Con: we had the worst night of camping we've ever had, on 08/16/13.
Pro: the new owners - Connie, George & other brother - were very receptive to our comments and seemed truly sorry for our bad experience.
We stayed up on the hill in the tent sites, site H-8. There was not actually a single level spot on the site, and we spent the whole night having to hike our sleeping bags up the slight incline, but that soon became a minor complaint. Around 11pm when we went to wash up, we found a group of men at the shower building preparing to play drinking games up in the rec room. Not a great sign at night, but our site was far away. But then back in our site, moments after we laid down for the night, the absolute rudest group of loud party girls showed up right next to us. We gave them about 30 minutes of shouting as they struggled to set up their tent, by which point a male seasonal regular had joined them - and then I asked them to please keep it down.
And then proceeded the most miserable 3.5 hours we've ever spent in a campground, during which the loud girls and seasonal guy continued to party about 30 feet from where we desperately wanted to sleep. We also heard from well across the campground another large group of people shouting and presumably drinking, til after 2am. Loud party girls finally shut up around 3am, although they built a fire at 2:30am that they didn't bother to put out when they went to sleep. When we got up in the morning, their site was covered in beer cans. We were just a nice, quiet, clean family trying to sleep, and it was like torture - like trying to fall asleep in a frat house.
This was just one really bad experience, I acknowledge. My main complaint to the campground owners was that, while I saw later that their brochure does note quiet hours from 11pm-7am, they do not hand out this brochure to arriving campers or mention the quiet hours. Most sites we've stayed at, they say this out loud when you check in. We also weren't aware of a campground host, and were very discouraged to hear multiple parties going on, which seemed to indicate this was just the culture of this campground. We felt like there was nothing we could do, especially with seasonal regular guy acting like this was just business as usual to be up drinking & shouting til 3am.
When I spoke to Connie and George in the morning, they were extremely apologetic that we'd had such a bad night. George acknowledged that they need to do a better job of telling people about the quiet hours, and Connie said that the tent hill sites are usually quiet as a cemetery. So while we had a horrible experience, I think we really hit it on an off night, and others may have a better time. They also said that in the 6 months they've owned the campground, this is the first negative feedback they've heard.
It is a very attractive campground, and the bathroom facilities were great. It's the closest to Bethel Woods, and up until 11pm we enjoyed being here. Hopefully the owners will follow through with promoting quiet hours, and maybe also with keeping a better eye on loud groups. read more