Renting an RV from Cruise America...

Has anyone rented an RV from Cruise America?  

We are replanning a vacation in September, and getting an RV to wander around the state is a firm possibility.  Our local Cruise America has some pretty good rates- better than the AirBnB RV rental websites.

Just wanted to see if anyone has rented from them before, and how it was.

I haven't rented from the before, but the time I looked into it, the fees and mileage costs made it more expensive than I was willing to pay. That was a number of years ago so it may have changed. 

I'm not sure who we looked at a few years ago but like Allen said check all they're fees. We wanted to rent one to go out west and the per mile charge was insane.  We were able to book really nice rooms for less than we would have paid for the RV.

I shopped them all around (camper world, RV share,  and cruiser america - last two months), and the rates for our needs were MUCH better than hotels. What kills you is the mileage. My Montana trip and back will be $4,000. We take 2 international trips a year, and at that price, I can go out of the country instead of Montana. 

So we opted to do our Montana trip next week but skip the RV. 

For us, the RV rent makes great sense, if I extend the days of stay, but stay closer to home. If I am in a 300 mile radius, and do a week trip, financially it makes the most sense (per my excel sheet for myself)

No, I looked into it years ago and it seemed wildly expensive.  A coworker of mine has used a local rv rental place, which was a lot more reasonable (in Boulder CO area). 

SWMBWO researched renting from Outdoorsy this spring.  It's a service where you rent directly from owners.  Rentals were cheaper if you were willing to drive to more rural areas to pick up the RV.  You can also have the owner park the RV at the camp site of your choice (close to their local) in case you don't want to drive it. We wound up just renting a cabin in the woods so I can't comment on the actual experience. 

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

We were looking at doing a big loop to see the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Vegas, and as much of California as we could so the miles were going to add up fast. 

Things I have heard but none I have done...

Cruise America is the big name but many RV dealers do rentals and the rates might be better.  Shop around.  It may be a tough year.  Just because you have a camper doesn't mean you have a camp site for the night.  Many people have the same idea you have of avoiding hotel rooms. Rates and availability may be tough.

If wanting to travel to the other side of the country (like out west), I have heard of people flying westward or driving personal car westward.  Once getting there, then picking up the camper rental.  First stop to Walmart for all the things you need.  It can be cheaper to buy all those things and throw them all away at the end than it can be to drive the camper westward.  

Hoondavan said:

No, I looked into it years ago and it seemed wildly expensive.  A coworker of mine has used a local rv rental place, which was a lot more reasonable (in Boulder CO area). 

SWMBWO researched renting from Outdoorsy this spring.  It's a service where you rent directly from owners.  Rentals were cheaper if you were willing to drive to more rural areas to pick up the RV.  You can also have the owner park the RV at the camp site of your choice (close to their local) in case you don't want to drive it. We wound up just renting a cabin in the woods so I can't comment on the actual experience. 

 

Right now (as in a seach an hour ago), the comarison between the two for similar vehicles in Sept is surprisingly close.  Even if I pay for the $0 deductable option for CA.  

And I'm betting that the personal rentals are like air-bnb where you need to read the reviews closely to see if they are good.  

So i'm more curious how good cruise america is.

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to mr2s2000elise :

We were looking at doing a big loop to see the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Vegas, and as much of California as we could so the miles were going to add up fast. 

Look me up if you are out here. 

In March (day before shut down), we finished a week trip out to Arches/Flaming Gorge/MOAB/Canyonlands/Antelope Canyon. Did a bunch of offroading in the FJ, and stayed at UnderCanvas (think glamping), which was interesting and different.  We were scheduled to go out to Egypt for spring break, but due to Corona, Luthfansa shut it down, so this was our last minute spring break. 

I am headed out Monday (will hit Zion and Bryce/Capitol Reef), for a 14 day 3,300 mile trip finishing up in Montana. Hope to catch some fish.

In reply to John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) :

When we are going is normally a low period.  I think I would be more worried that things got bad, and camp sites would have to close than anything else.

This is a general RV question... How does the water and sewage work on this? Could you fill it with water to flush the toilet for a week, if you're not showering or cooking? How often do you need to empty the toilet, or whatever it is? Does it stink? 

This could be a good option for the family at the vacation place to get an extra bedroom for a week.

I don't always rent from cruise America but when I do my friends all rent identical units and we travel in convoy with  a few feet of spacing, at 10 mph below the speed limit. Most of my friends are German.

Remember to consider the cost of campsites if you will be using them.  They are often pretty damn pricey.  Like $50/night.  Add in your mileage charge, gas cost, RV rental, etc. and just a normal Air BNB can be quite a bit cheaper.

I just went through this. We rented an RV for our vacation last week. I tried Cruise America first, but it didn’t work out due to wanting to pick up on Fourth of July weekend. We found one RVshare.com. It worked out terrific, much better than Cruise America. Cruise America hits you with fees on everything, and very little is included. You need to pay for utensils if you don’t bring your own. No T.V.’s. No leveling blocks. No awning. Plus you get to drive a rolling billboard. Also, no pets with Cruise America. We rented this instead and it was less expensive...

King size bed, bunks for the kids with their own TV’s (5 total, including one outside for movie night) two bathrooms. Nothing like this with Cruise America. 

The downside is that with all of the RV share sites, you are dealing with individual owners. Some are great, some are flakey. Cruise America is a company, likely easier to deal with if you have a problem. Either way, book well in advance. Covid has driven up the demand for RV rentals. 

mtn (Forum Supporter) said:

This is a general RV question... How does the water and sewage work on this? Could you fill it with water to flush the toilet for a week, if you're not showering or cooking? How often do you need to empty the toilet, or whatever it is? Does it stink? 

 

This could be a good option for the family at the vacation place to get an extra bedroom for a week.

Around here gas stations have dump tanks. $5 and you can dump all your stuff using their pipe. Size of tanks depends on size of RV. If you do 2-4 days (as I have done many times), I dont even need to dump waste, as I bring it back to them, and they charge $35-$75 taking care of it. Sometimes thats worth the price of convinience.  Water is the same, depending on size of RV. On smaller trips, I never had to refill water. 

If you are not showering/cooking, EASILY youc an flush toilet for a week (again depends on size of tanks/rv)

It only stinks - if you eat beans all week. 

I planned to rent in Phoenix and cruise up to the Flagstaff area for 6 days. It was grossly expensive.  Renting all the linens and cookware - sheesh, we were actually going to visit Walmart and buy all that stuff because it was cheaper than renting it.

It was literately cheaper to rent a huge SUV and stay in nice motels and eat out three times a day.

Emptying an RV sewer system is easy, but can freak people out for some reason. If you limited yourself to "nighttime" use only you probably could get by without visiting the dump station. Guarantee there's a nice fee for them to empty it, though!

In reply to alfadriver (Forum Supporter) :

Do you own something capable of towing?  Is it possible to just rent a trailer?  

You mention "wandering" which implies a lot of movement.  Driving a van based, overloaded camper, is not the easiest thing to navigate or see out of.  A pickup or SUV (that you already own) and a small trailer could be more comfortable and really no more cumbersome.   

Something like this for less than $100 per night.   Just less than 2k lbs

FWIW, I thought about doing this with some buddies and going mountain biking.  A decent option was to simply buy a used one, use it for a few weeks, then sell it.

In reply to John Welsh (Moderate Supporter) :

As of right now, no, we don't have anything to pull with.  HOWEVER- that may change next month- the lease on our Escape is finishing, and we may try to get one that can tow.  We will need one eventually, just so that we can tow our Alfa around like we used to- but that's not a real requirement until 2022.  If we DO get a vehicle that can tow- for sure, that's what we will do.  So that we can park the house and go drive around.

All of the suggestions to just drive around and stay in Airbnbs or hotels is a fine one- but we are hoping to stay to oursleves.  No idea how this virus is going to change between now and September, but it's pretty clear that our original trip to Euope is not going to happen.  And the distances will will go will probalby be up to northern MI and not over the bridge.

State campground prices are actually VERY reasonable- I checked for 4th of July week for full hook up, and it's a pretty nominal cost.  Not free by any means, but the sum of everything will be reasonably close to the cost of hotels we would stay in.  Maybe....

One thing that I appreciate wih the personal renters is that there really are smaller ones available- locally there are some less than 25ft.  

My destination is usually Boyne City, MI the birthplace (and retirement) of my mother's parents.  They have since past years ago and the house was sold then too.  However, we still visit the area.  About 2 years ago we did a VRBO and it worked great.  This was a freestanding house.  We were traveling with a 2 yr old that was a light sleeper.  In this new C-19 world, this would have been great too.  

When we arrived for the week we did some grocery shopping.  We saw very little in the way of restaurants for the week.  If we did it was lunches.  We did breakfasts and dinners at the house, in our own kitchen.  We had the young one to bed early every night and were bothered by no one.  

Boyne City is a good central spot.  One hour north and you're in Mac for the day. One hour south and you are in Traverse for the day.  Other time spent in Charlevoix, Petoskey and Boyne.  

In Charlevoix, I can lead you to some public accesses that are so private you will see no one.  The same place that you can go watch the sun set, while having a beach fire and some wine and not be bothered by anyone.  In Boyne, I know of some public accesses to the lake that are pretty "locals only" that you would never guess are there.    Travel down into The Jordan River on a road that seems to no be public access, but is, and get right down to the trout stream.  You might not see another person the whole time there, and its beautiful.  

I have towed dozens and dozens of trailers for over 30 years. The hardest trailer I ever towed was a teardrop. 
 

They weigh less than 1000 lbs, but they bounce. That's a 1000 lb weight pulling back and forth on your bumper. 
 

They are harder to tow when they are empty then when they are full. 
 

They are also a challenge to back up. 
 

YMMV

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

I have towed dozens and dozens of trailers for over 30 years. The hardest trailer I ever towed was a teardrop. 
 

They weigh less than 1000 lbs, but they bounce. That's a 1000 lb weight pulling back and forth on your bumper. 
 

They are harder to tow when they are empty then when they are full. 
 

They are also a challenge to back up. 
 

YMMV

Longer tongue fixes most of those problems. 

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

A longer tongue fixes many problems.  

Real bump to this oldish thread.

We ended up renting from a local company- it was a 20ft Amerilite trailer.  Turned out to be a great trip to go all the way around Michigan's mitten.  The Escape didn't have any issues pulling the trailer, but the trailer was not exactly stable at high speeds.   But that was ok, as we took the slow route around the state.

The trip was awesome- Michigan is a beautiful state.  Especially along the lake front.

We had so much fun that we are renting another trailer through Outdoorsy for the President's Day weekend.  Slightly smaller and lighter trailer - but we won't be going too far ironically.  The only available campsite is less than 20 miles from the owner.

We rented an RV in alaska a year ago. We didn't go with them because of the price. We found others to be cheaper and have unlimited miles. We went with Great Alaskan Holidays, but that doesn't help you here. 
really just posting this for future searchers of this kind of info.