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Trails Collection Plus is the latest membership offer from Thousand Trails. If you are full-time on the road, it has some great perks that would be really useful but it also has a caveat. Make sure to check out our article about Thousand Trails membership options if you don’t have one yet since this is an add-on. If you don’t know what the Trails Collection add-on is, now is a great time to read about that since this is an extension of that program.
What is new with Trails Collection Plus?
Trails Collection Plus adds-on some great benefits that we have been wanting. With this new membership you can stay for up to 21-nights in a Trails Collection campground. This extends your stay by an additional 7 nights over the traditional Trails Collection membership.
The Trails Collection Plus also allows you to go park-to-park in the Trails Collection. This is an amazing addition to the membership. Since the Thousand Trails upgraded memberships allow you to go park-to-park, it could get a little confusing when planning trips.
We had to pay attention to make sure we weren’t planning to go park-to-park between Trails Collection parks. We even had to pay full-price for a week when we miss booked and wanted to stay in the area.
This perk alone makes this membership worthwhile. You could have a winter in the Florida Keys and move back and forth between Sunshine Key RV Resort and Fiesta Key RV Resort.
The final benefit of the Trails Collection Plus membership is that it grants you a 90-day reservation window. This will allow you to book 30 days earlier than any of the regular Trails Collection members. Winter in the Florida Key’s might just be possible!
The Cost
This Plus membership will cost you $615 / year. This is $300 more than the standard Trails Collection but you will recover that in a single stay. We think this is a great deal!
The Catch
With a membership like this that sounds too good to be true, there has to be a catch. The Trails Collection Plus membership requires you to have the new Thousand Trails Adventure Membership to access it.
This puts it out of reach for the majority of Thousand Trails members who are happy with their current membership. The standard Trails Collections is available to everyone though and completely worth it.
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Thank you for the very detailed explanation. I just have one question, if the trails collection plus allows you to go park to park why does it say 21 days in/7 days out on the comparison chart?
Great question and the same one we asked them. It means 21 days in a park then 7 days out of that park. You can go to another TC park.
Regarding this “You could have a winter in the Florida Keys and move back and forth between Sunshine Key RV Resort and Fiesta Key RV Resort.”
It was explicitly stated to me that both Florida Keys locations will be under high use restrictions year round. Accordingly you cant bounce between them. What I was told was you have to be out of the specific park for 28 days (and I am assuming the max stay is 14 days instead of 21). So you can in theory “Mostly” stay in the keys but you have to cycle between Fiesta/Sunshine/ and Miami.
What is maybe more concerning is that there is not a clearly defined list around high use restrictions for the Encore parks and how this is going to be handled (especially in Florida where everyone who is paying $10K to upgrade for access to this is planning on using it). So its a very real possibility you pay for TC+ only to find out all the FL parks are flipped high use in the winter and you only get 14 days stays and 28 days before you can come back to that park.
Park to Park still a great perk but we really need to see the fine print and get a realistic statement from ELS on what the plan is with High Use at Encore before you can really make a judgement on value for that much $$$
Reality is that ELS has more than doubled the price of the TC in just 2 years. Since Fall ’23, the TC went from $330 to $370 and now in Jan ’24 is $425. Close to a 25% jump in a few months. The TC+ should be ~ double TC price. The sales people swore up and down that TC+ would “never increase >2%”, directly contradicting the written contract that stated both the price and the new fees added into the price ‘could increase as much and as often as unilaterally determined’ by ELS. The other reality: No additional sites were going to be allocated for TC or TC+ reservations, and the few sites (~10 per park) that are allocated, that under the 14/7 out of system rule allowed 3 reservations per 6 weeks now with 21/0 out of system is filled by only 2 reservations, not even accounting for the 3 weeks of ‘out of system. Effectively, half as many reservations are possible.
Yet another reality: You hit on it a bit already. TC never had “high use” restrictions until TC+ was invented. The Keys camps had 28 day restrictions. Now there are at least a dozen TC that have 14 day high use, 28 day, and/or $20/night extra fee. And many of the parks are ancient MH parks with ancient utilities, terrible roads and site conditions, and entitled longtimers but only a few actual “camping” sites. ELS is (successfully) putting the monetary burden on the TC & TC+ (to a lesser extent) for its dilapidated and ignored MH parks’ upgrades and upkeep and rebuilds after weather events rather than keeping those expenses on its “residents” and “annuals” who get the benefit.
Yet another reality: ELS is a Ponzi-type scheme. The older ‘plan holders’ are pushed out as ELS sells ever increasing preferential access to the highest bidders.
Just try getting a TC reservation in Florida between Nov-May! Only scarcely and worst sites, parks, environments. Because the TC+ have them all. TC renewals were being ‘dropped like rocks’ .
Do not even get me started on how many “member sites” were taken away and dedicated to “public” nonmember reservations and “cabins” under yet another progrsm to get your money but guarantee you ZERO access in a system built and sold as BY members FOR members.
Trails Collection increasing price, adding restrictions, and adding Trails Collection Plus is a symptom of supply and demand. No one is being pushed out and it far from resembles a ponzi scheme. There are more campers than ever on the road as evidenced by sales numbers produced by RVIA. There is no massive surge of new campgrounds being built so you are seeing increased pressure on existing campgrounds. ELS is definitely taking advantage of the situation in their favor but that’s to be expected from any corporation. Have you seen the price of eggs?