Thousand Trails Pio Pico — Hotel in Rancho San Diego

I'm going to leave an "early" review since we still here and for a couple of days. We arrived with our reservation but the place was full. Yes, they cant keep track of sites that are full so you can make a reservation and the site could be full, so they will move to another campground that are for lease, without sewel. Is not THAT bad, if you relax, just stay the night there and then move to a site. but is not that easy, They will recommend you to grab a new paper in the morning and walk around checking who is leaving that day and put your paper there, (yes, get into the camp site of another person and put a paper in their meter....) and then pray they will leave and not extend the time. So you will be walking like 12 block at 7 am, wondering if you are going to move or not. Then wait half of your day "checking" if they leave or not, or if someone else just took your paper off and used the spot. The is FAR from relaxing or vacation. So if you plan to stop here, call them and make them swear that you are going to have a full hook up space when you arrive and not being playing around to find one half the next day. I know that this is the first come first serve system, but should be a way to reserve a full hook up spot, some people can

While we were playing "searching for the spot that supposed you had" we met a lot of people. Most people were so nice. and couple of them that we talked went thru the same thing of searching spot. We found some acid people. But "acid" people are everywhere right? is not the park task to educate people.

In any case. cell phone signal is super weak. If you have signal internet will work great (tower is good) but is very "spotty". Probably a signal booster will help, mine didnt picked it up. Place wifi works aceptable (at least for now), hardware is good and correctly installed BUT (again no the part problem) there are a lof of campers that use this cheap range extenders that will contaminate the wifi signals of the camp. There are some free wifi spots that will work too. Tomorrow we need to work from the park, we will see if wifi works or we will need to rush to the city.

Stuff in here is friendly, despite that the situation goes beyond of what they can handle.

We were thinking about buying the lifetime membership, and after this experience (plus other parks that we stayed), we dont even think to renew the standard membership.

This park as same as other Thouthan trails parks, are well designed, and at some point the couldn't manage to maintain it.

They will ask for your id (ok) car registration (uhm, somehow ok), and car insurance (ehm...) but probably is because we are too close to the mexico border (? you will see border patrol cars 4 or 5 times a day...

Having been a member of Thousand Trails, and having limited areas to go camping Pio Pico has been a location that we have gone to multiple times. Each time that we go we are often left to go on the North side of the park which offers no amenities, while long term renters stay on the north side which offers a pools, club house, recreation room. The South side also has long term renters which are questionable. The long term people can often be rude, should you accidentally park in there area, which if you are new to the game, at times can be hard to discern which areas are safe for parking. We had an incident, and it was filed at the park as an incident report. Had it only been me involved, I would not have been as frustrated but, the man who was upset kept yelling rather aggressively with my 3.5 year old child, and another 10 year old child. I understand these people live there, and we are merely weekend visitors but, lets be honest you live in a park with this type of environment. I have commented on the North side quality, and they state that the North side the long term renter improve their spaces which I completely understand. Over a 4 year period we have always and only had the option of parking in basically a dirt lot. The other issue is when we came to the park we were not informed that we had parked in a leasee spot, and were asked to pack up our trailer and move to the south side after a day of being there. When we pulled in I asked if there were limitations and they stated no an error on the person introducing us. At this point I will no longer be going to this park for three reasons: 1. Constantly having to go to the south side, where amenities are limited and questionable persons 2. The park staff for making errors and not being customer service oriented - I am ok with moving our trailer but, not aver we have slept in the spot overnight, and then re set up in another spot due to the mistake of their employee 4. Once we went to the park they allowed a bus of 24 children, swim in the pool during the hottest days of summer, and they did not open the adult pool to everyone it was literally human within 3 inches in the pool. We left.

You are best camping for free at Walmart purchasing a pool for 20 dollars for the amenities you will get. Having to drive across a busy road loading up children each time, and going back and forth because we do not lease spots. There should be at least a few open on the other side for us weekend carries, as we do pay our annual fees. I will be cancelling Thousand Trails as wells and asking for a refund. If I could go lower in stars I would. There are a few nice, respectful nice staff but, few and...

This park holds a special place in my heart because this is where my family started it's full time adventure. The location is beautiful with plenty of hiking and even a natural waterfall just a 10 min walk from the south side of the park. There are a lot of sites and we usually don't have an issue booking even short term notice. Most of the staff is incredibly friendly (shout out to Lisa, Fawn and Marcia!). The downside of the service is that they rarely answer their phones (office and ranger station included) which can be inconvenient if you need something and you're not at the resort. Amenities are good. Laundry is easy and we usually don't have an issue finding machines like with some other parks. There is a well stocked store and an amazing deli/activity center! Boars head sandwiches are fresh and delicious. There is also a pool hall. The activities are great with karaoke every week and plenty of games and equipment to borrow (pool cues, pickle ball, mini golf).

Some downsides are:

-Some of the sites don't have the 110v outlets on the pedestals hooked up. I don't know if this is to cut costs or what but it's very inconvenient if you have a loss of power in your rig. We usually hook up an extension cord to the 110v pedastal so that we can have a heater running and charge our devices if we lose power in the rig. Our ATS just went out and we couldn't run our generator at night so we were freezing for 2 nights. We ended up purchasing a 30amp to 15amp 110v adapter just in case this happens in the future. It can't be very difficult to hook up the already installed 110v outlets that are at the pedestals.

-The two heated pools were one of the best amenities at this site. Our daughter loved being able to swim year round. Recently they shut off the propane heating to the pools claiming it cost too much to do. Every other park has heated pools.

-Little to no cellphone service and the paid wifi is a joke at best. The cell service isn't the parks fault and is due to location and the JabbaWiFi is terrible at all the parks so these inconveniences don't affect my rating.

Unfortunately the pool heating, lack of answering phones and the electrical at the pedestals are the main reasons my review isn't getting 4 or 5 stars. Memberships cost thousands of dollars so I'm not quite sure how they'd be low on funds to heat the pools and there have been times where I'll call the ranger station/office multiple times with no answer just to drive over there and there is staff in these locations. Anyways, overall this park is great and meets most of our...