This year's trip to Hershey was kind of a last minute decision. Mom & I went on Friday looking for units for her/us (girl camper!) and Jon & I.
Overall, we were a bit disappointed with this year's show. We saw almost everything on our two lists, but there were a few very notable units missing. I've been to enough of these shows to know that this was to be expected. There also seemed to be a bit of a movement away from many of the smaller trailers back towards the larger units. There were a few smaller 5th wheels that were great to look at (specifically Winnebago's new line).
We found a couple of A-liners that we kind of liked. Specifically a model that had two twin beds. Perfect for if mom & I were camping together! We looked at the Little Guy Max & both decided it just wasn't for us. The Lance 1475 is another great option - but really only for 1 person OR a couple. Not great for a mom/daughter camping duo.
The bigger units we were looking at are all dreams. Jon and I are trying to figure out the direction we'd like to move in a few years. We LOVE our Brave, but at some point won't want the maintenance of that third engine any more. We're debating a travel trailer or a 5th wheel. We'll figure it out & have plenty of time to do so. We've got other things to pay off before we worry about getting a truck & trailer of any kind again!
Mom & I ran into Stephanie of RVFTA and chatted with her a little bit. I enjoyed seeing her (it'd been about a month since I had last seen her) & introducing her to my mom. Sorry we missed Jeremy though!
Showing posts with label RV Show. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RV Show. Show all posts
Monday, September 18, 2017
Sunday, February 19, 2017
MD RV Show - MD State Fairgrounds - February 19, 2017
In stark contrast to our trip to Tampa for the RV Supershow, for this trip, we were looking for a smaller trailer. My mom is dabbling with the idea of getting something she could potentially full time in, but isn't really sure where to start. So, she asked us to come with her. It's an RV show & my momma - how could we say no?!
The Maryland RV Show is held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, MD. Since it's in February, pretty much everything is inside.
When you get to the fairgrounds, you'll park in their parking lot. Pretty ample parking. Then, you walk down to the building where the show is held. You can buy your tickets online or at the show. If you buy them online, it'll save you some time getting in.
Having been to the Hershey RV Show & the Tampa RV Show (the month before this!), we were a bit disappointed with the selection of RVs. That being said, for an indoor show, they had a wide variety of units.
We were specifically looking for smaller RVs under the $20k mark. That really narrows down the field! We did find units that fit the bill, but several of the ones that were advertised they'd be there weren't (like, we never did find the Airstreams - out of budget, but just wanted to wander through).
We chatted with several of the campground people at the booths, which was nice. At some of the larger shows, they don't always have the time to talk.
We headed to Famous Dave's for lunch and then returned to the show to do "one last loop" before heading home. Overall, we found a few units that we thought may work for the situation we were looking for - but not everything we wanted to look at was there.
The Maryland RV Show is held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, MD. Since it's in February, pretty much everything is inside.
When you get to the fairgrounds, you'll park in their parking lot. Pretty ample parking. Then, you walk down to the building where the show is held. You can buy your tickets online or at the show. If you buy them online, it'll save you some time getting in.
Having been to the Hershey RV Show & the Tampa RV Show (the month before this!), we were a bit disappointed with the selection of RVs. That being said, for an indoor show, they had a wide variety of units.
We were specifically looking for smaller RVs under the $20k mark. That really narrows down the field! We did find units that fit the bill, but several of the ones that were advertised they'd be there weren't (like, we never did find the Airstreams - out of budget, but just wanted to wander through).
We chatted with several of the campground people at the booths, which was nice. At some of the larger shows, they don't always have the time to talk.
We headed to Famous Dave's for lunch and then returned to the show to do "one last loop" before heading home. Overall, we found a few units that we thought may work for the situation we were looking for - but not everything we wanted to look at was there.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Tampa RV SuperShow - January 2017
Sometime in September 2016, we decided to head to Tampa for the RV SuperShow. It fell over a weekend we were preferring to be out of our area, so it was perfect timing.
We decided to drive - as we were considering taking the Brave down. Instead, we ended up needing to get the Brave into the dealership to service it, so we kept our driving idea and just booked a hotel.
We told a couple of friends that we were headed down & asked if they wanted to go with us. They ultimately decided to fly down & meet us there - with an agenda. We were officially helping them shop for a rig that would fit their family of five. They love their Airstream, but have outgrown it for the time being.
On Monday, we took the Brave to the dealership. We had them looking at the small slide, roof for caulking, seals/caulk everywhere on the rig, and a couple of other small things.
We made it a 2-day trip down, starting on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we arrived in Tampa and checked into the Residence Inn Tampa Sabal Park/Brandon. It was the perfect location for our stay. Just about 2 miles from the fairgrounds & about 2 miles from Brandon. There are a couple of traffic issues right around there, but it's nothing we haven't experienced close to home.
Thursday, we got to the show at 9:30. It was crazy to get in, but we managed. We met up with Renee & Tim - fellow Brave owners - after we got into the show. It was great to meet them in person! After meeting them, we headed out to start looking at rigs. The show was so busy!
Around noon, we met up with RH & Jessica and started looking at toy haulers. This is a world we haven't really ever dove into. We spent the day looking at toy haulers & enjoyed learning more about them.
Thursday night, we went to Outback to have dinner & review our notes from the day.
Friday, we set about to look over the top two toy hauler choices and then to look at smaller trailers. It was great to see the different things that the industry is working on. Jon & I helped some friends look after their kids while they did a live video from the show (they're podcasters that are pretty awesome). We went out with the podcasting friends and a BUNCH of other people to Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City Historic District.
On Saturday, we went with our friends back to the toy hauler that they had selected & when the boys started talking $$, the girls ran around and looked at a bunch of rigs that there were no way we were buying. Different things - everything from travel trailers to Class A, B, and Cs.
After finding that they could get a better price closer to home, we decided to head over to LazyDays in Tampa to visit. We couldn't skip a visit since we were so close (only a few miles from the show). It was definitely worth the visit! If we were ever in the area again, we might consider staying at their campground, if we couldn't get into one of the state parks in the area.
We were pretty tired after all of the running around for three days, so we left on Sunday (instead of Monday). It turned out to be a good decision, as the weather was pretty crappy all day. We drove until NC & stopped for the night and then finished up the drive Monday.
All in all, it was a great trip! I'd definitely recommend visiting the Tampa RV Super Show!
We decided to drive - as we were considering taking the Brave down. Instead, we ended up needing to get the Brave into the dealership to service it, so we kept our driving idea and just booked a hotel.
We told a couple of friends that we were headed down & asked if they wanted to go with us. They ultimately decided to fly down & meet us there - with an agenda. We were officially helping them shop for a rig that would fit their family of five. They love their Airstream, but have outgrown it for the time being.
On Monday, we took the Brave to the dealership. We had them looking at the small slide, roof for caulking, seals/caulk everywhere on the rig, and a couple of other small things.
We made it a 2-day trip down, starting on Tuesday. On Wednesday, we arrived in Tampa and checked into the Residence Inn Tampa Sabal Park/Brandon. It was the perfect location for our stay. Just about 2 miles from the fairgrounds & about 2 miles from Brandon. There are a couple of traffic issues right around there, but it's nothing we haven't experienced close to home.
Thursday, we got to the show at 9:30. It was crazy to get in, but we managed. We met up with Renee & Tim - fellow Brave owners - after we got into the show. It was great to meet them in person! After meeting them, we headed out to start looking at rigs. The show was so busy!
Around noon, we met up with RH & Jessica and started looking at toy haulers. This is a world we haven't really ever dove into. We spent the day looking at toy haulers & enjoyed learning more about them.
Thursday night, we went to Outback to have dinner & review our notes from the day.
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| Show Map |
Friday, we set about to look over the top two toy hauler choices and then to look at smaller trailers. It was great to see the different things that the industry is working on. Jon & I helped some friends look after their kids while they did a live video from the show (they're podcasters that are pretty awesome). We went out with the podcasting friends and a BUNCH of other people to Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City Historic District.
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| Airstream Basecamp all decked out |
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| Hymer Touring 550 - Hopefully they'll get it to the US soon! |
After finding that they could get a better price closer to home, we decided to head over to LazyDays in Tampa to visit. We couldn't skip a visit since we were so close (only a few miles from the show). It was definitely worth the visit! If we were ever in the area again, we might consider staying at their campground, if we couldn't get into one of the state parks in the area.
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| LazyDays Tampa |
We were pretty tired after all of the running around for three days, so we left on Sunday (instead of Monday). It turned out to be a good decision, as the weather was pretty crappy all day. We drove until NC & stopped for the night and then finished up the drive Monday.
All in all, it was a great trip! I'd definitely recommend visiting the Tampa RV Super Show!
Monday, September 21, 2015
Hershey RV Show Round 2 (2015) - Part 2
After looking at the Lance offerings and deciding (pretty quickly) they weren't for us, even though we already own one, we moved on to Thor. Some friends of ours have a Class A already & are thinking about upgrading to a Thor Tuscany, so we went to scope it out for them. The model they're interested in is beautiful! Can't wait to see what they decide.
Next on our personal list was Tiffin to check out the Allegro. Last year, we weren't even considering the Allegro, but after walking through it, it went on our short list. We stopped in to check out a few of the coaches. We thought we had it narrowed down to the 32SA, but we looked at the 36LA and we really liked the extra room it gave us. We don't love the interior of the Allegro. It's still a little too "old" for us.
We learned that the Ford F-53 Chassis was going from 5 speed to 6 speed for 2016, so that was a good piece of knowledge to have as we went through the rest of the day.
After seeing the Tiffins, it was about 11am or so. At 11:30, there was a seminar on how to make your motorhome more "fun" to drive. In reality, it was Blue Ox telling us about a couple of products that really make the coaches a bit safer to drive. It was still pretty informational & gave us time to sit and think about a couple of things. It also gave us time to get hungry!
I had pulled pork (no bun) with chips. Jon had 2 hot dogs. During lunch, we had an interesting conversation. We've narrowed it down to the Winnebago Brave and the Tiffin Allegro. I think we narrowed it down last year. After seeing both at the show again, we were a little torn. We like some of the things about the Tiffin, but did we LOVE it?
Jon asked my opinion and I said "I feel like if we bought the Allegro, we'd always wonder if we would've been happy in the Brave, but if we bought the Brave, we'd never look back at the Allegro." Jon answered simply with "I agree". With that, we left lunch.
We stopped by the Progressive tent/trailer to seek out Stephanie from the RV Family Travel Atlas blog. We chatted with her for a while, she asked if we'd stop by later to do an interview & we said we would.
With that, we headed back to the Brave. We found Steve & started talking. We worked out a deal that we are happy with and signed the papers to order our Winnebago Brave 31C in Bell Bottom Blue, with a Moody Blue interior and Doheny Driftwood cabinets. They haven't made any coaches with the driftwood cabinets, so we'll have the only one like it for a while. We're looking forward to finding out how long it'll be before we can take delivery!
Once we finished up with Steve, we headed back to Progressive to do our interview with Stephanie. It was so great meeting her & chatting. Hopefully the interview turned out well & usable!
After chatting with Stephanie, we headed out of the show, found dinner, and then headed home. Can't wait to see what our pets think of the new digs & all of the room they'll have to run around!
Next on our personal list was Tiffin to check out the Allegro. Last year, we weren't even considering the Allegro, but after walking through it, it went on our short list. We stopped in to check out a few of the coaches. We thought we had it narrowed down to the 32SA, but we looked at the 36LA and we really liked the extra room it gave us. We don't love the interior of the Allegro. It's still a little too "old" for us.
We learned that the Ford F-53 Chassis was going from 5 speed to 6 speed for 2016, so that was a good piece of knowledge to have as we went through the rest of the day.
After seeing the Tiffins, it was about 11am or so. At 11:30, there was a seminar on how to make your motorhome more "fun" to drive. In reality, it was Blue Ox telling us about a couple of products that really make the coaches a bit safer to drive. It was still pretty informational & gave us time to sit and think about a couple of things. It also gave us time to get hungry!
I had pulled pork (no bun) with chips. Jon had 2 hot dogs. During lunch, we had an interesting conversation. We've narrowed it down to the Winnebago Brave and the Tiffin Allegro. I think we narrowed it down last year. After seeing both at the show again, we were a little torn. We like some of the things about the Tiffin, but did we LOVE it?
Jon asked my opinion and I said "I feel like if we bought the Allegro, we'd always wonder if we would've been happy in the Brave, but if we bought the Brave, we'd never look back at the Allegro." Jon answered simply with "I agree". With that, we left lunch.
We stopped by the Progressive tent/trailer to seek out Stephanie from the RV Family Travel Atlas blog. We chatted with her for a while, she asked if we'd stop by later to do an interview & we said we would.
With that, we headed back to the Brave. We found Steve & started talking. We worked out a deal that we are happy with and signed the papers to order our Winnebago Brave 31C in Bell Bottom Blue, with a Moody Blue interior and Doheny Driftwood cabinets. They haven't made any coaches with the driftwood cabinets, so we'll have the only one like it for a while. We're looking forward to finding out how long it'll be before we can take delivery!
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| Don't I look right at home? |
After chatting with Stephanie, we headed out of the show, found dinner, and then headed home. Can't wait to see what our pets think of the new digs & all of the room they'll have to run around!
Hershey RV Show Round 2 (2015 show) - Part 1
Originally, we were going to go to the Hershey RV show from Wednesday - Sunday. We decided to sell our house earlier this year, we've had several unexpected trips (and expected ones), and I ultimately took Hershey off the table. It was just too much for the year.
Jon convinced me that we should head to Hershey for one day instead of the whole week. We had some questions about things we saw last year, things we thought we liked, and some ideas about what we might want to upgrade to in the future.
We ended up going to Hershey on Wednesday night & stayed at the Spring Hill Marriott again this year to avoid having to make the drive Thursday morning. We arrived at the show at 8:30am, just in time to stand in line to get in. (Jon REALLY wanted to be there early this year... again.)
Once the gates opened at 9am, we headed straight over to Cruiser RV. Last year, we decided we really liked the Enterra. Cruiser RV has since been acquired by Heartland RV and the product line has changed a bit. Unfortunately, in talking with the factory representative, the Enterra has been replaced by the Radiance. It just wasn't as high end as the Enterra. We didn't love it, so we moved on pretty quickly.
After the Cruiser RV stop, we made a beeline to our love from last year, the Winnebago Brave. Our intention was to look at it (again), see what we thought about this year's model, and then to look at a couple of other gaser Class A's. This was supposed to include a couple of other Winnebagos.
We stopped at the Brave first. Yup, still just love it. We feel so at home in it. Still. Siiiigggghhhhh.
We walked through a couple of other Winnebagos, but we felt just "eh" about them, so we stopped looking at them. We returned to the Brave & saw Steve, the sales guy from last year who we talked with so many times (5?!). He remembered us and we started chatting with him. I guess we left an impression! I mean, who looks at a coach 5 times and walks away from it?!
We had a couple of other things we wanted to look at, so we said farewell and went on our way.
Our next stop was Lance. We love keeping up with what they're doing. As we were walking over to Lance from Winnebago, a couple was behind us and mentioned something about going over to the Lance section. I (Heather) interjected myself in their conversation talking with them about the Lance product & Parkview RV (the dealer at the show). They were happy to hear what we had to say about both, which is good. We saw later on the Parkview RV Facebook page that they were joining the Lance family. Congrats to them!
We were really hoping to see the toy hauler, but Parkview sold it the week before the show, so it wasn't there. Ah well. We love our 2013 Lance 1885, but it's definitely getting a bit tight! We like the floor plans of the larger ones, but we've got some concerns about the tires on the trailer and where the axles are. That's kind of a deal breaker for us and it hasn't changed in the past couple of years, so we're not inclined to spend the money to upgrade to either of the larger floor plans.
Up next: Hershey RV Show Round 2 - Part 2
Jon convinced me that we should head to Hershey for one day instead of the whole week. We had some questions about things we saw last year, things we thought we liked, and some ideas about what we might want to upgrade to in the future.
We ended up going to Hershey on Wednesday night & stayed at the Spring Hill Marriott again this year to avoid having to make the drive Thursday morning. We arrived at the show at 8:30am, just in time to stand in line to get in. (Jon REALLY wanted to be there early this year... again.)
Once the gates opened at 9am, we headed straight over to Cruiser RV. Last year, we decided we really liked the Enterra. Cruiser RV has since been acquired by Heartland RV and the product line has changed a bit. Unfortunately, in talking with the factory representative, the Enterra has been replaced by the Radiance. It just wasn't as high end as the Enterra. We didn't love it, so we moved on pretty quickly.
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| I did really like the island! |
After the Cruiser RV stop, we made a beeline to our love from last year, the Winnebago Brave. Our intention was to look at it (again), see what we thought about this year's model, and then to look at a couple of other gaser Class A's. This was supposed to include a couple of other Winnebagos.
We stopped at the Brave first. Yup, still just love it. We feel so at home in it. Still. Siiiigggghhhhh.
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 27B |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
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| Winnebago Brave 31C |
We had a couple of other things we wanted to look at, so we said farewell and went on our way.
Our next stop was Lance. We love keeping up with what they're doing. As we were walking over to Lance from Winnebago, a couple was behind us and mentioned something about going over to the Lance section. I (Heather) interjected myself in their conversation talking with them about the Lance product & Parkview RV (the dealer at the show). They were happy to hear what we had to say about both, which is good. We saw later on the Parkview RV Facebook page that they were joining the Lance family. Congrats to them!
We were really hoping to see the toy hauler, but Parkview sold it the week before the show, so it wasn't there. Ah well. We love our 2013 Lance 1885, but it's definitely getting a bit tight! We like the floor plans of the larger ones, but we've got some concerns about the tires on the trailer and where the axles are. That's kind of a deal breaker for us and it hasn't changed in the past couple of years, so we're not inclined to spend the money to upgrade to either of the larger floor plans.
Up next: Hershey RV Show Round 2 - Part 2
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