Riverbend West Campground — Hotel in Town of Vienna

My experience at this campground was disturbing and alarming. Families with children or women alone should absolutely not stay here. The staff/owners I experienced are verbally abusive and potentially violent. I had arrived to visit my brother who had rented a cabin on the grounds because his girlfriend's parents have had a seasonal camp on the property for many years. I drove an hour to see him for a short time on his birthday. The camp's policy is to have visitors purchase a pass for their vehicles if going on the grounds. My brother's girlfriend went in to the "store" (decorated in Christmas lights and wreaths - it was July, P.S. and smelling extremely foul) to purchase the pass and came out with a woman who was treating her with such disrespect that I expected the woman to be a stranger and not the owner of the facility. I got out of my vehicle to see if I could help with the situation. The woman would not let my brother's girlfriend speak and berated her over and over, spoke to her in a condescending, rude and unprofessional way that left me almost speechless. Be aware, the issue she was being treated so badly about? My brother did not have a pass for his car, because his girlfriend thought her pass for both of their cars was adequate as the rental came with two cars for parking on site. Trained in conflict resolution and difficult communications, I interjected. The woman said to me: "And who are YOU?" I answered her politely that I was there to visit my brother for an hour for his birthday and that I would be leaving before midnight. (It was 10 p.m.) I said "I believe there is a solution here for you and everyone involved, but I need to understand the policy and the issues overall." She now turned her condescending, berating tone toward me. I said: "I am not comfortable with how you're speaking to me. Can you be clear about where this tone is coming from? It seems like you're angry and I am trying to help and understand why." She then apologized and finally we were able to explain to her the car situation. We paid for a pass and received a pass for my brother's car. He made a sincere apology , which truly wasn't necessary, for the misunderstanding and the owner apologized for her disrespectful, unprofessional tone. I paid for my pass, went out to my car and waited for my brother's girlfriend. (Side note: When I arrived another camper was being treated in the same way by this woman. That camper was not as calm and professional as I was and came out of the store yelling.) Within about five minutes, a man who appeared to be on bath salts or some other psychotropic drug, bursts into the store, flailing his arms and screaming at the people there to leave and he wouldn't put up with this anymore.He then barrels down the stairs to my car window and screams in my face that I am to leave immediately and to get the hell out of there and off his property. Extremely startled by his almost violent approach and abusive language, and extremely confused by this random person, I said "Who are you and why are you asking me to leave?" He started screaming and waving his arms at me telling me to get the hell off his property or he was calling the police. It was bizarre. "I'm trying to understand what happened. Why are you asking me to leave? Who are you?" "I'm the owner," he screams this repeatedly while stamping his feet. Now, a younger psychotic version of this man lunges at me repeatedly screaming "get the hell out of here". He seemed to have a violent nature as the people around him began to hold him back. I'm a 120-pound, 4' 11" woman. This man was likely 6' and tipping 200 or more. I told him if he got any closer to me I would have him arrested and press charges. I truly believe this man would have hit me, so, scared of the violence, I left. I still don't know what set off this man and his younger version. Having worked with mentally ill and emotionally disturbed people in my past career, they exhibited these types of behaviors. Please do not stay here. You will risk...

Oh my ... where do we start!

Pros: Beautifully mature trees throughout the park with lovely foliage for the end of the year. Several playgrounds for kids that looked to be fairly safe to play on. Easy check-in and out with polite staff at the front desk. It was fairly cheap for a holiday weekend/3-night stay. Check-in time is 3p, but check-out is 2p which was really nice and relaxing for us.

Cons: First of all, we have a 43'-trailer and we let them know this when when we scheduled it. It is thoroughly annoying to have to wait to get your receipt for booking in the mail instead of email or I'd have taken a text message. We also were not made aware before we arrived there was no wifi for free (although it says it listed in the wifi connections). They charge $4.99/4-devices every day.

Once we arrived, the site was only big enough for about a 25' trailer on a loop that was extremely hard to navigate due to all the vehicles parked caddywhompus throughout the loop. Yes ... we hit something in the dark due to this. Additionally, damn near everyone (full-timers) in the park was drunk. The staff were nice enough to move us to a larger spot; however, one of the main reasons we wanted to come here was the proximity to the lake so the kids could fish. We bought firewood from the office upon arrival. The firewood was green as if they removed trees, split it, and left it damp/unseasoned. There were no picnic tables at the campsites (although we saw plenty of them stacked and/or broken down), no grates to cook over the fire rings, and the rings were at the very front of the site - no where near the entry of a standard camper. Our camper has an automatic levelling system; however, for those that don't, it will be a huge pain to level your camper side to side. Our wheels on one side weren't even touching the ground.

The park is off of Sylvan Beach. It is poorly maintained and we are grateful we didn't bring the boat as that the boat launch was nothing but sand around and guaranteed we would have gotten stuck. The park looks like a cross between a run-down trailer park and a refugee camp with a lot of uncared for campers, unkempt lakes with green duckweed skimming the surface that hasn't been cleaned in forever. There are cabins and these grounds looked decent. We didn't see the bathrooms as that the doors were locked.

Let's talk about the other campers: Most are seasonal long-timers. The ones we talked to were nice and polite during the day. At night, it was a whole different ball game. They were drunk, loud, had a loud speaker/karaoke machine blaring until past quiet hours, and seemed to ask A LOT of personal questions that made us feel really uncomfortable. If we, as weekenders, had acted like they had, there would have been all kinds of complaints and the cops called.

All in all, this would have been a good "passing through" kind of campground if you just need to hook up for the night and keep going. We would probably never return or recommend to...

Do not book here unless you’re a seasonal camper. They treated us like complete trash. Long term campers yelled at us for driving and we were constantly questioned and had staff member follow us around the camp. We took our kid swimming during s light rain and had to male staff members approach me and my mom to constantly Make comments on our kids swimming we brushed this off. Well that should have been a sign cause from that point on they followed us and questioned us. Then one night while sitting around the fire the same 2 men approached us and started cussing us out and accusing us of casing the campground and proceeded to call us thrives and said they had over 15 videos of us looking suspicious. At 10pm and night they told us to pack up and leave I have 2 older kids and a 4 month old baby and they demanded me and my husband pack our car that night and leave we are from another state so it wasn’t just a hour or two drive for us. I told them we were not leaving that night and they could call the police if it was an issue and one of the men laughed in our faces and said if we aren’t gone by 8 am they next morning there would be problems and the next morning him and another man watched us pack and kept making side comments and laughing. This...