Wild West Ranch & RV Resort

This guy is a jerk, first he charged my card for all 4 nights and then when I as for a refund due to Covid-19 reasons, he refused and offered to extend my reservation for another date in the future.
We were coming to AZ for a wedding that had been cancelled due to shut downs from the fear of Covid-19, like everyone else we were scrambling for new plans. I politely asked for a refund due to having no idea when we might come back, again he refused.

I sent an email stating I would pay for 1 night as a cancel fee and refund the other 3 nights, I never got a response from him at all. Normally I would just go to credit card company and handle it that way but due to the dire economy I sat on hold 4 times for over 1 hr and can not get through to them. So, I have filed a complaint with Az attorney general's office and still waiting. I can not attest to condition of the park only to the owner and his arrogance. There are no cancellation policies listed on the website so he makes them up.

Stay away this owner and his park. We Rv'rs must stick together and this is the only way we have.

The best thing about this campground? We could see lots of stars.

They advertise that they offer internet. When we checked in, the person ahead of us was told that sometimes people are streaming and it just takes longer to get on. After trying in the middle of the night with no luck, my husband went to the office the next day and the clerk said no, there’s no internet. Why lie???
The morning tgat we were due to leave, our water pressure went to zero!

If you don’t mind a huge dairy down the road and all that goes with it, welcome.

Next time, we will keep looking. There are plenty of good looking places around here

It wouldn’t be my first choice but this is not a bad spot for an overnight stay when passing through on Interstate 8. There are some large dairy farms nearby so, when the wind blows from that direction, the smell can be very strong. If you can get past that, the campground office has a good selection of wine and beer, the laundry room is good, the price is fair and the scenery is good as you’re right on the edge of the desert.

All dirt roads with many FHU sites. It would have gotten a 5 if regular maintenance was obvious. There were almost all of the concrete pads that have, and have not for a long time not been repaired. This causes many tripping hazards. My wife sprained her ankle on the broken pad the first night there.

Otherwise it was a nice park with many friendly people. With the exception of the birds in the trees near our site (from 5:30-7:00pm every night the sound of the roosting birds was almost deafening.
Otherwise peaceful quiet days spent at the resort

I’ve stayed here 3 times and thought all the crooked accusations where hooey. However, this third time I had the “un”pleasure of meeting the owner and just immediately had an uneasy dealing, you know, something just didn’t feel good. So I paid for the week and actually got a military discount, but his demeanor still indicated something weird. This was the 3rd week of June. Now on September 10 I get an invoice in my email wanting me to pay $1.00 for a roll of toilet paper that I’ve never purchased.

I called Wild West ranch and spoke to the owner and told him about it and he had a VERY bad attitude insisting that my email had been hacked. When I explained to him that many, many other reviews I read said they had credit card issues with his establishment and it was his invoice system that billed me, he got EXTREMELY rude, defensive and vulgar, yes he started dropping the “F” bomb left and right.

My recommendation is DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT stay at this park. But if by chance you do, pay with cash and don’t give them any personal info ie; email phone# etc. 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

Fellow RVers: STEER CLEAR OF THIS UNETHICAL PLACE. Our experience this past winter at Wild West Ranch & RV Park (formerly John Wayne RV Ranch, LLC) in Maricopa, Arizona
We paid a $100.00 deposit via credit card to this campground on 11/10/2017 for a month's stay beginning on 12/18/2017. Upon arrival, we wrote a check for $400.00 for the monthly rent. We left the campground on 1/13/2018, and my husband had made arrangements earlier in the week to return for another month beginning on 1/28/2018. Our credit card was charged by the campground for our electricity usage through 1/13/2018 on 1/29/2018. The amount charged was overstated, and a credit was issued to our card for the difference. We had not authorized this charge. Upon our return to Wild West on 1/28/2018, we wrote another check for $400.00 to cover the month ending on 2/28/2018. (At this time, our initial $100.00 deposit is still on the books as a credit). On the morning of our departure, March 1, 2018 we discovered the campground had charged our credit card 5 times between 10:57 and 11:08 am on 1/28/2018 for a total of $80.00 for electricity usage. We had not authorized this charge. We went to the office to inquire and ask for a final invoice along with the return of the deposit since it had not been used. I was told we would not receive our deposit because we owed money to the campground. We totally disagree with this and they have offered no proof of it. The owner (wife) was offsite and would only communicate via text. The owner (husband) was onsite but offered nothing but insults to my husband. As of this post, we have yet to receive any communication from the campground and our many emails and texts continue to go unanswered. We have filed a complaint with BBB-Arizona. A complaint has been filed with our bank as well. It turns out, this is not an isolated incident, and other campers have had similar problems involving the return of deposits and unauthorized credit card charges. There are several reviews out there. CAUTION: DO NOT USE YOUR CREDIT CARD WITH THIS CAMPGROUND!

Pictures posted on their website and on Facebook are very outdated. The park is very run down and most spots are just gravel parking spaces, there are a few with concrete pads but not many. Water seems to be an issue as we spent 2 days without it. Sewage backed up in the bathrooms. Activity building looks like it hasn't seen any activity in years. Office looks more like a booze store. WiFi is sporadic at best. Dog feces can be found all over the park. There are no decent spaces as these are taken by what looks like permanent residents. Laundry room while clean had mostly out of order machines. Can't say anything about the owners as we never met them, The manager Erin is very rude and doesn't seem care who she offends. The shuffle boards and horseshoe area looked like it had been many years since their use. There is no pool or activities of any kind here.

We are glass half full kind of folks so it's rare we write bad reviews but this is a place we feel we need to warn our fellow RVers about. To back up previous reviewers comments, the management of this place are not only completely lacking in any kind of service but they are dishonest, unethical and liars - and we do not use those words lightly. We actually had made a 2 month reservation in July 2016 to stay in December/January at $300/mo plus electric, but had to cancel that reservation in August due to a change in plans. Manager advised by phone she would cancel the res and refund my $100 deposit. My bad for not checking my credit card statement right away as it wasn't until February 2017 I realized the funds had never been credited back to me. You see, in December 2016 we had made another month reservation for the month of February 2017 - were charged another $100 deposit fee - and advised we would have the second from the end site at the back, overlooking the Sonoran Desert. We wanted a safe place to leave our coach while we flew home to CO for 10 days and a quiet location to work from. We arrived just before 6pm on a Sunday evening and (understandably) the office was closed - but there was no check-in packet waiting for us. We unhooked the toad and I drove around to find our site - it was occupied by someone else. Eventually the owner came out and seemed confused to see us - completely unaware of our reservation, and said they were fully booked. Naturally we were annoyed. They tried to placate us with wine. Eventually said we could stay in an overnight spot and "see if any spaces opened up during the week" which they couldn't guarantee, and literally said their RV tenants lie to them about their plans and they never know. Nice. Upon driving around the place, it was weird - part of it looked nice in a rustic kind of way, but driving around the rest of the place it felt trashy and we did not feel comfortable leaving our coach unattended while we were in CO. We decided to leave as Owner had disappeared by then, I called the next day to leave a voicemail for the manager to advise we had left as our site was not available as it had been promised and requested a refund of our $100. Long story short, they ignored all of my phone calls and emails, and eventually I filed a dispute claim with my bank. This behavior prompted me to check if they had actually refunded the first $100 from 6 months prior and I realized they had not. So they had $200 from us and we never even stayed a night, we were there 20 minutes tops. The manager eventually emailed to say that according to her notes the first $100 was refunded on August 26. A lie as she has since disputed my claim with the bank incorrectly stating that "we stayed a night and used $30 worth of services" when we weren't anywhere near the place in Dec/Jan. However the second $100 from the failed Feb stay WAS refunded, after us showing up and spending 20 mins unhooking/rehooking and leaving. It's all very bizarre and their way of doing business is dishonest and unacceptable. So they got $100 out of us just for messing us around and clearly don't care that it affects their reputation. I had held off writing any reviews, in the hope it could be resolved (I realize miscommunications and mistakes do happen and wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt) but it is now apparent this is a a shady business managed by dysfunctional and dishonest people. It's a shame that people like this are out there running businesses that make a practice out of dishonesty and ripping people off. Fortunately, in our 3 years of full-time RVing this is the first and only experience like this, so the majority of RV park owners are decent people running reputable businesses. Sadly, Wild West Ranch is not one of them.

PS. After posting my review and sharing on our Facebook Page, we were viciously attacked on our page by Wild West Ranch and it's Management, who made several wildly exaggerated accusations and outright lies. Before we even got to read them, our community who know and trust us and our judgement, jumped to our defense. The concerns we expressed in our review above were completely validated by the extreme, bullying and dishonesty displayed by the manager on our feed. Two of our followers also commented they had similar experiences with that Park/Management and shared our post - then reported they were also being trolled and harassed by the owner/manager on their own pages. I also learned that the management has been "caught" by an RV Review site writing negative reviews about their neighboring parks and giving themselves 5 star reviews (which were removed by the Site Admin). Do your research and read multiple reviews and make your own decision. It is our hope no-one else has an experience like this, but be very careful about giving them your credit card and know that even if you have something in writing, it won't necessarily be honored. We agree with one of the earlier reviewers that the park "has potential" but not under the current management, which seems to be it's biggest problem. Well that... and the troublesome tenants and the barnyard funk (see below). In the end, we we believe we had a lucky escape.

We stayed at Wild West Ranch for the first and last time this winter. We payed for one month of camping and stayed about 3 weeks of that month. The only time we were able to get information or an audience with the owner was right after we pulled in when he came immediately to collect rent and deposit. After that there was never anyone in the office ever and no one to get any information from. We purposely did not use very much electric as we found propane to be much more cost effective. We ran our fridge, water heater, and furnace all on propane and at the end of our stay our electric meter read between 51 and 52 which should have cost us about $8 at .16cents a kw. When we left they told us the owner had gone on holiday and no one else could refund us. I took pictures of our meter reading which I later sent to Wild West. My husband called numerous times to get our refund and was told that no one ever has such a low reading so therefore we must be lying about our reading. We were given a refund of $28 and change and after more calls were told we would receive an additional $40 which we agreed to even though it was not an accurate amount. WE NEVER RECEIVED ANY OF THIS MONEY. These are not honest people. Add to that the smell of cow urine and feces that was often present and very, very strong. Even though we spent most of our time with family and were only there to sleep it turned out to be a very negative experience.