Happy Traveler Cabins and RV Resort — Hotel in Temple Terrace

Everybody fell in love with this place. A Spring Break 2025 family trip to Tampa we were looking at hotels for 4 nights at a area hotel for $1200. My wife stumbled upon Happy Travelers RV park for $700. I was a little leery at first because there’s not a lot of good pictures on Google or yelp; hoping to change that. Booking through Hotels.com was a flawless execution. We had a slight SNAFU an hour before checking in, trying to get a digital form, filled out along with the door code. After which our children told us over and over that this was the best place ever! Very cute and cozy cabins. A lil on the cramped side for 3 children under 6 but perfect for smaller families and their children or even a couples retreat. My 6yr old was excited for the heated pool which was absolutely perfect! I was surprised they even have camp-fires every Friday night of the week! Sadly we didn’t bring S’mores this time, but with Aldi just 10 minutes up the road and Winn-Dixie a half-mile down the road anything was possible. They have charcoal grills at each unit however we chose not to grill out and opted for microwave and stove top meals instead. They have included in each unit enough plates, silverware cups, and bowls for four place settings. They also have several steak knives, chopping knives, utensils, tongs, mixing bowls, pots, pans, skillets, measuring cups for making things of the cabin. I was surprised that they have a two burner electric stove top in the units as well. They also have shampoo and conditioner dispensers, as well as bar bath soap. The park is very quiet at night time, security is very good. We had the pool to ourselves most nights and when there were other families there the kids had other kiddos to interact with. Also theres an assortment of pool floats, noodles and squirt guns for kids entertainment in the pool, which was a huge plus, something you won’t find at any hotel. After speaking with the owners at checkout, and they stated it used to be a former 55 and up community. They are currently in the process of adding additional cabins to a total of 120. They realize they have a lot of families that come as of lately and are planning to build a big playground for kids at this park.

** There was a few hiccups that you might encounter, but nothing that would deter a 5 star review! They have hanging outdoor lights strung between the cabins that stay on all-night with no blackout curtains. It’s not a completely pitch-dark cabin at night . We improvised and bought some black poster boards from Dollar Tree an taped them to the windows for a better blackout sleeping experience. I wish they could turn these light off at 11 PM. **Also, on several of the cabins the mini-split A/C evaporator is on the backside of each unit on the opposite wall of the bedroom bed headboard, so whenever the air conditioner turns on it sounds like a helicopter just 10 inches away from your head on the other side of the wall. It’s not the place fault but merely a cabin manufacturing defect. **It was only upon checkout that we found a lot of trash that was missed by the maids that clean these cabins, particularly under the couches and beds. While searching for our own children’s accessories, we managed to find: a old; half full baby bottle, a sandal, tequila bottle and other items left over from previous people. The front desk, lady apologized and stated that “Blue Suede Hospitality Group” out of Miami manages and cleans the cabins.

**Overall, the pros far out way the cons! The price for the stay at this location was AMAZING! The cabins are less than a year old. Everything is immaculate. The kids loved it. We enjoyed our stay and made great family memories and can’t wait to come back. Everything in the Tampa area, Busch Gardens, the zoo, aquarium, children’s museum, was all within a 20-25 minute drive of the cabin. It’s a very affordable centralized location to a lot of area...

Sending this review as I also plan to post it to Yelp and Google:

We stayed at Happy Traveler resort just this past week, to spend spring break with our son who attends college at USF. The two things this “resort” has going for it are the friendly employees and the close proximity to USF. Aside from those two things, I would avoid this place like the plague.

I would absolutely not consider this place a resort. There are several dilapidated RVs occupying sites, which seem to belong to full timers. Nothing against full timers, but several of the sites remind me of my child hood growing up in a trailer park. The only real amenity is a swimming pool, but what rv park or trailer park doesn’t have a pool these days.

A few days into our stay, we left our two cats in the camper while went out to spend the day with our son. When we returned that afternoon, we found the power had been out nearly all day. The maintenance crews were on site, but had no idea why the back half was without power. It was over 100 degrees in our camper and our cats were struggling. When I spoke to the very nice lady at the front office, she too had no idea why the power was out, but was scrambling to get it back on. I was present while she was on the phone with the electric company, when it was revealed that the “resort” didn’t pay its bill. We spent that evening looking for a different park to move to, only to have the power turned back on around 6pm. Needless to say, we stayed for our last two days. The next day however, caused me to question that decision when we again lost power for about 30 minutes. Because I couldn’t trust that the electricity would stay on, I stayed at the camper while my family went on an outing…and I’m glad I did. It was much warmer that day, but being that I was there, I could open windows.

I asked why this “resort” didn’t have some sort of text or email notification system, and got a look similar to a cow looking at a new gate.

To boot, I reserved a “premium” site which was an unlevel gravel pad, with a small concrete pad and dilapidated picnic table. Nothing about my site screamed premium at all, unless you count the morning view of fornicating ducks a premium feature. At least there was a bit of humor bouncing around from site to site.

The laundry facilities were acceptable, and accepted tap pay over coins which was nice. Even nicer was that certain wash setting resulted in free washing, which meant it only cost me $2 to wash and dry a load of laundry.

Overall, nothing about this place earns it the title of resort. I would argue that very little is actually “nice.” I get that there aren’t many options that close to Tampa, but I’d urge you to first...

Happy Traveler R-V Park is a nice campground for Motorhomes and campers. Each site has big beautiful Live Oak trees which provide lots of shade. There is an older heated swimming pool but the water was immaculately clean and blue and warm. They allow and even provide floats and noodles for pool. Most of time you have pool to yourself. No concrete pads. Our picnic table was in poor condition but it wasn't an issue for us. Full hook-ups, No need to go to a dump station. $2.00 a day for electric on top of rate. Also only a few sites with cable, that costs you an extra $2.00 a day, also. Not the best channels on their cable, but o.k. Wi-fi gave us some trouble, maybe all the huge oak trees surrounding us? No pull-thru sites but we've not had anyone behind us when we got here nor when we leave tomorrow so we can hook up car hauler and put car on as if it were a pull-thru. Very quiet. Many people live here permanently and long term. They all have pretty plants around their campsite and whole campground has plants, which is nice. 2 laundry rooms, an air conditioned Rec room with very large tv, tables, chairs, games, movies (mostly tapes), games, books, and brochures for places, with an urn of coffee brewed. They had a 4th of July get together (on 4/5) , everyone to bring a side to go with provided hamburgers and hot dogs, decorated for 4th. There is a nice outdoor covered porch with ceiling fans attached to rec room. Diner no longer exists. No groceries here, but 2 min. to Winn Dixie. VERY convenient to stores, Busch Gardens, Aquatica, etc. Dogs allowed. They have ice, soda machine, and propane. Many chairs and rockers around laundry room and office. Seems cozy. Rate was $29.22 a night for June and $31.12 for July. They did not give us the $135.00 weekly rate (reg. rate for 3 extra days). Hope to straighten that out when we leave. There are some friendly people who work and live here. One of staff went out of her way to let us into a large storage area field for our bigger dogs to run around off leash. Would...