We stayed at the Springfield, IL KOA. It was a nightmare. During our stay we were sitting at the table in our camper and I turned off the Air Conditioner as I was talking on my cellphone. We were eating lunch and the TV was NOT on. The TV started to smoke so I quickly unplugged it. The breaker box started to smoke so I shut off all the power. I went outside to see what was happening the power had been shut off and then restored and it surged our camper. It was raining so I waited until it stopped and then I went up to the office to talk to the owner. When I approached him and told him what had happened he said it wasn’t his problem that he only had to supply electric to the campsite. He sent one of his people over to check electric at our site. By this time it is back to normal. He said it was at normal power. Then our neighbor drove up and shortly they came out and said that their TV was blown. The man, the owner sent over took our TV up to the office to see if it was working. In about 5 minutes the owner came back and told us our TV was working and he needed the remote. So I gave him the remote and then he took the man next door and his TV up to the office. When we got up there our TV was working. Our neighbor’s TV wouldn’t work. The owner drove us back to our campsites. I told him we had lost power in all of our electrical switches, our microwave, stove fan & light. He told me that I should go to a RV dealer and that they would pop in a new breaker and it would be fine. That night as it was getting dark our lights began to dim and I realized that it was running our battery down and not charging. So we had to shut all of our lights off the rest of the evening.
The next day I got a man to look at our camper. He checked all the circuit breakers. He found them to all be okay. The battery charger that charges our campers’ battery was blown. We had one fuse blown. He bypassed the battery charger and we got our electrical switches to work. (He loaned us a lamp so we could have some light.) When he replaced the fuse the fan and light on the oven was working. He found that the microwave and the camper battery charger were blown.
The whole time the owner never made any offer to help us in anyway. If anything he avoided us. The next day we were washing dishes and I noticed that the hot water stopped and then a few minutes my neighbor on the other side knocked on the door and told me that they hit a water line and the water was shut off. I shut off my gas on my hot water heater. Nobody from the campground ever notified us that the water was off. After it was off for several hours I went to the office to ask how long till it was on and Linda the owner’s wife said it would be back on in an hour.

When we called about this campground they never told us that they were under major construction and that we would lose power and water from time to time. They also told us that they provided WIFI and this was a told joke as you could never stay on the internet for very long as the connection was VERY POOR!! One of my neighbors told me that he had to go elsewhere to use internet because he couldn’t get on at all.
In the shower rooms they had a sign that was in total bad taste. It stated to keep shower to ten minutes. We were paying campers and they are telling us to shorten our shower time because it was a family business and it was their main source of income. I can understand being considerate of the other campers and not using all the hot water but to cut down on shower time to save the owner money seemed in bad taste.
This was our first visit to a KOA. We had been considering getting a KOA value card and using KOA more but this visit put a bad taste in our mouth. We spoke to several other campers in the area and they were very disappointed in what was going on as well.
We spent over $14,000 for our camper in 2003 and we still owe money on it. We expect that this owner will pay for the necessary repairs to make it right.
When ever we stayed at other campgrounds previously to this, (they were not KOA), we never had a problem like this. There was a time when the power went out and it wasn’t the campgrounds fault but they notified us and offered to refund some of charge on our bill. We told them no as we knew it wasn’t their fault. The important thing was they tried to make it right. They checked on us to make sure we were okay and offered us refuge in the clubhouse during a storm.
We trust that this matter will be made right.