KOA - Reviews and experiences

they eventually made it right, even though I had to push a bit. I started out pretty skeptical — I mean, why would I trust a cancellation to go through when the person on the phone couldn’t see my screen? — but after a frustrating runaround it ended on a better note than I expected.

simple meals, showers, coffee, the usual camping routine. Those doubts stayed in the back of my head, and sadly, they turned out to be justified.
A lift station failed and, long story short, human wastewater ended up all over two of our grills and pooled across our site. I watched the whole thing happen. Staff were working on the lift station and used our spigot to rinse things (with their bare hands, as far as I could tell). There was a sort of mist as they pressure-washed; there was no warning, no tape, no quarantine area, no gloves, nothing. I asked the manager directly if he would have told us if we hadn’t been there. He smirked and didn’t answer. That reaction — the shrug and silence — was worse than the spill itself.
I pushed for action. I begged them to clean or at least cordon off the area. Nothing meaningful was done. At one point the manager relayed that his boss’s instruction was to “turn the grills up and cook it off.” That made me sick — literally — and was the moment our trip stopped being a vacation. Several people in our group were overcharged and left without a clear resolution. On top of that, when we got home we discovered our KOA accounts had been tampered with (made inactive), which we assume was to stop us from posting reviews. That was fixed later and an employee was "reprimanded" but honestly, reprimand felt inadequate given the risk.
I did contact KOA corporate and the local health department. Corporate initially defended the manager, which was frustrating. It took escalating to the company president before we got a genuine apology. I’m grateful for that apology and for two front-desk staff who handled things with real kindness while the rest of management floundered — they went out of their way to try to help. That made a difference, and I’m thankful for those people.
Bottom line: my pre-booking doubts were validated. The site’s basic safety response was poor, and I won’t return unless there are serious leadership and procedure changes. At the same time, the kindness from a couple of front-line staff and the president’s eventual outreach are reasons I’ll at least monitor how this is handled going forward.