Bar Harbor / Oceanside KOA Holiday — Hotel in Bar Harbor

I'm trying to find the right words to describe this campground. I booked this trip in August of LAST year over the phone with a staff member (who conveniently no longer works there) and I paid a site lock in fee. But when I got my email reminder about our upcoming stay last week, they had us in a tent site with no hookups. We have a pop-up and wanted an ocean-front site with water and electric. I called and spoke to the manager who gave us another site that wasn't oceanfront but had water views and offered 25% off. He also threw in some free firewood, which I was happy with. The site ended up being ok. However, it was a muddy mess when we arrived and to my surprise, we shared the site with a tent site. It was #374 if you want to look on the map. It was on a little dead end of the campground, near the marsh but the area was so crammed that it felt like we were camping on the same site as complete strangers. It truly felt like they took one large private campsite and divided it into 2 just to get the extra money from the tent that they figured they could cram in there. It was all around weird and I would not book this site ever again unless we were planning on sharing it with friends or family that I knew well. The campground itself is a really great place to act as "home base" while exploring all that Acadia National Park and downtown Bar Harbor has to offer. It's really close to everything and location was everything. We spent a lot of time off of the campground during our 5 day (Mon - Fri) stay. But it's kind of pricey for camping and I think I might have been able to find a better price elsewhere. The "beaches" on the campground are rocky so make sure you bring water shoes. The water is swimmable but there are lots of crabs that will pinch your feet if you're not careful. The plus side to this is the entertainment my kids got from trying to catch the crabs and explore the rocks. (This was a highlight) The front desk had really friendly staff. Bathroom #2, located near the playground seemed to be dirty from the time we arrived and continued to get worse as our stay went on. It smelled horrible and the floors were constantly wet. The soap in the women's room ran out on Tuesday and wasn't filled again until Thursday, even after we contacted staff twice to let them know about it. The place was full pretty much all week. The RV sites were totally on top of each other and some of them barely had space enough for the rigs they allowed on them. The rentable Airstreams all had a really foul septic smell coming from them and one of them was right near our site and we could smell it all night. It literally made me want to vomit. The deluxe cabins were nice. My mother and step dad stayed in one of those and there was ample room and a nice patio. We chose to spend most of our time at their cabin and away from our stranger neighbors and foul smelling, muddy campsite. Overall, for what I paid with the discount it wasn't horrible but I can't see myself paying full price for a site at this campground. and I'm not so sure we'll return to the KOA if we come back up...

I've been a loyal customer of this KOA location for 7+ years, but now I don't think I'll ever go back. I had one of the best spots in the campground for the entirety of the 7+ years that I've been coming here and was supposed to have 1st dibs for the site for the next year (which is how it's always been). When checking out, they told me I needed to call another day, because the person who does booking wasn't in. I called maybe a week later to be told that it was already booked out for next year and that I had lost my spot, even though you're supposed to have 1st dibs for several months. Everyone I talked to seemed confused when I told them my situation, because they also knew I was supposed to have 1st dibs. I finally talked to the new manager and he told me that things changed and that they no longer let us have 1st dibs for the 2 best tent spots. There's no more guarantee that anyone gets those spots anymore, with 0 warning to people when they book, check in or check out. I've given them an awful lot of money throughout these past few years and this was our big vacation that we take every summer that we look forward too emensly. Unfortunately, all their other tents spots are something to be desired and we don't have a camper, so we will not be back for the foreseeable future, as the site we had was already near impossible to book because it's always full. The manager also told me this is how it works for all the sites now and that he had lots of angry customers calling him in regards to this situation.

Another complaint I'll bring up is the disgusting bathroom that is no longer separated by gender. That bathroom is always filthy and the stall doors don't lock properly. The last time I (a woman) stayed here, I was in a stall going to the bathroom. While I was in there using it, a man came in and opened the door to the stall that I was using! I screamed at him, he was as freaked out as I was and (luckily) he left. I vowed to never use that restroom again, I'd just use the different disgusting, hardly ever cleaned bathroom on the other side of the camp ground. I'm not sure why they decided to have it be a completely open bathroom, but I think it was the wrong decision. You could very easily put a door on each side to separate it again, and I highly suggest you do so. It makes people extremely uncomfortable. I talked to multiple people in there during my stay, and everyone had the same thoughts.

Anyway, I hope that if there are people bothered by this new change, they decide to go somewhere else. I watched a lot about this KOA location start to go down hill, but I put up with it until this most...

Not up to the standard that KOA is known for. I’ve been to about a dozen other KOA’s and this one was disappointing. Not bad though. Better then most campgrounds however after 10 days there I’m left feeling like next time I go to Acadia I’ll Look For other options. What they had going for them

Great people that work there. Customer service is great as most Koa’s are. The beach and the sunset. Also they enforce quiet time. Someone was listening to music kinda loud and the worker came and asked if everyone was ok and happy. The hot water was perfect. Never ran out. The camp store was good. First KOA I’ve seen that actually had a couple of plant based items for us. They also had good recommendations for park activities.

What was I disappointed in. The activities are not as plentiful as most Koa’s. No pool, no mini golf, no bike rental (bike rentals they had were few and only for kids) no game room they were also lacking in the activities during the week. We were there for 10 days planned activities were only Fri-Sun. And this is Acadia so the campground was still fairly packed after Sunday. The wifi could use some work. The cabins are too far from the bathrooms and yea they have us ports potties to walk to but in our 10 days they were cleaned twice. They give carts to carry stuff from the car to cabin but unfortunately there isn’t enough for everyone and half of them are broken. So packing everything up on Sunday was fun with a broken cart and out stuff kept falling out of the side. The dog park is great unfortunately there is no shade there. I couldn’t keep my snow dogs on there for more then a couple of minutes at a time. The lobster cafe. Was good but expensive and would have liked to have seen more non fish option’s. The pancake breakfast also good but double the price most KOAs charge and their pancake breakfast was sparing. The holiday weekend they only offered on Sun and Mon and on the regular weekend it was only on Sunday. Most load have it every day of the weekend if not every day. The solar lights also didn’t always work. Our fire pit was way off base that we didn’t use it at all. We ended up giving the wood to our neighbors. There was also no fire extinguisher in our cabin. If your in an RV be prepared to be packed in like sardines. It also would have been nice if some of the canine got beach front and not just the RV’s and a couple of...