Why Buy A Thousand Trails Membership?

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A Thousand Trails membership might not be cost effective for everyone, but we have found it to be a remarkable way to save money and make new friends. For our family, our main travel goals revolve around spending the holiday season with relatives: East coast one year and West coast the next. We also absolutely love spending several months of spring time in Texas, our domicile state/legal residency, when our route permits.

We bought the Thousand Trails Basic Elite membership so we can stay three weeks in a Thousand Trails Campground and then go immediately to another Thousand Trails Campground for up to three weeks (AKA Park to Park). We could do this continually the entire year if we chose to stay in areas with park availability. The initial purchase price was a one time fee that gives us lifetime access to the membership. The annual dues are easily justifiable for our budget so long as we use the Thousand Trails System at least two weeks a year.

When we are in areas that don’t have Thousand Trails Campgrounds we look for the least expensive Full Hook-up (FHU: Water, Electric & Sewer) campsites we can find (depending on location we might pay $20-$75 per night). They rarely have the amount of campground amenities we have grown accustom to through Thousand Trails. Nearly every Thousand Trails campground we have stayed at has had a playground, pool, mini golf, and some type of activity center. Many have fishing lakes or natural water access of some kind.

Our Thousand Trails membership has taken us to camping locations we otherwise wouldn’t have thought to go. We ended up being pleasantly surprised by several of these places and are eager to get back to them in the future. There have also been a couple of campgrounds that were not ideal for us, but nothing bad enough to make us leave early. The first come first serve sites are definitely not all equal, occasionally we will move during our stay if our initial site is undesirable and a better one opens up.

While we do not make friends at every Thousand Trails campground we have stayed at, we have found it to be generally easier to make friends at Thousand Trails campgrounds than we have at any non Thousand Trails campgrounds. Having a shared background in full-time RV living is a great gateway to begin friendly conversations. Although our reunions are rare, we enjoy the camaraderie of other RV families and look forward to the possibility of meeting-up at a future campground.

When we first began our RV life journey in 2020, we planned on doing a lot of boondocking. We absolutely love being surrounded by nature and taking in the beauty around us without having tons of neighbors. Our first year on the road we got to stay in a lot of really cool boondocking spots. We also stayed in a few really uncomfortable campgrounds (there is a reason if it’s significantly cheaper than anything else in the area).

As much as we love boondocking, we also love having a FHU site within walking distance to a pool and playground. While the sites may not be picture perfect like some of the boondocking locations, they allow us to spend a lot of quality time outside with our very active boys. Most of the boondocking sites we stayed at resulted in every surface of the RV being covered in dust and dirty clothes. Staying in a campground typically helps us keep the dirt and laundry at least moderately under control.

We had received a free Thousand Trails Camping Pass with the purchase of our RV and only used it a few times because there were not many campgrounds that lined up with our travel plans. We had no intention of purchasing a membership, but the more we heard about the new adventure pass the more intrigued we got. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least ask about the different packages. When we first found out the price of the new Adventure Pass our jaws dropped!

We could not fathom pre-paying for that many nights of camping in a system we had only used a few times. After comparing the different membership levels and looking at our wants/needs for continuing to live in our RV full time, we determined that the Basic Elite package could actually save us a lot of money with just a couple years of use. Our initial purchase price (or as we like to call it, pre-paid rent) was around $6000. In addition to the 21 day park to park access, it included one week cabin rentals for five years.

Living in our RV full-time we thought we would have no reason to stay in the cabins, we didn’t pay too much attention to that bonus. Thankfully we remembered it was an option for us when the RV needed to get some major repairs done. We were able to stay in a cabin during the repairs and didn’t have to worry about trying to budget for a hotel/Airbnb on top of the RV repair costs.  We also got to continue enjoying the campground amenities and activities which we might not have had with more expensive housing alternatives.  

As of June 2023, we have paid around $8,800 total for our membership (Including purchase price, annual dues and premium site fees). We stayed over 400 nights in Thousand Trails campgrounds so far which comes out to less than $22/night. We have yet to find any campground with comparable amenities for that price. The more we use the campgrounds, the lower that nightly rate gets – we are estimating it will be down around $17/night by the end of the year.

In addition to looking at how much we ‘paid-per-night’ we also like to see how much we might have had to spend if we spent those same nights in campgrounds that were $30-$50/night. 400 nights at $30/night is $12,000 so from that perspective our membership already saved us $3,200. Even more dramatic, and not as realistic for us personally but plausible depending on location, 400 nights at $50/night is $20,000 resulting in a savings of $11,200!

Ready to make a purchase or have more specific questions answered for your personal scenario? Fill out the form below to get in touch with our Member Specialist.