Val Vista Villages RV Park & Resort — Local services in Mesa

In late September 2021, we suddenly found ourselves in need to a place to stay in the Phoenix metro area for the next few months for medical reasons. A tall order, considering the area is popular with snowbirds and many RV parks are only open to folks aged 55 or older. But after researching our options, we called Val Vista Village, and even though we were several years younger than the age requirement, they sympathized with our situation and let us book a long stay (we probably got lucky: in a normal year without COVID restrictions at the border and without a lockout disrupting spring training, which is a big draw in Phoenix, they might not have had room for us).

The per night cost reflects what we paid during the March segment of our stay: we paid a special promotional price of $1500 that covered our October through December stay at our first site, then we stayed 6 more weeks at another site before leaving for another campground, only to come back and end up in a third site at the beginning of March for a final medical procedure. There are monthly utility bills for electrical, sewer, and trash services (each site gets a trash can and recycling bin), which on average came out to around $100.

The resort has about 1000 sites, which are a mix of permanent small houses (mostly former trailers) and RV sites. There are several rows of long pull-through sites located throughout the property, which seem to all be spoken for by annual residents. The rest are back-in sites where the campers sits on gravel next to a concrete pad that serves as a patio, and you park any vehicles next to the patio (in some sites the parking area was gravel; in others it was also paved). Resort staff members (“rangers”) guide you to your site and will help you back in, which is good because the sites are tight and some of the resort streets are narrow.

They didn’t have any trouble getting us into our first two sites (340 and 301A), which were sites next to a house. But when we came back for our March stay, the site the office had picked for us (613) was on a street with trees and houses that made backing in our 37-foot RV problematic. Because it was a Saturday, the office wasn’t open to authorize picking a different site, but the ranger made the decision to put us in site 608 instead and said he would clear it with the office on Monday, which he did.

We didn’t take advantage of the multitude of activities and amenities they had, partly out of a lack of interest and partly because most organized activities (except for the concerts) take place on weekdays when I work. We did use the resort post office to receive mail and packages (although many packages just came directly to our site), and the dog parks scattered around the resort. Pets are only allowed to take care of their business at your site or in the parks: any other landscaped public area was off-limits (this was true of a lot of the 55+ resorts in the area). Our older dog couldn’t always hold it until we made it to a park, so we took a water spray bottle with us to clean up after her as best we could. Fortunately our final site was right next to two adjacent dog parks which was super convenient. The parks themselves were nice and grassy, but the fact that they all got watered at the same time once left me without any place to take the dogs during an emergency 4am potty break.

In terms of cell service, the best speed I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna during our stay was about 36Mbps down and 11Mbps up. Other than the very occasional buffering, we had no trouble steaming video during our stay. The speed tests I did with my AT&T phone showed 66Mbps down and 16 up.

The proximity of grocery stores and other services made up for the lack of scenery, but you could see the mountains to the east in certain parts of the park, which made for some beautiful sunrises.

We would stay here again if we needed a long winter stay...

This is a fantastic place, but with problems that detracted from my experience.

If you are looking for a great place to snowbird or buy a winter home, or even retire permanently, this place is hard to beat. The amenities and activities are too numerous to list. The restaurant and bar are good even by public standards, but to be private and exclusively for residents, it's impressive. With these features in mind, remember that this is NOT an RV park. It's a mobile home resort that makes empty spaces available to travelers on a monthly basis.

I am bothered by the poor WiFi. The signal is weak if you are more than a few spaces away from the local router, should be better. And the security at the gate leaves you vulnerable to getting stuck on the road waiting to get in; if someone is visiting or making a delivery, the backlog at the entrance can very quickly get to 5 or 6 vehicles waiting to get in. Great security, but the chokepoint can be a drag.

Beware of the add-on charges, which they will not tell you about until you get your reservation confirmation. For monthly stays, you pay the customary additional charge for electric, which is common. What is not common is the additional $20 surcharge that you pay for the electric company to come and read the meter. Add another $20 for trash pickup, and $10 for sewer, and suddenly on the last day of your stay you owe an additional $105.

Here's my final warning: if you are looking to stay for a month in your RV, be very careful accepting the space you are assigned. If they give you a space that backs up to Val Vista Road or University Ave, be prepared for noise. I have NEVER, in 3 years of fulltime travel, lived with such noise. These 2 roads are 24/7, they are pretty significant arteries, and there is no noise barrier. We have had the traffic drown out the T.V. As nice as this place is, the traffic noise in the roadside sites will ruin your stay. Fortunately, we found another place to go that can give us an interior site. Frankly, we would have stayed here another month, but we...

Stayed here this winter. Very large site with a real hodge podge of of accomodation. Really old park models, new park models, motor homes and trailers and 5th wheels. Some nice layouts and others areas where you can have the challenge of trying to back your unit between a carport roof overhang and a large palm tree. Once in you can enjoy the view of a 80's trailer trying to pass as a park model. On three sides in some sites. Many of these units should be demolished. Add to the ancient homes a lot of really tacky ornaments sitting in front of the units and you have the perfect trailer park trash layout.||There is a lot to do on site, much of it run by volunteers from site. There are a lot of very friendly people at this site. ||The roads in the site have been sealed with a product that is constantly coming off. If you have a dog, be prepared to have a very dirty dog and feet from walking the site. There three dog parks, everyone in the park including the dogs were friendly.||There is a central area where people can gather to enjoy new friends with a drink, some food and decent music. It's too bad that line dancers don't know that every song written is not meant to be line danced to. Come on ladies, sit a few out and give others a chance to enjoy the dance floor.||The location in Mesa is good, not too far from anything. It is close to the airport flight path, so you will hear planes passing over often.||We will not...