Flagstaff KOA Holiday — Hotel in Flagstaff

We stayed here for 4 nights while in Flagstaff for a wedding. Unless you're approaching the campground from the north on Highway 89, you'll be making a left turn into the campground at a traffic light with no green arrow and limited long-range visibility of oncoming traffic, so prepare to be patient.

The campground is located within a lightly forested area at the base of Elden Mountain. Most of the roads within the campground are one-way roads, marked as such on the campground map but generally not on the roads themselves. Some roads are paved while others are gravel. All of the RV sites have gravel pads, a picnic table, and an elevated charcoal grill. Some sites are equipped with extras such as fire pits, patios, and cable hookups.

We arrived about a half-hour after the check-in time of noon. The RVers in the spot originally assigned to us had trouble with their rig and hadn't left yet, so the campground staff quickly found a new spot to put us in within the same section of FHU pull-through sites with cable TV hookups at the north end of the campground. After escorting us to site 168, our guide told us to turn on all the breakers on our power pole (not just the 50 amp one we were going to use), or we might not get power. We did that and had no power issues during our stay, but the pump handle style water spigot at our site would occasionally experience severe drops in water pressure. We eventually figured out that this only happened when the handle was fully engaged in the up position; when we pulled it down a slight bit, the pressure would remain consistent.

The sites in this section of the campground are pretty un-level: we had to put two boards under the driver's side tires to get close to level, but a lot of other folks had it much worse, using blocks stacked one to two feet high to get level or using their leveling jacks to lift their front or rear tires several inches off the ground. There are quite a few tall trees in this section, which provide shade but can also complicate maneuvering in and out of sites. We could not have made the left turn out of our site with our large rig: fortunately we were able to exit through the empty site in front of us, otherwise we would have been backing out.

This particular KOA currently has no swimming pool, but it has many of the other typical KOA amenities like a jumping pillow, a playground, a store within the office, bathrooms within the office building and another building that also had a laundry room, and large tricycles for rent. There is also a permanent food truck on site that wasn't open yet. The propane refill station is located away from the office on the end of a row of sites, with no real place to park nearby without blocking a road. There is also a dump station along the official "exit" road out of the park, but most folks exit via the entrance road to take advantage of the traffic light

There are two adjacent dog parks at the front of the campground with separate entrance gates and mostly dirt and grass surfaces. They receive some light at night but you'll want to take your flashlight with you. Another good option for walking dogs is along the hiking trail that starts at the north end of the park. That segment of trail also connects to longer public hiking trails, including a steep one that goes to the top of Elden Mountain.

In terms of cell service, I could not get enough bandwidth on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna to even run a speed test, no matter what time of day it was, so we ended up using the cable hookup to watch TV (the cable picture was pixelated at times but usually watchable if you're not a high-resolution snob) In contrast, the best speed I saw on my AT&T smartphone with 5G was 93 Mbps down and 14 up. The campground WiFi clocked in with 7...

We have been coming to this KOA during the summer (from the Phoenix area) to get relief from the heat for the past 12 years. To our dismay, since ownership changed, we have noticed a big difference in this campground...and not for the positive. The grounds are not kept up. All around there is equipment, junk, clutter, weeds, felled trees that need removed, etc. The Rec Hall is apparently abandoned with the back courtyard left full of junk. And it appears that there are some full timers in the park as there were several camp sites with "old" units, with loads of trash stashed all around. One of those (a pop up camper) was right in the middle of the park. Looked just awful. I can only imagine what anyone staying in a site near them thought. The staff under the previous owners were such hard workers. All busy bees around the park. And so friendly, always acknowledging the campers, even when busy. It appears that the new owners like to use teenagers/young adults as staff. I have no issue with the age of their workers but the 3 days we recently stayed, I sat at our patio site and watched the majority of them sitting in the cart parking area smoking and on their cell phones. They did empty the trash cans daily, but as campers came and went, did nothing to tidy up the sites. The icing on the cake is when my husband and I went to the office to purchase snacks and ice. There were 2 young ladies behind the front counter and some gentleman in the back (I could hear him talking). None of them acknowledged us even though we were standing at the counter ready to check out. I should note that there were no other customers in the store so it wasn't busy, at all. My husband finally told one of the girls we were ready to check out and she informed us it wasn't her job. The other was on a phone call with her feel propped up on the counter. She made absolutely no effort to acknowledge us, or tell us she would be right with us. Now I'm assuming because of her posture (feet on the counter, leaned back in the chair) that she wasn't on a business call). And of course the man behind the door never even popped his head through the door, even though I would assume he could hear our conversation. Having worked in customer service for many many years, it takes a lot to get under my skin. But this takes the cake. Of course, since they apparently did not care one way or the other, we put our items up, told them we would drive to the convenience store, and we left. They said absolutely nothing to us, not "I'll be right with you", "pardon the wait", "let me get someone to help you", "I'm sorry", nothing... The other issue I have is that we paid $100/night for a premium patio site and spent all day Monday, listening to campers come and go from the patio site adjacent to ours as they emptied their holding tanks. I am assuming this was either overflow from the campground, or the KOA also allows dry campers to come in and use their dump facilities. Because they don't have room at their dump location, they directed campers to the site next to ours. It was awful to hear and watch...all day long!! We love Flagstaff. And this is a really great location in relation accessing local attractions. However... I have cancelled our August reservation and we will just move down the road to one of the other area...

Overall, we had a great tent camping experience. We found it to be very clean for camping. Clean showers and toilets, nice laundery facility. If you are hoping for a Best Western hotel, you may be disappointed. We came to get away from the concrete city, so I am glad the sites are dirt and mulch. KOA's are perfect for families looking for early camp experiences for young kids, so yes, there were many kids around. If you don't want to be around kids, ask for a spot far from the bounce pad as that is where they gravitate to. The campground was very quiet by 9 pm which was nice. We did not feel we needed utilities, so went with a primitive camp spot. The cool thing about them is they are right by the activity center, and very close to the bouncy pad and facilities. Unfortunately, these are also the lowest quality spots with a rough curb, some are rather small, and are in FULL sun with zero shade from about 11AM -5PM. So after a tiring day of site seeing we would get back around 3 to an uninhabitable campsite. We asked if we could move the first day at check in and the only other spots we were offered had a big concrete wall that bordered a neighborhood so it really wouldn't feel like camping. 90% of the place is geared towards RVers. They should give them the sunny spots as most of them have AC and don't seem to like trees anyway. There were spots in better areas that we were told were unavailable but some were open for most of our stay or had people show up for maybe one night arriving late and leaving early, so we had a hard time believing these people specified their spots and things couldn't have been reconfigured. This is why I docked one star. Fortunately, we figured out how to work around this by letting our kids burn off energy at the bounce pad while we sat on the shady patio within view of it till the shade moved enough to make dinner at camp. If you camp primitive, try to get site 194 or 195 as they were still decent in size and seemed to get some shade quicker than ours. On to the POSITIVE, as we really did enjoy our stay. Other than the first crew, the rest of the staff were really super friendly. Most of the campground is shadey with trees. We liked that the dog park had seperate areas for big and small dogs. The craft of painting your own tshirt, pillowcase, or carry bag was pretty cool. Bathrooms were very clean whenever we went in there. The one in the back near the laundry facility seemed to be newly updated although I peeked in the front ones and they were still clean if not updated with more modern tile. The showers were a bit small and might be rough for a larger person, but the water was always hot and had great pressure. The dish washing station was clean and adequate. The laundry facility was clean, in good repair, and the front shop sold reasonabley priced single packs of detergent. While the campground is conveniently 15 min from downtown and literally across the street from safeway and a few gas stations, once in camp, you do feel like you are in the woods (given that you are not against the brick wall). You can hear some traffic, but not too much to where it is a bother. Overall we loved it and would stay again, but will sport for utilities if just to get a shadey...