Membership

We attended our membership sales presentation yesterday as part of the deal for our free stay here.  I will get into that in a minute, but first I wanted to tell you about the golf course that is part of the RV park.  The course is called Jackass Flats.  I guess the name comes from the wild burros that roam the area, although we have seen none.  The course is across the street from the park and is a little nine hole Par 3 course, with the longest hole at 90 yards.  What is a hoot about this course is that there is no grass, just dirt, sand, rock and artificial turf.  They have men and ladies tee boxes made of artificial turf then an expanse of rock leading to a green made of artificial turf in different sizes to simulate a green and the fringe.  If your ball lands in the desert, you have two options, one is to move it to a turf patch surrounding the green, “drop zones”, or you can carry a small patch of turf with you and put it under your ball and hit it where it lies.  We had a blast playing this course, especially since it is free.

Here is a picture of one of the holes

Ok, onto membership.  I had a little understanding of these membership parks but not the specifics.  The sales person was a very nice older man who was not high pressure at all.  This company has 8 parks, most of which are all on the Colorado River.  You buy in at three different levels starting at $8,000 and going to $13,000.  You then pay an annual fee, which is currently around $450 per year.  For this you get unlimited use of their parks free of charge.  The only stipulation is that you can only stay in the park for 14 days at a time and must leave for 7 days, but you can just go to one of their other parks.  You also get to use parks in affiliated clubs at $10 per night with the restriction of 7 days at one time. 

For a full timer it is not a bad way to go as it could pay for itself very quickly and you still are left with an asset (you can sell or will your membership), but the value of the asset is very questionable.  From what I am reading most people have found it difficult to sell or transfer and have tried to walk  away but were met with resistance as it is a “lifetime” contract.  We were a little interested and decided to see how far they would deal.  Our sales person then brought in “the closer”.  Now it was just like buying a car.  “The closer” reminded me of a used car salesman.  He tried to meet our offer in a roundabout way, but we decided since we were having reservations we should not go forward.  They were quick to give us our “goodies” and get us out so they could talk to the next couple.  It was not a bad experience and they did give us some good incentives to attend the presentation.