Bar Harbor Campground — Hotel in Bar Harbor

This is my second time staying here in about 10 years. The place is lovely. It has all the amenities of a campground. The kids have a pool and a playground now the pool is supposed to be heated, but at the time it was not because I think the liner was leaking, but that’s fine. The water was pretty warm. The playground was nice and it overlooked the ocean. The laundry room was also clean and easy to use for those using laundry. You can use change or you can bring your cell phone and tap to pay or your credit card. Now the machine that spits out dryer sheets did swallow our four 4 quarters. Front desk said they’d give it back to us, but we didn’t really mind. Our campground was right in front of the sewage dump so we had vehicles coming to us to dump all day and all night and it wasn’t a bother. You couldn’t smell anything from it. We had site D4 and D2 and I’m gonna tell you. They are probably the best sites to have when the sun rises. It rises right over the playground in front of your tents. The showers are pretty clean and they cost a quarter for five minutes now if you’re a big guy like me, the shower stalls can be pretty small and they did not have a handicap shower area which I was looking for, but maybe they did and I didn’t see it. The toilets were clean. The kids loved the playground. It was up-to-date and they were able to run around in the street with their scooters and bicycles. Each tent site that we had in the D’s had electrical and water. I believe it was 30 A but we weren’t hooked up to an RV. Our sites were less wooded, so there was less bugs, but we did have a lot of bees and chipmunks. If you do have somebody who is allergic to bees in your party, it is best to bring an EpiPen because there was a lot of bees. Check-in was super easy. I hopped out of my car at 2 o’clock and was back in my car within a minute or two. The property has a small arcade at the entrance with a few games. They also sell ice at the entrance in 16 pound quantities and 5 pound bags and they also sell firewood. Navigating the property is very easy. You can even get to the local barbecue and ice cream place from the property. Now we did see that some 10 sites didn’t have water or electricity but that’s what you choose. We registered online and reserved a spot that we wanted. It was $20 extra to do that. When we did this, we got a confirmation email and follow up email confirming everything as the days let up. All the employees were super friendly. They drive around the golf carts and they talk to you and ask you how you’re doing they also clean up other sites and they put in new picnic tables at the site next to us. You cannot run a generator at least a gas power generator for your RV. If I were to stay there again, I would stay at the D2’s or D4’s or the B loops that are closer to the laundry, but we had the best view of sunrise. It just came up over the horizon. Will be staying there again. And if you’re wondering, how big each campsite was, you could probably fit about 2 x 6 people tents on each site plus your car. There was a fire pit and a picnic table on the site too. The only problem that I have and it’s not really the campground’s fault, but I don’t understand how there hasn’t been more accidents. If you are coming from Ellsworth going towards Bar Harbor to pull into the campground you must be aware of the people behind you because you will be pulling into the campground as the “speed lane” ends and merges to become one lane again. And the merger happens right at the entrance of the campground now it’s not your fault for whatever people are doing behind you but I put my turn signal on 2/10 of a mile or 1000 feet or 300 m before I even hit the entrance just to make sure that nobody...

Stayed here this past weekend (July 17-21, 2018) with my boyfriend. I will try to keep this short but this campground left a very bad taste in our mouths. We’ve been on the road for a month and have stayed at a variety of self register sites, free sites, privately owned sites, and National Parks. We were looking for an ideal site near Acadia to top off our trip. This one is 20ish minutes to Bar Harbor and the National Park. I chose this campground because I loved the idea of contributing to a local family owned and run business. However it was less than satisfactory. Here’s my honest review and what you should expect when you stay here.

1. If you aren’t a family with kids, don’t stay here. It’s more fitting for families.
2. the rates are decently high but competitive for the area (wasn’t an issue for us though just take note)
3. you pay for the showers (25 cents for 5 min) -- you would expect to have the amenities included with such high rates but nope. The bathrooms are clean however the showers will switch between scolding hot and ice cold depending on how many people are also using the bathrooms. Beware some showers may eat your coins only to not work.
4. they impose many strict rules that they only force on some people Ex. you can’t leave your dog unaccompanied at your campsite but many people did including one RV which had a yapper of a dog that freaked out any time people would walk by. They never addressed this issue.
5. this is the biggest reason to why I give them 1 Star. I work in the hospitality and service industry so I understand how things work and how some really bad people will try to take advantage or swindle you for free services. We originally planned to stay 3 nights but decided to add on another night because we liked Acadia so much. My boyfriend stopped by the office and asked for one additional night and told the lady our site, he paid in cash (that’s all they accept), she wrote something down on an index card and sent him on his way. I noticed it was a quick exchange and even pointed that out to him. She gave us no receipt as well. But we trusted that it was sound. The next day we came back to our site to find a note on the table. “We had a mix up in our records could you swing by the office so we can try to sort it out.” No big deal. My boyfriend went to go talk to them and was greeted with hostilty and threats to call the police to have us escorted out. He explained what happen and the woman at the counter told him it was impossible cause she worked the previous night and he stated that he spoke with another older woman. Again she went “oh well that’s just impossible, there’s just no way”. Mind you 20 minutes after this conversation we saw the same woman riding around on a golf cart several times passing our campsite and giving us the eye. We were very uncomfortable at this point and felt unwelcome. She clearly was not manning her station the entire night as we literally just witnessed her drive by several times. She was very very rude and claimed that people do this often and that we were trying to cheat them. We were not. He asked if they had cameras to prove he came in and paid since he was not issued a receipt. She said no... (they actually DO have one camera at the entrance, she just lied... again). If we were really trying to cheat them, why would we suggest that they check video evidence? They told us we will have to speak to the manager/owner the next morning who ultimately never stopped by to talk to us. We are honest people and wouldn’t cheat anyone. The behavior of the staff was very offensive and quite honestly extremely rude.

Would never stay here...

My wife and I stayed here in August, 2014. We have traveled a lot across the country and we loved this park. It is the closest park to Acadia which we loved exploring. You have to drive around and pick your own site and either go ahead and set up or at least leave something indicating it's taken before heading back to the office to pay. We were lucky in that we got a site that had a good view, great neighbors, and good wifi. I heard from others that internet is not so great in many of the other campsites. I have to concede that our finding what I would consider an above-average site within the park may be influencing our rating of this park but I want to believe we would have been happy wherever we had landed. The free local shuttle busses run every 30 minutes to Acadia. Management here is a bit different and in reading some of the other reviews it appears some have trouble with that. I found it refreshing. The park is strict in it's enforcement of rules to keep this a quiet, safe (no speeding) and enjoyable park. If you want to be rowdy this is not the place for you. I believe it is the least expensive park in the area but you cannot make reservations and it's cash only. For us this was no problem. We often don't have a schedule exactly mapped out months in advance so we rarely have reservations very far ahead. We often use the bathhouses for showers and they were fine. The pool was heated and the laundromat was good and as inexpensive as we've seen in a very long time. All the amenities were good to great. The staff we encountered were friendly and helpful. That was our experience, I can't address others comments to the contrary. What I will say is that this park is far above average in all aspects of what we feel a park should be. Personally we loved it. We had moved here from another "highly rated" park just across the bridge that we didn't enjoy and was literally twice as expensive as Bar Harbor. We checked out 4 parks as we knew we would be moving, which is very rare for us. Bar Harbor Campground is where we settled in for a week and we loved it. We have a small travel trailer but noted that this park can accommodate anything from tents to big rigs. We used it as a base to explore Acadia. If your purpose is to explore Acadia, I can't imagine staying anywhere else.. Oh … one more thing. If you get tired of eating lobster try the pulled pork sandwich "Eds way" at the restaurant "Mainly Meats". Its a short walk from the campground and it's great. They also have home-made ice cream and there is putt-putt for the kids across the street, also a very short walk from...