RV Trip Wizard: Our Secret Weapon For Trip Planning

RV Trip Wizard will save you time and money while planning your epic RV journey. From maximizing RV club discounts to planning your fuel stops before you hit the road, RV Trip Wizard does it all.

Now with the ability to seamlessly import your trip into the RV Life GPS app you will also get to your destination safely by using RV safe routes and following turn-by-turn directions.

RV Life Trip Wizard Review

RV Trip Wizard (now RV Life Trip Wizard) has been an invaluable tool in our arsenal for successful RV trip planning. Since we full-time, we need to continuously plan throughout the whole year.

We originally started our trip planning in Google Maps, but with the limit of only 10 destinations on a map, we quickly ran into the problem of having too many maps.

It got confusing on which map we were supposed to be looking at that week.

Since it didn’t have anywhere for notes, we had to also use a separate spreadsheet to track our cost, site numbers, and other notes.

Since it is web-based, you can access it on your computer, smartphone, tablet, or any internet-connected device.

What is RV Life Pro?

RV Life Pro is the membership program that grants you access to all of the RV Life products and websites including RV Life Trip Wizard.

That’s not all though, you get access to the RV Life Masterclass training courses, RV Life RV Safe GPS routing app, thousands of campground reviews on RV Life Campground Reviews, an RV maintenance tracker on RV Life Maintenance, and more.

RV Trip Wizard Planning and Routing

The main purpose of RV Trip Wizard is RV trip planning and routing for the perfect RV vacation. Since it was built around RV trip planning it takes into account some of the nuances of RV travel.

Customize Your RV Height and Weight

When driving your RV, you generally want to avoid low clearances. The thing about low clearances is that the definition of “low” changes for every RVer.

RV Trip Life Wizard gives you the ability to customize your route planning and routing to your RV.

After you input your specific RV height, width, weight, and if you are carrying propane, the RV GPS system will take into account and avoid low clearances, low bridges, steep grades, and propane restrictions. Google Maps can’t do that!

Driving Distance and Times

One of our favorite features of RV Trip Wizard is the driving distance circles. When creating a trip, you input the miles that you are comfortable driving and it will display three circles from the currently selected campground showing mileage away from it “as the bird flies” on the Google Maps looking map.

This is one of those amazingly helpful features for RV trip planning that you didn’t know you needed.

At a quick glance, it shows you roughly where you should be looking for a next stop based on your travel style.

Since we normally like to drive only 200 miles with a max of 500, we have circles that show us 150 miles, 250 miles, and 500 miles away from our last stop.

When RV trip planning, it allows us to quickly find campgrounds within the 150 – 250 mile radius that is perfect for our road trip driving preferences.

If you would rather plan your days around the max hours you like to drive, you can specify that instead of how many miles.

RV Trip Wizard also allows you to input other routing options like if you want to avoid toll roads, low bridges, ferries, or tunnels.

If you’re the type of person who loves to take the back roads, there is even an option to avoid highways.

Pro Tip: If you’re looking for even more awesome RV apps, check out 17 Apps Every RVer and Camper Should Have.

Fuel Limit

When routing, RV Trip Wizard estimates how many miles you can drive and when you will need to refuel based on the fuel reserve you set.

This adds additional security to your driving so that you don’t get stuck out of fuel on the side of the road.

Since we like to refuel when we have around one-third of my fuel left, we were able to set a reserve of 10 gallons.

The fuel marker shows up on our route where it estimates we should fill up.

Campgrounds

RV Life Trip Wizard is owned by RV Life, the same company that owns CampgroundReviews.com (now RV Life Campgrounds). They have integrated the two so that you get all the independent RVer submitted reviews and comments available to you.

RV Life Campgrounds provide everything you need to know about the campground or RV park itself. There are customer-submitted photos, internet speed tests, and more. They even sometimes include local points of interest and other useful RV tips like if they have dump stations.

If you are like us and love to read reviews about campgrounds and RV parks before making a decision, this makes planning RV trips a breeze.

Campground Filters

With over 20,000 campgrounds available to choose from, it can be a little overwhelming to choose where to stay on your road trip.

The great news is that RV Trip Wizard can filter out all the campgrounds that don’t meet your specific travel criteria.

RV Clubs and Camping Memberships

This single campground filter is our secret to saving thousands of dollars every year while full-timing. We absolutely love RV clubs and campground memberships for the discounts they provide but they can be forgotten when planning sometimes.

Since we have so many memberships, we love being able to limit campgrounds to only those that we would receive a discount from for our first pass at travel planning.

We can also prioritize those that save us more in RV Trip Wizard. For example, our Thousand Trails membership grants us camping for a $0 nightly rate so we choose those ones first.

Next on our list is Passport America with its 50% savings, then Good Sam Club, Escapees, FMCA, etc. with a 10% discount per night.

This allows us to save money with our RV clubs when it fits into our trip but we can always disable the filter to see any of the other 20,000 campgrounds if they would better fit our plans.

RV Park Type

If you prefer to camp in the Army Corps of Engineering campgrounds, National Parks campgrounds, or State Park campgrounds you can filter on those options as well.

This is great for those planning a road trip to the national parks so you can quickly filter to those run by the parks system.

Our trip planning hack is to use the filters for City and County RV parks during the summer holidays when we didn’t make reservations early enough.

We have been able to find availability in them since they are less well known when all the private campgrounds in an area are full.

Park Rating

Only like to stay in 5-star RV parks? You can filter based on the sum of review ratings from CampgroundReviews.com.

This is also useful to eliminate the RV parks that have bad reviews from showing while road trip planning.

Park Features

Want a pull-thru site? Want to know if pets are allowed? Only want to show boondocking sites?

This filter allows you to show only campgrounds on RV Trip Wizard that have the features you want.

Amenities

Looking for a campground or RV park that has propane available? Do you want to do laundry on-site? Need showers or a restroom?

The amenities filter allows you to find campgrounds and RV parks that have what you want.

Park Price

On a budget? The park price filter on RV Trip Wizard lets you see only campgrounds that fall into your price range. This helps you stay within your budget and save time by excluding those pricer options.

Points of Interest in RV Trip Wizard

While campgrounds get the main focus while trip planning, they are not the only thing you need to think about for successful RV trips.

You need to think about other points of interest like fuel, rest stops, dump stations, and other fun stops like attractions in the local area.

Fuel

The fuel filter in RV Trip Wizard will default to showing you all fuel stations in its database. While great to see all you options, the power comes from being able to filter down to the fuel stations where you can save the most money.

If you have the amazing money-saving fuel discount card from Open Road/TSD Logistics, you can filter to Love’s and TA truck stops where you get the best discounts.

If you are a Good Sam Club member, you can choose to just see Pilot and Flying J where you get a $0.05 – $0.08 discount per gallon.

Those with a Costco membership can filter to see only those stores for great fuel savings.

Overnight Parking

If you are traveling between destinations and only need a place to stop overnight, this filter is a great tool. It defaults to showing you all the overnight parks locations but they might not all apply to you.

If you are Elk or Moose Lodge members, you can display only those.

Need some supplies? Filter to show only Walmarts, Super Walmarts, and Sam’s Clubs.

We personally love staying at Cracker Barrel’s or Casino’s so will usually use that filter to see our options for those along our route.

Pro Tip: If you stay overnight in a Walmart, make sure that you follow these 6 Rules You Must Follow For Boondocking at Walmart

Rest Areas

Want to stop along your route to stretch your legs or each lunch? Rest stops are perfect for a quick break.

RV Trip Wizard allows you to filter on Rest Areas allowing you to quickly spot places that are easy to pull off the interstate for a break and then get back to your drive.

Dump Stations

Have you been boondocking and need to find a dump station on your way to the next destination? Use the dump station filter to find those gas stations and other points of interest along your route in RV Trip Wizard.

Area Attractions in RV Trip Wizard

The area attractions filter is super useful for planning those “life” things you need.

We will use the grocery store filter to find a place to restock on our way to more rural parts of the country. This is also useful to find pet stores for Carmen.

You can also find fun stops likes zoos, aquariums, museums, and more to explore during your trip and have them all in one place in RV Trip Wizard.

Road Trip Cost Estimating

This feature of RV Trip Wizard was super useful for planning our trips. It has trip cost estimating like the old Microsoft Streets and Trips program that allows you to estimate the food, fuel, and camping costs of your route.

This is something you don’t get with any other trip planner, the ability to see your estimated fuel costs, campground costs, and food costs will allow you to stay within budget.

RV Trip Wizard also shows the fuel costs between points of interest of your drive so you can see if that out-of-the-way national parks detour is worth it to you for the extra fuel cost.

RV Life RV-safe GPS App

Planning is only half the battle. When it is time to take your trip, you need to arrive safely.

While RV Trip Wizard allows you to export the to use in RV GPS units like Garmen or Rand McNally, they are expensive units.

The RV Life Pro subscription includes access to the RV Life RV-safe GPS app. It can be used as a standalone phone app, creating a safe route to a single destination or you can import your whole RV Trip Wizard trip including all your points of interest.

The RV GPS also allows you to download the maps before hitting the road so you don’t have any issues in areas with no cell service.

You still get accurate, RV-specific, turn-by-turn instructions for getting to your next stop.

They have done a great job with this RV GPS app and it is one of the nicest campground and routing apps available. It is a game-changer for saving time and getting to the campground safely on travel days.

Cost

RV Life Pro has an annual cost of $59. However, you can save 25% off your membership, by using the code “GETAWAY25” during checkout! This includes access to the trip planning website and turn-by-turn RV GPS.

That’s only $3.06 a month with our exclusive discount.

Should You Buy RV Trip Wizard?

RV Trip Wizard and the RV Life GPS app are necessary tools in your RV trip safe route planning toolbox. They help you save money, save time, stress less, and enjoy your RV trips.

This planning tool is useful regardless of your travel style. From those planning weekend trips to a larger summer break epic RV journey to those like us who travel full-time, RV Trip Wizard will make your life easier.

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