Lake Magic RV Resort - Thousand Trails

We have stayed at Lake Magic eight times since hitting the road full time in November 2020. It is one of our favorites for the closeness to the theme parks and stores (Aldi is our grocery store of choice). We've stayed in 3 sections of the park, all paved. The hookups have been good. There are a few gravel sites here, but they look decent and level from walking by. Folks are nice and we've always had a good time. There is a small playground for kiddos and there are two pools. A fun thing is that the park seems to be in a hot air balloon flight pattern. There were several times we got to see some fly over.

Stayed at this park for 2 nights. Made this reservation 3 days prior to my stay due to last minute travel changes. This park has both park models & RVs. There are both pull through and back in sites. Some sites on concrete, others on gravel.

My specific site was a pull through on gravel. While in theory the pull through site sounds great, it had its faults. The sewer is definitely toward the back end of the site. Even parking towards the back of the site, we needed to use some extra sewer hoses. The sewer had an uphill slope, so dumping took some work. Just be prepared if you plan on staying here. Being that we wanted be towards the back of the site meant having to park our car in front of the RV. Due to all the one way streets in the park, I had to do a decent size loop of the park in order to hook up.

Didn’t use any of the amenities (bathrooms, laundry, pool, tennis courts etc.) Verizon signal was adequate for texting and searching the internet.

Staff was super friendly. Got a call the day before arrival confirming reservation. Check in is at noon. If you arrive before noon you can pay $25 for early check in or they hold you at the front of the RV park. This wouldn’t be my first choice for an RV park in the area, but I would stay here again.

I received a free Thousand Trails promotion with buying my RV and came here because it wasn’t too far from home and we wanted to get to know the RV. It’s a great location for vacationers, close to theme parks and other attractions. There’s shopping and other amenities near by. The park is quiet and clean. It’s a mix of permanent residents, snowbirds, and vacationers. The amenities are great, though everything was understandably closed due to the pandemic. We didn’t care about that. The reason for 3 stars is the service. Though there were plenty of empty spots with concrete pads and grass, we were put in a spot that was basically sand and loose gravel. Not much of a way to promote Thousand Trails, is it? You have to pay for WiFi. Smartphone data works but not strong enough for a hotspot. Agree with others that management could have been friendlier and more helpful.

Positives:
It's 6 miles from Disney.
It is clean.
There are places for walking the dogs and there is a dog park.
People are all nice, although there isn't much community around RV's so not many people outside.
Efficient and easy to get into, they accept mail, etc., so it is functional.

Cons:
The sewer on our site and quite a few others were at the very back of the site, which means my regular hose that works at 99% of parks was about 10-12 feet short. With the slope of the site this means there was an upslope to the drain. I feel nervous having 30ft of waste sitting in a pipe.
Quite a slope, pretty much at the limits of air leveling, the back of the RV was on the ground!
It feels too much like a holding place for people through the winter. I think some of the closer in sites may be nicer, but this site is out the back.
The cell signal isn't the best. We have a great cell data setup and had 40/15 mbps in the morning when everyone was asleep, but 3/6 mbps late afternoon into the evening. Too many snowbirds!

I'd look for a more interesting place to stay on a future visit, but we booked fairly late and we got a spot, so the provide a useful service.

Stayed 2 nights for free as part of our Thousand Trails membership with the Encore addon. Full hookups (50amp, water, sewer). Stayed in site 806.

We called the day we arrived and were surprised there was a spot this close to Disney with availability, so we quickly snagged a night. We went to Disney World the next day so we extended to 2 nights. It was early December so props to the resort for having a spot and allowing us to extend. But that's about where the compliments end.

The water hookup took 30 minutes to figure out. The water connection had 2 spigots and both were leaking. Took a bit of wrenching and adjusting to get everything hooked on without a leak.

The site was sand with gravel and very uneven. We had to use a few blocks to get level and even then it was tricky since front to back and side to side were bumpy all over the place.

The site was located right on the walking path to the pool and tennis courts which we didn't mind since we used the tennis courts. We heard a bit of walking traffic but since we spent our only full day away from our site at Disney World we didn't really care about the busy pathway.

The service was sub-par. We arrived and the lady at the the entry booth was less than friendly. The next morning when we extended our stay she was even less helpful and acted like we were inconveniencing her. And then the morning we left at 11:10 (checkout is 11, so we were obviously a few minutes late as we packed everything up), we received a very unfriendly call that we needed to vacate immediately.

The only dumpster is located outside the resort near the entry gate and it stiiiiinks. We're full-timers so we're used to dumping our garbage in gross dumpsters, but this one gets the award as the grossest. And it's tough to slide open and shut so you get to inhale the smell for a couple seconds while you fiddle with the latch.

Cell service is pretty bad. We use Verizon and AT&T and both were sloooow or even nonexistent even with a WeBoost antenna.

Obviously the biggest attraction is the proximity to Disney and other fun things in the area. For the price we paid (free with Thousand Trails membership), it's hard to really complain much. But it's still worth sharing some of the minor issues we had with the park.

This is my preferred location in the Disney area. Nice "resort" with more space than most Encore resorts in the area. Nicely maintained and pretty level. Concrete spot with a nice concrete pad and picnic table. Winter in FL is tough to get spots. I could only get 5 days here this winter. ATT is a bit spotty depending on which band you connect to. I went from really awesome 80 mpbs down to crawling along at 2 mbps. Not sure if ATT is testing the new band but that is the one that allowed the fast speeds. VZ was maybe a 4 mbps. Close to Walmart/Publix/Starbucks/Dunkin and all that is 192 on the Disney corridor. It may only be 10 miles but during heavy times it can easily take 30-45 mins to get to Disney. Staff was friendly and did try hard to extend my staff although it wasn't able to happen. Bath houses were typical Encore needing an update but they were clean.