Shoal Creek Campground — Hotel in Buford

The past 3 years I have rented a campground with a beach for my son to play with is out of town cousins. The past 2 years have been amazing and that is why we booked the campground again this year. I found the best campsite with a private beach so the kids could play and not bother other campers. Only issue with the site this year was the beach was a mess and we had to get a rake so the kids could actually play in the sand. ||There was no one camping around our site this year and the park was not full. The first 2 days were great. We live about 5 minutes from the campground, so we have never slept at the campground. Since we do not sleep and the campground, I PAID TO USE, we do not put up a tent. The past 2 years this is what we have done without issues. We go during the day to have a guaranteed place for our kids to enjoy the beach and lake. The last day of our stay our beach chairs, toys and rake were gone. We went to the front gate and all of the employees were at lunch at the same time, so it was closed. When I went back after the lunch time was up there were 3 other cars waiting to get in. I informed the lady and the man that I just needed to get all my things, as we were not done with our campsite. They were both very rude to me. The kept saying this is NOT A DAY CAMPGROUND... YOU MUST SPEND THE NIGHT AND YOU MUST HAVE A TENT in order to use the campgrounds.... Nowhere on the website or the paperwork does it say we MUST have a tent up and we MUST spend the night, or we can't use the campground. If I CHOOSE to pay for the campsite, I should be able to use the campsite as I see fit. Ever since Margaritaville has taken over this campground I have heard nothing but bad reviews about the staff and the grounds. The campgrounds were not full when we were there, so what does it matter if I didn't sleep there. They just kept yelling it’s NOT A DAY CAMPGROUND and gave me a list of the local day places. I live here, so I know where they are. I chose to SPEND $$$$ at this campground to have a guaranteed place with a beach for 3 days. My husband had issues with the front gate staff and so did my guests as they were leaving the grounds. This was a wonderful summer tradition for my family that I guess has come to an end. WARNING TO ALL... If you plan on staying here be aware that the front gate staff REQUIRES you to spend EVERY NIGHT here like you are a hostage..... As long as the rude staff is still working the front gate and being rude to guests, I will NOT recommend this...

Ever since this campground was taken over by new management the environment has changed. You no longer feel welcome like you did before. You will show up and will be made to feel like you’re doing something wrong for doing things that were completely fine before such as showing up a couple hours before the person whose name is on the reservation does. This was never an issue before. It’s completely understandable if rules change but it’s not okay to make your customers feel uncomfortable if they weren’t aware of this new policy, especially when we all paid to reserve our spots as well. There’s a way to explain this politely without making your paying guests feel like they’re trying to do something nefarious.

That said, this alone wouldn’t have caused me to leave this review if it wasn’t for how discriminated against we felt by the new staff. It was the way they looked down on us, talked to us, and eventually kicked us out for just talking to another group at the campsite they didn’t like. I hate to insinuate this but the majority of us were Latinos and brown/mixed and speaking our language at times instead of English. This is the only “offense” me and my witnesses felt upset them. At no point were we ever rude to the staff, belligerent, loud, or playing loud music. We were not disrupting the other campers or breaking any rules at all. In fact, we asked them repeatedly to tell us the exact rule we broke and they couldn’t answer us. They just wanted us out and gave us only 15 minutes to do so, while attempting to intimidate us with their officer. All this with a baby of under one in our group.

It really is a shame because we’ve come to this campsite for years and have never had an issue before. This one experience was enough for us to...

BE WARNED BEFORE YOU BOOK: Shoal Creek Campground has beautiful views and a lot of potential, but it is not maintained well, at all! The roads and asphalt at the campsites are crumbling and most sites were very overcrowded to the point where it was difficult to pull our camper through the campgrounds, let alone our own campsite. The bathrooms and showers were very nasty and half were not functioning. The worst part of all was coming back to our site after a beautiful, relaxing day on the lake, only to find that ants had taken over our ENTIRE camper! There were ants crawling on the floors, ceilings, walls, in the beds, suitcases, and even coming out of the outlets (and we have never had any sort of any issue before our second day at this campground). It was late in the day, but we made it to the front gate right before the office closed. I shared our concerns with the staff members at the front who were kind enough, but told us to call the next day and speak to the manager about a refund, if we had to leave early. Due to the fact that ants had taken over everything in our camper, we had no choice but to pack up all of gear (along with our three young children) and start our 6 hour drive home very late in the evening. We are still trying to clean out our camper and mitigate the ant infestation! I have tried calling, reaching out to management, and leaving messages for five days straight, with no return response. At the very least, we just want a refund for the one night we were unable to stay, due to their ant infestation and maintenance issues. Please save yourself money and the potential issues, and camp elsewhere! UPDATE: We were refunded for the last night, since we were not...