[prairieschooner]

This is a very time appropriate discussing for me and I was just going to start a discussion about it.
I have been in contact with TT (housand Trails) lately. I have been thinking about this membership for some time now. OK here is how it was explained to me so far;
Yes, $499.00/year and for a limited time you can get the second zone with no additional cost. 2 weeks in and 1 week out at no additional cost until you have 30 days in their parks within the year, after that it will cost $3.00/night while staying in a park in their system. I was not aware that some parks would charge more for 50 amp service but that would seem likely. I have only seen 2 parks so far. The one in Palm Springs but actually Palm Desert and it is right off of the Freeway with no walls etc. between the park and the freeway and would most likely be noisy from the Freeway. This park gets very full during the winter as we have seen when coming home from Earp, CA (next to Parker, AZ).
I just drove through the Wilderness Lakes Park in Menifee, CA. It was a nice park considering that it is free stay (prior to 30 days) with membership. There is a Cattle Ranch right next door, just across the fence! so there could be a problem with flies and odor at some months but most likely not during the winter when we will be staying there. The park was clean and looked like we would enjoy short stays there. This park is about 30 minutes from where our coach is.
Some of the older memberships are not available anymore. There are numerous memberships for sale on ebay, craigslist and other sites that specialize in selling these (a google search will show them). I was very interested in a Platinum because this usually comes with a 3 week stay then 1 week out before coming back to the same park although you could go straight into another park in the system without a week out. Be careful though because unless it has an Alliance upgrade (not to be confused with an Alliance Membership) it will evaporate in 10 years and with the Alliance upgrade it is for life.
Be careful though because you are responsible for the Dues during the length of the contract or until sold. The TT Transfer Dept. has been very helpful so far and if you have the membership number in an older membership they will let you know what the Transfer Fees ($750 +) and dues are, dues for the Platinum have been $549.00


Hope that this is helpful and here is the number for the transfer department which is different from the Sales Dept. 800-388-7788, option 4

PS We are most likely going to get the 2 zones for the year this Sunday when I take Tricia down to look at it. At $499.00 for the year (and they will take payments about $45.00/month with the finance fee) this sounds really good. If you want nice clean parks with allot of service personnel this type of membership will not be for you. We have another membership in Colorado River Adventures and have really enjoyed it so far and it has paid for itself.

I talked to the District Manager this morning (he happened to be at Menifee Lakes) and they are doing this promotion with the zones in order to replace membership that has gone away during this economy.