Strafford / Lake Winnipesaukee South KOA Holiday — Hotel in Strafford

This was our 2nd time at this particular koa. We stayed here 5 years ago and it was lovely. Everyone was so friendly, kids running around having fun, a cart “train” ride was provided twice a day for the kids. Our son talked about this campground for years and how much he loved it. Because of an unfortunate event that was at no fault of the campground or ours, we got to meet the owners and they were so kind. We finally decided to book it again and had a very different experience.

Pros- we booked a patio site this time and now I am hooked. It was adorable, cozy and we loved it. -The Women working in the store and the ones on the carts were very friendly. Always saying hello and talking to the kids -The man who ran the home run derby for the kids was funny and considering he didn’t have a lot of contestants he made do with what he had. -it is a relatively clean campground. Not a lot out of place and the playground is well kept . -they offered free slushies for the water slide being down and it was hot so those were great.

Cons-There is definitely a lot of rules. I am sure because of issues from the past. But the amount of things you have to initial definitely makes it feel less relaxing because you’re always afraid you’ll break a rule you initialed. For instance no chalk on the patio or they charge $100 cleaning fee…. -They only want you buying their fire wood. Again understandable….but on nights when there was this one gentlemen working, he would drive around flashing a big light into people’s camp sites “looking for outside firewood” which we thought was weird. And they will kick you out of the campground if they find out you have outside wood (I initialed that in the rules) -maybe we went on an off week but the campground was dead. For our last 2 nights we were the only ones on our road and there were 2 other roads that were completely empty also. It felt deserted -the store closes a little early 7:30 on a wednesday and at 8pm you are basically forced back up to your sites for the night. Last time we stayed here my son loved going down and fishing at night. This time he was told to go back to the site at 8pm. We also decided to go swimming after dinner one night and got kicked out of the pool at 8. We thought the pool stayed open until dusk but I did go back and read it was 8 in the rules but it just seemed a little early for summer since it was still pretty light out at 8pm. -No more colorful “train” rides. This was a huge let down for our daughter. Our fault I suppose for telling her about them but again, last time we stayed here they offered them twice a day and the kids LOVED them. -water slide was down and I guess it has been most of the summer but it’s not posted on the website. The kids cared more about the pool anyways but the pool was very cloudy and full of sand. There was also a very bad smell. We couldn’t tell if it was coming from the splash pad or the pond. Lastly the 11.99 a night resort fee….We’ve been camping for years and have been to many resorts and other KOA’s and we would have never guessed or realized this was considered a resort until we...

I was so nervous to go here after reading all of the recent reviews, but we had already booked it for 5 nights and were looking forward to it, so we were going! The place is definitely short staffed but so isn't everywhere else. It is run by young kids but we had nothing but helpful workers assist us when needed. We stayed in an RV rental. It was pretty clean and came with all of the blankets, pillows, sheets, towels, cookware, coffee maker, microwave, small(kind of useless) tv, and 3 beds to sleep in. I think the couch may have even been a small pullout too. The shower was pretty awful though. Way too small and the water barely came out. The RV was overall much smaller than I thought it'd be, but that's just probably my ignorance about campers, as I've never owned one.

We were at site 48 and diagonal from the bathrooms, which was still nice even though we had a bathroom in the RV. The bathrooms could use attention for sure though. I showered in there one night and the water backed up and was basically backed up before I showered. So I was standing in who knows what as I tried to get clean. The whole room was just damp and wet and gross. It is a shower and toilet combined and only 2 of them total in the bathhouse where we were. So if you're showering, others can't use the toilet.

The pool was open and seemed to be ok, despite the worrisome reviews I read before going. The slide was awesome and my kids loved it but it was not open often due to staffing, which was a bummer. It would be open for about only 20 mins each time we went there, no matter what the time. It closes at 2 supposedly and I think opened at 10 or 11 with frequent closings in that timeframe.

The store also closes at 4, which is strange, but I'm assuming its from staffing as well. My kids had fun at the arcade that's within the main building. I don't think you should expect a lot from a campground arcade, lol, so I don't know why people were so hard on them in that category. My kids and husband thought it was pretty good despite some games not working.

For the pond, we didn't go anywhere near it really. We did want to explore the boats but we never got a chance. I would definitely not swim in it though. It was pretty brown and on the gross side. It did look nice from afar!

The reviews about the bees are spot on! Oh man I've never seen so many relentless, non stinging bees in my life. It was pretty bad along with the black flies. They both bothered you at your site and the pool.

Overall this place was a good time for my family. The workers we encountered, though young, were helpful and we even met the manager who was helpful as well. The young girl who was in charge of cleaning the RV rental, looked to do a good job in the neighboring RV, as she was in there for about 30-40 mins cleaning, maybe even longer. The reviews made it seem like they didn't even bother to clean the rentals.

My 12 and 8 year olds loved this place and we may even go back next year and see if they can maybe fix some of the negatives to make this a much more...

If I could give this a negative review, I would. Our bad experience occurred not even 5 minutes into us arriving at the Strafford KOA. We were notified at check in that their pool was down, which is something they should have notified people prior, so they could have had the chance to cancel or make other arrangements because their pool is one of the main reasons people would come to this location and to find out it was closed as your checking in is absolutely absurd. They did however offer their boat rentals for free throughout the weekend, which is great, but everyone in the campground was utilizing that and it was very had to access those. I then checked in to get my tent site (which I do not get to choose), once I arrived at my actual campsite, it was the worst site I have ever seen. For a tent site, it had stumps all over it, was completely out int he opens, was tiny and had neighbors right behind you and next to you. I have no idea how they can even consider site 23 as a campsite. I then went up to the office to switch campsites and worked with Kayla, who was absolutely amazing. Everyone in the office was great, and I worked with Kayla numerous times and was fantastic all weekend. However, because we were switching from a "tent site" to an "RV site", I was charged an additional $105.00 which is absolutely INSANE. I am then two seconds into driving to my campsite and I am going up a hill which is extremely hard to get up a hill going 5 MPH. As I go to turn the corner, a kid who works there, that I later find out name is Marv hops off his golf cart in and in front of my car and starts being extremely rude and yelling at me that I am going too fast and that the whole park is 5mph. I said OKAY, no problem. He then continued to go on about how fast I was going up that hill and how there's kids all around the park. Like it was plenty enough to just say hey its 5 mph, slow down. I was just responding with okay, and he was rude, felt the need to keep it going, and was on some kind of power trip completely. By the time we finally get to our campsite, we are unloading our cars (clearly unpacking our cars, like it's very obvious that is what we are doing). Not even 5 minutes of being there, Marv is back around again at our site complaining about our 3 cars- we were again like you can clearly see we are unpacking, can we do that? Fast-forwarded to that night when its not even 5 minutes past quiet times and we are being yelled at again by Marv and Jay for being to loud saying they could hear us allllll the way across the campground, but at this same time were being yelled at, there's people alll over the campsite louder. Again, this is all the first...