Most RVers these days want to be connected with the Internet when they travel. Some carry their own mobile hotspots. Others get online at a McDonald’s or Starbucks or other locations with available Wi-Fi.
But many RVers depend on the Wi-Fi at RV parks, and even at public campgrounds, which are increasingly adding Wi-Fi to their camper amenities. Even National Parks are getting into the act.
The campground industry is well aware that its 3,000-plus members need to do better with their Wi-Fi service. Most RV park owners know that they must offer Wi-Fi or lose potential customers who won’t stay if it’s not available.
For today, let’s see what the readers of RVtravel.com think about the quality of the service they have encountered at parks where they’ve stayed. What has been your experience?
It may take a moment for the poll to load, so please stand by. And feel free to leave a comment.
The parks we go to don’t even offer WiFi so we can’t comment.
I never even try the park’s WiFi, I just use my cellular hotspot.
Exactly.
We now carry one of the FMCA-sponsored hotspots. Works well in almost all cases. Looking forward to 5G.
I think we have all become used to having some minimum level of connectivity to the internet at private campgrounds. If the campground is in an area with good cell service I use my cell phones data plan or a hot spot to access the internet, so good campground WIFI is not important. If the campground is in a poor reception area for cell service, it is much more important for the campground to invest in much better WIFI coverage. Same goes for over the air TV vs. Cable TV.
Campgrounds offer “free” Wi-Fi….they don’t offer “free” Wi-Fi that works.
My wife and I usually don’t care about the WI Fi at campgrounds, we’re there to enjoy sitting by the fire taking in nature and the weather. We have cellphones to keep in touch with friends and family or emergency. Works for us, everyone have a great day and happy camping in 2021. Snow bound and cold in Wisconsin.
In my experience over several years, in repeat visits to several campgrounds, the campground owners are trying, expanding their capacity each year. And the wifi is wonderful when I get up in the morning. It remains that way for most of the day, but between 5 PM and 5:30 PM – you can almost set your watch by it – it drops from great to useless as the self-absorbed clowns throughout the park begin streaming video. Most of them have satellite dishes on or beside their rigs, and could easily move most of their traffic there. But they feel “entitled”, and the low-bandwidth users such as myself are shut out. The amusing thing is that these annoying streamers whine about the lousy campground service as they shut each other out. You’re not at home, folks! You don’t have a 2 GB/second service plan all to yourself.
Wi Fi is not free. So you must subscribe and in this park it’s some unknown by the name of airbeam. Not bad when it works but tech service is TERRIBLE. And using a verizon hot spot is worse. One bar at the best of times. Most of the time you can’t even make a phone call. 750 or so residents and still waiting for verizon to make upgrades.
I said “It’s good but not great” but you have to take that in context. Some campgrounds have wifi that doesn’t work at all, even at the main building. Most have wifi that’s good in some locations and not so good or non-existent in other locations. Overall, we’ve found that wifi access has improved over the last seven years that we’ve been visiting RV campgrounds. Like many others here, we often depend on cell service for internet access and just bought a hot spot recently for use during the coming summer season. We also bought a Weboost Drive Reach that we hope will help when we’re not too far from cell service. We don’t stream movies, just need access to our cameras at home, e-mail, and my wife wants to keep up with her Facebook friends. Over time we’ve moved almost all of that to our now “unlimited” cell service. Not really sure how “unlimited” that’s going to be, either, based on past experience.
We take our WIFI with us, 3 years ago Verizon offered unlimited WIFI with their JetPak service, we were all ready using the Jet Pak on a limited plan so I jumped at the chance to upgrade. The only requirement was we had to prepay the monthly fee. Since the bill was all ready being auto pay from my checking account that was not a problem. If we ever fail to prepay the service will be cancelled and can’t be restarted. This past summer we signed up with Spectrum for cable, internet, I continued paying the Verizon bill because I wasn’t impressed with Spectrum and I’m glad I did, 3 weeks later I cancelled Spectrum entirely and started using my Jet Pak again. I have never been without WIFI from south TX to middle TN to KS and FL. The wife loves it because she can use it while we’re traveling.
I find most WiFi at campgrounds to be iffy at best…I want to upgrade and get something I can travel with that works, but just don’t know how to proceed, despite reading a lot of info and websites (ie; RV mobile internet) but really don’t understand it all…frustrating!
I wasn’t sure how to answer this since I never use RV park WiFi; I use the hot spot on my cell phone.
The best WiFi we have encountered was at McGregor Lakes RV Park outside of Marion, MT, 30 miles west of Kalispell. There was absolutely no cell service due to the mountains and proximity of the nearest tower. We used WiFi calling while there. The ‘free’ WiFi was good, but you could purchase a faster service by the day, week, or month if needed. Usually the WiFi stinks.
A lot of the parks we’ve gone to don’t offer WiFi and we boondock a lot. The WiFi at smaller, privately owned parks is pretty good. The worst internet access I’ve ever experienced was in Vermont, in several locations.
Most Campground WiFi is only good for checking e-mail, which is why we have a hotspot. We don’t have a satellite provider but stream all our TV stations. I also need to be able to link to my office so I need a reliable internet. I am hoping that Starlink will be a solution.
I seldom try to use an RV park WiFi because usually they are worthless. A local RV park offers free WiFi and a daily rate WIFi that is supposed to be fast. I’ve never stayed there but it is an interesting idea.
I have unlimited cell service and a Cell booster amp with the antenna mounted on the roof. Of course, if there is no cell service than the amp can’t help.
We too use our hotspot almost all the time. I’ve stayed in a couple of parks that had fast reliable WiFi but. I can count them on 2 fingers.
Free wi-Di is worth every penny you pay for it!!
Iffy at best, we only use to check in with kids.don’t go RV to watch streaming service. We are out and about or reading and listening to music that we previously downloaded.
How about a choice that says…”Don’t know because I don’t really need or want Wi-Fi when I’m camping”… just sayin’ 😀
Bill, I agree with you. I don’t care if they have W-Fi or not. Don’t even have it at home. I think I am the last person on the planet without a smart phone (forced into a flip phone because of daughter), or cable TV. I did have to get a car, and RV, with auto trans. Hate the electric windows. $300 to $500 a pop to fix them (have replaced 4 so far). Don’t get me started on electric door locks. We took our last 5,000 mile trip with a road map. I’m not about to “grow up”. lol Work forced me into the computers and am almost forced to have one in order to order parts for projects. No one carries parts in stock any more. Life has gotten complicated and we the people have made others rich.
5) Why would I bother to try?
We use wi-fi basically to check emails and find attractions to visit. No streaming. Most campgrounds do not have the bandwidth to support streaming. TV is not that important while traveling. I have used it to make phone calls though. While in Canada two years ago my cell carrier did not have service in Canada and I wasn’t about to pay the extra charge for it. I used wi-fi calling on my smart phone.
We learned a long time ago if you want to watch a movie in the campgrounds you bring a DVD or download in advance. Even less than 50 feet from a repeater we couldn’t get a reliable signal. I found that in most campgrounds the best time is very early in the morning. Since most of our camping is done out west and we’re from Florida I get up early enough to get a little uninterrupted time on wifi.
I’ve actually found 3 places wifi to be stream-worthy: AVI casino near Laughlin NV, Las Vegas Bay CG, and Morefield CG at Mesa Verde.