Allendale-West Grand Rapids KOA

Unfortunately, I would NOT recommend staying at this KOA site. We stayed at Allendale KOA for two nights, Friday evening to Sunday morning. The location was well-maintained and clean, and there were a few permanent campers, which didn't detract from our experience at all. The campground had quite a few lovely amenities, they had fun opportunities for kids and most of the staff was kind and professional. We stayed at a tent campsite, we had an easy check-in, and easy access to set up.

However, our interaction with the owner's mother who lives at the campground took away from our stay. We had misplaced our placard for our car and did not realize until returning to our campsite late Friday evening after the office closed. At 8 in the morning, my partner had gone to use the bathroom facilities next to the main office before going into the main office when they opened to request a replacement. However, upon leaving the bathroom on his way to the main office, my partner was confronted by the owner's mother accusing him of coming off the street to use their bathrooms. He explained to her that we had misplaced the placard, apologized for not having it up, and that he was coming in to request a new one. She continued to berate him and accuse him of lying, even after he repeatedly told her we had a campsite booked, including giving our site number. When he moved to walk into the office she followed him closely and she reissued a placard for our car.

In all my years of camping and backpacking, he and I have never had such a negative interaction. My partner felt as though he was being treated as though he was trespassing. I am not sure if this is a continual issue that individuals drive to this KOA to use their facilities? The location appeared fairly rural, I would be very surprised if this is a continual issue for this KOA. If we were not leaving the next morning we would have left and found a new campground. We were left feeling very uncomfortable for the rest of our stay since our site was within visual distance of her home and every time the owner's mother was nearby/driving by on her golf cart.

After reading other Google reviews this seems to be a continual issue with this same woman. Unfortunately, we would never stay here again and would exercise caution to any other person who may want to stay here to steer clear of this woman. Had it not been for this interaction we would recommend this campground.

Spent a very nice long weekend. Really enjoyed our experience. Good place to base camp for those wanting to explorer the Region. All within 30 minutes. Staff was super friendly and the weekend wagon ride for the kids was a hoot. We would time our arrival back to watch the wagon parade. Overall excellent. Only drawback was Wi-Fi and cell was limited which made working remotely challenging.

We stayed here for our shakedown trip as we had just picked up our new coach in Grand Rapids & wanted to stay close by. Sites are "somewhat" level. There are a total of 4 sites with concrete pads that appear to be fairly new. Ours was a full hookup site with no issues with the services. Numerous tall trees but somehow we were still able to get DirecTV programming about 95% of the time.

Check-in was quick & easy and staff was very friendly. The amenities for the kids seemed good. Pool, playground area in front & back of campground, a LARGE jump pad. Appearance of restrooms/showers/laundry was good. Staff will bring firewood to your site.

If you are wanting to "disconnect" from the world then this would be your place. Data reception for AT&T is almost non-existent, Verizon & T-Mobile are just ok. We had no issues with phone or texts with Verizon.

I would normally rate this a 4-star but taking off an additional star due to the appearance upon entry the campground. This can be easily corrected. There is also an abandoned fire truck & pontoon boat next to the bath house.

Overall we kind of like this campground. It's well kept and most sites are a decent size and separated by lovely tall trees. It's very peaceful and the staff and campers are very friendly. Unfortunately, when you drive in it looks very dumpy with 4 decrepit RV's at the entrance

We would NEVER get the upgraded concrete sites. They barely fit our 44' fifth wheel. They are also laid out in a weird shape that makes the whole layout awkward and unusable for us. In order to fit, we overhang the firepit and good thing there is no one on the other side b/c we are basically in their firepit as well. We much prefer the grassy sites in between the trees.

Our biggest issue here is we both work full-time virtually and the wifi is not good at all. We can't connect to their wifi and the park is quite empty. Looks like quite a distance to the nearest cell tower. We have hotspots for Verizon, AT&T & T-Mobile and got very minimal service. We did put up our antenna and with a bit of tweaking, were able to do most things we needed to at that point.

We really liked this KOA. It's a very large park with tons of trees. Many campfire rings and we stayed near a very nice playground. It's easy to see this place would be hopping in the summer! For a late fall getaway it's a nice quiet spot. We stayed because we purchased our new rig in Grand Rapids. We would stay here again just because it's so pretty and peaceful.
The site was pretty level and roomy. We mostly used our own shower, but I will say that hubby used the showers there and didn't have much good to say about them. The laundry room was clean and although the machines were older they worked well and it only cost $1.50 to wash and $1.25 to dry which is pretty cheap compared to most. Pretty sure there was no wifi there as I didn't see any info on the paper. We alternated between 1-2 bars of LTE/4G on AT&T.
Friendly neighbors and overall a really nice campsite that we would recommend.
The best compliment I can give is that the person I dealt with on the phone several times - Robert - was extremely friendly and professional. One of the best I've ever spoken to.