We, too, were leery of this KOA after we made our reservation and THEN read the reviews here. However, we had a great weekend! And we plan to go back. Didn't have many of the issues that others complained about. All charges were explained when I booked. Bathrooms and pool were clean. And we don't expect luxury when we camp (or any other time, actually).
We arrived late afternoon Friday and checked in with no problem. Our site (#100) was actually quite large, although the sites, in general, are quite close together and cramped. I'm not even sure how a camper would fit in some of them. But again, our site was great. We had to use our leveling blocks, but I don't think we've ever been on a perfectly level site. I do agree with one poster that some of the tent sites would be nearly impossible to pitch a tent on. A bonus for us was that there is a path from the KOA to River Riders, where we were doing a zip line canopy tour on Sunday, and it was literally right across from our site. Very convenient.
We found the bathrooms to be clean and well-maintained. We also had no issues with the showers, and I thought it was great that there were separate shower rooms for each shower. I grew up camping with my parents and brother, and my husband and our kids started camping again in the last year. I've never been to a campground that had private showers. Great feature. Had plenty of hot water, too.
We went to the horse races in Charles Town on Friday night and weren't back until about 11, but it wasn't overly noisy on our end of the campground. We spent all day Saturday at the KOA and thought it was great! My son jumped on the bouncing pillow and rented a four-wheeled bike, we played mini golf (which is a very nice course for a campground), swam in the very clean pool, played chess on the oversized lawn chess board, and toured the civil war museum. There are some cool things in there, even though it's very small, and the curators are very informative and eager to answer questions. The KOA staff we interacted with was friendly and helpful.
There was a group down the way from us that was slightly noisy on Saturday night, left a fire burning when they went to bed (saw it when I made a trip to the bath house at 3:30am), and obnoxious in general, but they weren't loud enough to keep us awake. And there was a different group that had some sort of a moped that various members of the group kept doing laps on from late afternoon until well after dark. All that to say, that I didn't see any quiet hours enforced. I did see a lot of staff patrolling in golf carts. Not sure what they were checking for. Some cars across the way from us seemed to be written up for something... maybe too many cars in a site. I don't know. I thought it was nice that staff drove around on a golf cart periodically with fire wood and ice for sale. Not that it was that hard to walk up to the store for it, but it was a convenience.
We walked around the campground and looked a sites that we would like to try in the future and made note of sites we definitely do not want to stay in. I think the $20 fee to pick and guarantee a specific site would be worth it at this KOA because of the undesirability of several of the sites due to location, proximity to other sites, or size.
Oh, and the free pancakes for breakfast! Definite perk! We took advantage of this on Sunday morning. Since it was Chocolate Mania weekend (all activities were around a chocolate theme), you could get free chocolate chips in/on them. Yum! Only downside to the pancakes is the abundance of bees attracted by the syrup containers. Nothing that can be done about that.
Overall, our experience was positive, and we had a great weekend! We will definitely be back!
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
