashland

Very sad and disappointed that this campground carries the Kings Dominion name which is a great park.

Short version: These tent sites are pathetic, they're tiny, terribly organized, hit & miss like someone said (meaning you may have to fight to get your picninc table or fire ring) and very expensive, 45% more than our usual place. Don't waste your time here.

Long version: We love Kings Dominion and our usual campground was full so we decided to try King Dominion's Camp Wilderness even though it is super expensive, $51 a night compared to $35 at Pocahontas State Park.

First the good: The store has a ton of stuff, very well stocked. The pool looked nice but we couldn't use it because our son had an injury.

Now our experience: We get there, they give us lot 102. We go, it doesn't seem tent friendly. Hard surface (for parking and trailers?), some space to put the tent but not much and wide open, no trees or anything and the land looked super hard, no tent site. Maybe our fault, we wanted a water/electric near the main store/bathroom and didn't realize these lots weren't for tents. We go to the office and get lot D and this is better, some grass, trees but no picnic table it seems some people took our table. We brought our lunch so we were supposed to get there and sit on the table and eat right away. Now it's been like 40 min and no lunch. We go back to the office and explain the situation. The lady says "Do you want us to send someone to get your table or do you want to do it yourself". I'm like seriously? So I ask them to send someone. We go back, wait, 2 guys come, they don't seem helpful at all. So at this point we have several discussions about getting the table, where to put it and getting the fire ring, where to put it, the elctric connection is too far the neigbors not only took our table but took some of our space so we can't put the ring, just problem after problem. So I ask the guy what I should do ? He says I have the prerogative to call the office and complain, I tell him well if you want me to call the office and he says NO NO NO NO NO I didn't tell you to call anywhere, I told you you have "the prerogative" to call them. At this point I'm done with these people so I start talking to my wife about leaving and getting a refund, the guy says no that he's calling someone. So this lady comes, she figures this campsite is a mess and tells us to choose any site from J to N. We go there and it's like 20 min trying to find the least bad one cause they all had some problem. The 2 guys are there waiting for us so they can get us a table and fire ring since again this is completely disorganized. We put up the tent even though there wasn't a tent ready place I mean this ground was part sandy, part hard and full of little rocks so when you walked in the tent it hurt your feet, forget about kneeling, if you tripped on a tent wire that would be a horrible fall into little rocks.

So it was a very bad start and there's other things we didn't like, these camp sites were way on the other side so now the bathroom was too far away. We didn't find a playground for our son. There was a bike area in a loop road but it was just one section of the place, the rest of the roads didn't have a bike section and many roads were just dirt roads. On top of that all day you hear the noise (screaming) from the park and at night we heard like 4 trains that made the whole tent rumble horribly. The WiFi is 1.3 Mbps, when you have 105 Mbps at home then 1.3 is rough.

If they charged $20 a night this would be almost bearable, I was expecting a high end campground, wow was I wrong. Yo could try the cabins but those are like $200+ a night and the other reviews say they're tiny.

If you're in the area go to Pocahontas or...

We stayed here for 6 nights. The campgrounds shares an interstate exit with the Kings Dominion amusement park: you pass the entrance to the park on your way to the campground. As you enter the campground, the office building will be on your left and a small shack with check-in materials for after-hours arrivals will be on your right. The campground has a mix of sites: pull-throughs with either asphalt, concrete, or gravel pads, back-ins that typically have gravel pads, a long street of house-like cabins, and a large number of tent sites (which tend to be on the outer edge of the property). Some sites have grass lawns, other mainly gravel. Most if not all sites have a picnic table and a basic fire ring (except for the luxury sites which have an elevated fire pit, a gas grill and patio chairs). Some sites have tall trees that provide shade, while the sites located in middle rows generally do not.

We were put in site 238, which was just barely long enough to fit both our 37-foot RV and our 21-foot truck with the truck parked sideways. A lot of the pull-through sites are buddy sites, including ours, so we were a bit concerned that our neighbors would have trouble getting around our truck to pull into site 237, but it ended up not being a problem. The site also dipped slightly in the middle before sloping upwards: in order to level, the front of our fifth wheel came down so low we couldn't fit the stabilizing tripod under the kingpin. And when it rained, the water collected in that dip, creating a deep puddle beneath our door. So I would not recommend this site for larger rigs. Our site was just across the street from one of the two dump stations, which provided some entertainment value at times.

The campground has many of the typical KOA amenities: a campground store with RV and convenience store items (including an ice cream counter), a large playground, a swimming pool (not filled during our stay), some outdoor games, a propane refill station, and a laundry room. In addition to the bathrooms and showers in the office building, there are two other bathhouses. There is a shuttle service that takes campers to the amusement park and back. Their K9 dog park sits on the eastern end of the park within a primitive group tent camping area, so I wonder how accessible the park is when that area is in use. The dog park also has no lights of any kind, but there are other lit areas of the campground where you can walk your dog during the night. You can put trash out at your site for pickup or put it into the fast-food style trash cans scattered throughout the park.

In terms of cell service, the best speed I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna was 20 Mbps down and 16 up, and other than some pixelation we had no trouble streaming video during the evening. The best speed test I ran on my 5G AT&T smartphone showed 36 Mbps down and 4 up. I tested the campground WiFi the morning we left (a Saturday morning with a lot of folks around) and only got 3 Mbps down and 2 up.

We'd be willing to start here again if we were in the area, just not...

This was the perfect place to stay when paired with a trip to Kings Dominion. There is a free shuttle at the KOA store that goes back and forth from Kings Dominion all day - very convenient for the younger kids that needed a break or afternoon nap. ||||Check in was at the main KOA store, which was stocked with everything we could need for the weekend - basic drinks and foods and firewood and some fun souvenirs. You can also purchase discounted Kings Dominion tickets from the store. There's also ice cream! To the kids' disappointment, the "arcade" appeared to be a lone Ms. Pac-Man machine. ||||We stayed in one of the cabins. There was plenty of parking. There was a fire ring and picnic table outside. We got the 2 bedroom - 2 bathroom cabin. The bathrooms had pump shampoo and conditioner and bar soap. The shower heads are set very low, which was inconvenient for some of the taller members of our group. While having 2 bathrooms was really convenient, be warned that the second bedroom is really just the loft - there was no way to close it off. The loft had two sides divided by a central stairway, but the ceiling is very low up there and could be hard for some adults to maneuver. What was really great was that both sides of the loft had their own TV (in addition to the TV on the main level) - cut down on a lot of fighting. It was also really nice that there was an additional window AC unit in the loft in addition to the central air on the main level. There was hardwood on the main level, but the stairs and loft had carpeting. Beds weren't super comfy, but OK. The blankets and comforters were old and scratchy, so we were glad we had brought our own from home. The kitchen is just a microwave, sink, and mini-fridge, so you'll need to bring all your own plates, bowls, and silverware. Overall, the cabin was pretty tight size-wise, but a good use of the space. Mosquitoes were definitely a problem, so be warned! ||||There's not much else around, so this place really only makes sense for us when going to Kings Dominion. There is a small pool (looked very crowded) and a few games on site (appeared to be seldom used basketball and volleyball courts), so Kings Dominion is the big draw here. ||||Conclusion: very reasonably priced option for a trip to...