Placerville KOA

If you travel with children you will likely enjoy this park more than my wife and I did because it has activities for children such as movie and popcorn on Friday and Saturday nights, little train rides, miniature golf, swimming pool, a couple of goats in a pen, and a pond with an island. The swimming pool is small relative to the size of the park. During our stay, social distancing in the pool was a challenge for the hosts. The hot tub was not open during our stay. With children along, perhaps one might find the nightly rates of $86 weekdays and $93 on weekends reasonable. Outside of the activities for children, the park consists of gravel sites and mostly gravel roads. During our stay we found the park to be really dusty. It was a very hot week and CA is in a drought. Most sites are close together. Most of the spots where RVs are parked are level, but your "yard" may not be. Our motorhome was fairly level, but our "yard" was a steep hill. The park itself is not level and sites are tiered on the hillside. Some sites are shady, some are in full sun. Our site was a pull-in site. Yes, pull-in. 33-foot Class C motorhome flat-towing a Jeep. Our site was just barely deep enough for the motorhome with the Jeep parked sideways behind it. During our week long stay we could not figure out how the hosts decided to assign spots. Some small trailers were in shady, pull-through sites with full hook-ups, while some large Class A rigs were stuffed into short, narrow spots. Our spot did not have full hook-ups. In our experience, $93 for a dusty, unlevel, tight, sunny, pull-in site without a sewer connection is over-priced. Again, if we had children with us, we might realize more value.

It’s a KOA, enough said. We came out from the Bay Area on a last minute long weekend (for us) and couldn’t find much anywhere plus wanted to avoid a super long drive for only a few days. I can understand some of the complaints about gravel/dirt but it’s not like it’s rained in awhile so things were fine. We needed to level the trailer - no big deal. In the pandemic things are closed so it’s a ridiculous price to pay for just a camp spot but it’s better than another weekend sitting at home waiting to be called for vaccinations! I’m happy to spend money to keep places like this going as their costs have soared.

I compared AT&T with and without the WeBoost. 2-3 bars w/o WeBoost and ~18Mbps down/2Mbps up. With WeBoost on a tall antenna mast I got 82Mbps down and 60Mbps up - blew me away.

There’s nothing special about this place, other than its location. It costs too much when there are other options. I feel robbed. You can get a few decent hotels for this price (or, less) “near” the area and many will let you park RV free. Hard pass, unless really just a night that’s directly off main highway. Would suggest boondocking, or other options in the area.

If you like the shuttle option you might like it here. But it is crowded (even for a KOA), large, and for $80/night, I would like a cement pad. Constant highway noise. I needed to stop for the night--what can I say. Would not stay here again, I would rather be in a Wal Mart parking lot. On the positive side, the staff was very friendly and the store was well stocked. And the WIFI worked even at my spot which was a long way from the office.

We spent 2 nights here in August. It did get toasty here during the daytime. The high temperature was around 95 and in the evening it went down to lower sixties, perfect temperature for a campfire. They don't allow wood fires but you can loan a fire pit from the office and burn DuraFlame logs. As for the heat we were able to handle it well during the day without having to run the 2nd AC. The campground is well maintained. The restrooms and showers were very clean. The young lady who checked us in was very courteous and helpful.

If you are looking to just relax and have a good time with all the amenities this is a good place to camp, if you are looking for more natural setting then I would go to a State park. We camped in a site that backs up to country side so the back view was nice and private.

It's a KOA, so you are mostly jammed in with the rest of the RVs. They do have tent sites. That is what I was in. Wifi is bad. It is noisy so close to the freeway (Highway 50). You can get a discount for many different types of things you already have, but it still is pricey for what you are getting. Showers and facilities are cleaned daily and well. If you are RVing, why go somewhere by a freeway? RVers with huge rigs seem to like it.

We stopped here for one night, as we were having dinner with friends in the area. It is your basic KOA. Enough said. It was off season, so we weren't crowded. We didn't do much other than park, visit our friends, come back, sleep, and leave.

Cable TV worked well. Verizon was excellent. Didn't try OTA TV.

The office staff was pushing to have you give them a good review when you received the KOA survey. They even gave you a sheet of paper explaining the rating system and why you needed to give them a 5 star rating. This paper came with candy. Strange. I felt like I was being bribed.

If we are through here again, I think I would try a Harvest Host or some other free place for only 1 night.

So, having been on the road since January, we had so far avoided KOAs. I had a preconceived notion that they were overpriced and usually can find a better option. We, however, didn't take into consideration the 4th of July weekend. Everywhere was packed, and we searched most of the day Saturday. So when we came across the Placerville KOA and they had a water/electric site for $52 we took it, just to stop worrying.

And it was everything I thought a KOA would be. Packed with RVs, packed with tents, packed with kids. I thought maybe I'd finally get to use a pool...but alas, the pool was pretty overrun with unsupervised minors. Having said all that, it was quiet at night, they had lots of activities for families, including a movie night, BBQ dinner, Sunday breakfast (all requiring cash BTW)...we were lucky enough to get one of the only available shaded sites and greatly appreciated it.

I wouldn't stay here again not because they did anything wrong, but the sheer amount of people made it difficult to enjoy the amenities that I was paying a premium price for. An off-season choice, perhaps.