Estes Park Campground at East Portal — Hotel in Estes Park

I had this site booked, paid for, and planned for since January and was truly looking forward to a wonderful weekend with friends and a first camping trip for my dogs. Unfortunately it ended on a pretty sour note. First, the tent pads are not the size advertised online, they are at least a few feet short, leaving us cramming two tents into a small space and getting reprimanded for that day one. Food/drink storage was not communicated properly. We had all of our food put away in our cars and bear lockers. The only coolers we left out had drinks and water from melted ice in them. To say a bear knows what a cooler looks like, makes zero sense. Bears go by smell and they would have smelled nothing from those coolers. The coolers were out all night with water and drinks in them, guess what, no bears visited! Trash out? I honestly don't know what you mean by "trash" considering it was all picked up and double checked over before we left to go fishing for the day. A phone call from the campground manager or host on Saturday explaining the situation would have been a good way to communicate with myself but instead chose to have my friend call me and tell me we were getting kicked out. That in itself is very poor customer service, I should have been notified immediately. Also, the campfire we left was not hot or still going. It was put out with water and attended to until we were sure it was fine to be left. I am from Colorado, I have seen the devastation that has come from forest fires and I'm not an idiot when it comes to that. Especially when friends and family members of mine are firefighters. Putting plates and cups to burn in a fire at a campsite has never been an issue any where else I've been. The paper plates and cups can either burn in the fire or end up in a land fill. I felt that my friends and I were targeted and unwanted since the moment we drove into the campsite. Instead of kicking paying customers out of your campsite and think that you are "educating" them on camping, you are actually making them incredibly angry and unwanting to go and experience camping ever again, which should be the whole goal of camping, shouldn't it? To want to be apart of the outdoors? I've been camping plenty of times before this and never ever had anything like this happen. Telling us what we should have done and giving us a chance to correct it would have been a much better way to handle it coming from management and a better way to educate people. In the future, I really hope that you can also learn from this experience and review of the way YOU handled this. It was in extremely poor management. To not even call the person and explain to them is beyond me. I've worked customer service my entire life and would never treat people the way I was treated this weekend. Myself, boyfriend, and friends are not idiots when it comes to camping as we've been doing it our whole lives and we don't appreciate being made to feel like idiots and targeted and bullied due to, most likely, our age. We weren't wanted at this campground since day one and won't be back and we will make sure others know...

We have stayed at the East Portal a number of times over the last decade (2015, 2016, 2017, and 2024) and always enjoyed it. Our most recent stay was about a week ago. We tent camp but still enjoy having flush toilets and a hot shower so it’s a nice compromise for us. They now have three (3) bathroom/shower locations so it’s pretty close for carrying dishes to wash or making a trip to the bathroom (headlamp recommended after dark). The bathrooms are by no means luxurious but are reasonably clean and well maintained. The tent sites each have a picnic table, bear proof storage, and campfire pit with a cooking grate. Firewood and extra ice can be purchased when you check in. They have upgraded their picnic tables from wood to metal which has been nice (sometimes the wood tables were warped and uneven) and I’m glad to see they finally put in bear proof storage at every site. This was not always there and was long overdue. A lot of tent sites now have a built up level site which is also greatly appreciated. The hosts have always been friendly and the other campers respect the quiet hours 99% of the time. The only negative we have experienced was on this last trip and it was atypical based on our past experiences. That being said, we had someone steal our firewood during the night. I was woken up between 3-4am by continuous footsteps and what appeared to be a headlamp near our tent. I thought it was someone getting up exceptionally early to enter the park before time entry is required (prior to 5am) and making a number of trips to the bathroom and cleaning dishes. In the morning, all of our firewood bundles were gone. Based on that experience, I would not recommend leaving ANYTHING out while you are away from camp OR at night. Always a bad apple out there somewhere I guess. Overall, we would definitely camp here again as this was the only time we had an issue and hopefully it was...

A group a buddies and I stayed here overnight on a motorcycle trip. We were harassed and obviously profiled by the campground host and manager. Another group staying in the campsite was very loud - singing and yelling after quiet hours. At about 11pm, a fight broke out and the other group started slamming things and screaming. The police were called, however not much was done and the noise continued to wake many campers up. After the other group was quieted down, the host and manager came by our campsite where we were quietly cooking some late night food and told us that we needed to put our fire our due to the inconvenience caused to all the campers from the fighting and noise from the loud group. We were making no noise and simply enjoying our fire and heating up water. Earlier in the day, we were bothered by the host, telling us that we had worried other campers because a couple members of our group had "weapons" on them and that we were wandering in other campsites when in reality, we were in no other campsites and walking along a clearly defined path on the south end of the campsite. The host commented twice on the noise of our bikes which we kept to the minimum only idling through the campsite to reach our site. I highly recommend finding another campsite to stay at where you will be welcomed if you ride a motorcycle and a site where the host and manager are capable of controlling...