Apache Palms is a dated but well maintained park. The park roads are just a tiny bit narrow on the curves, but large 45' motorhomes come and go without any significant problems. I had to back up to make one of the tight curves in my 40' MH, but fortunately I had disconnected while my wife went in to register, and we were able to make the turn into the park towing a 17' dingy by taking both lanes of the busy frontage road. ALL the roads are one-way, but some of big rigs HAVE to exit using the entrance, and it can make things "interesting" because motorhomes cannot backup when towing. The park has a pull-in area for registering at the office. It is marked for two rigs, but we pretty much filled both spots.
They have all the normal things like a pool, laundry room, & showers, but all are small to tiny. There is no dog run, grass, or club house. The trees are too small to qualify as shade trees. The spaces are gravel with narrow cement pads. The public shower and laundry room is housed in a very small building that that's about the size of a good tool shed.
The wifi was the most frustrating I've used at any park, which is one of the reasons for an "average" rating. Repeated frustration from waiting for pages to load, having the signal disappear, and restarting the computer was the daily cycle for three weeks. The wifi worked only enough to keep you trying. If a working internet is important then find another park , use up your own data, or be prepared to go to Hell for cussing.
Have you ever read one of those reviews that starts out, "The staff was really great ...." ? Well, this isn't one of them. The problem seemed to come from one person who set the tone for some of the others, but one of the men was very nice and helpful. I want to emphasis that the one staff member NEVER said one thing that was wrong; she was just an expert at unintentionally raising your blood pressure by tone, body language, and abruptness. My wife and I discussed why she became such an issue for us, and we believe it was because we felt like if you tried to reason with her it could easily escalate into a verbal altercation. But as some reviewers said, you don't visit RV parks to be friends with the staff, but that doesn't mean they can't leave a burr under your saddle.
Here are some examples of those burrs. After making our one-week reservation to have a chair lift put installed, an extreme heat wave set in that tried for the record of the most consecutive days of a 110 or higher. I phoned to see if we could get an early check-in to beat the extreme heat. As anyone who drives in extreme weather knows, this is a safety issue. (People died from being caught in the heat while we were there.) We had to travel across dessert mountains with one slow climb lasting for about ten miles (or so it seemed). Extreme heat is not good for radiator hoses, tires, etc., and break downs in a tin-box MH would mean hours on the side of the road under conditions not good for most living things, ... especially old people. She was unconcerned. Check-in was 11 AM. Period. Rules are rules. It would have been nice for her to have softened the "NO!" with an explanation, such as, "We'd be happy to accommodate you if we can, but all the spaces are booked and they might not leave much before check in ...." If that was in fact the case, but I've never seen every space leave minutes before check-out time. Even IF every space was rented, I'd bet a few of them would leave before sunup to beat the extreme heat. When we pulled in a few minutes after 11, we looked over the available spaces. Unfortunately she had already assigned us a space. After seeing the assigned space I went back into the office to ask for a better space for parking and exiting with our large MH, I was told it couldn't be switched. The space I wanted remained empty for two days. Asking for the space number on our paperwork to be changed appeared to be too much of a hardship. The poor customer relations didn't stop there. The internet problem caused the system to be down for protracted periods, when I phoned to check I was told I could use the cable inside the office, but was twice directed to an outside table when I appeared at the office. (Remember the extreme heat.) I used a lot of my jet-pack data while at this park. A refresher course in customer relations 101 might be in order.
Would I stay here again? Only if my wife agrees to call the office to see it they've solved their internet problem. It gets old real fast to keep getting "No network found" in the middle of a major metropolitan area. read more