D & D World Travel - Our Articles - Thousand Trails Ultimate Odyssey

The Thousand Trails Camping Pass is the entry level or first tier membership level, and the Ultimate Odyssey is the highest level or fourth tier membership level. All three of the upgraded contracts include the National Camping Pass (all 5 Zones). Basically, the upgraded perks include unlimited nights of free camping; a 180 day booking window; all 5 zones which includes 81 Thousand Trails campgrounds; 28 day stays with park-to-park; standard discount of 20% off daily rates & seasonal deals from Encore; unlimited day use; 50% off all cabin rentals forever; five (05) free weekly cabin rental rebate certificates; 2 years prepaid membership of RPI Gold with Resort Connections; one (01) year prepaid membership to The Trails Collection; six (06) $500.00 vacation credits to use towards cabins, condos, & cruises (allowed 1 per year & must be used within 8 years); rent getaway cabins for $60.00 per night forever; get one (01) free week stay in getaway cabins for ten (10) years (can trade yearly free cabin week for a condo or cruise); two (02) additional weeks or a 5th week stay for $29.00 per week; two (02) additional high use weeks for a 3rd week stay as an "exception to the rule" during a high use 2 week stay limit for $99.00 per week; maintenance dues reset to current Camping Pass rate for each year going forward; inactive status without maintenance dues for up to five (05) years; maintenance dues frozen at age 62 for life; gift up to 4 National Camping Passes with reduced dues starting at $190.00 per year to friends; Will up to 8 free Ultimate Odyssey Memberships to relatives; offer 8 courtesy cards to family members for $104.00 per year (it allows family members to camp 3 weeks per year with no nightly costs).

HERE ARE SOME SHARED PURCHASE PRICES FOR ULTIMATE ODYSSEY MEMBERSHIPS, SINCE THOUSAND TRAILS/ELS DOES NOT PUBLISH ANY PRICE LISTS

These listed prices are the purchase prices without any type of financing added in. I strongly suggest you only buy what you can afford without financing. Save up the purchase cost first, then pay cash, because with financing, the price you actually pay will cost at least one-third more due to interest charges. Thousand Trails/ELS will only do 5 year loans on membership upgrades, and the interest charges are between 13% to 18%. BUT, I will also say that even if you purchase a higher tier membership, & finance the cost through Thousand Trails/ELS, you will still save lots of money over the cost of paying the nationwide average nightly cost for RV camping which was $31.53 in 2018.

If you have purchased or upgraded to an Ultimate Odyssey contract and would like to share what you upgraded from, the date of your purchase, and the price you paid, I will not publish your name. This information gives people some advance knowledge on what prices to possibly expect depending on what their current membership level is. Email D & D World Travel at SergeantMajor@ddwt.us with your information.

THERE ARE BOTH ULTIMATE ODYSSEY I AND ULTIMATE ODYSSEY II CONTRACTS

The current Ultimate Odyssey contracts are "unofficially" known as Ultimate Odyssey II contracts. Any Ultimate Odyssey contracts sold prior to 08/01/17 are "unofficially" known as Ultimate Odyssey I contracts, because they have different developer perks & benefits from the current Ultimate Odyssey contracts sold on or after 08/01/17. The Ultimate Odyssey I contracts included 20 Encore Bonus Parks with 28 day stays, 180 day booking windows, and park-to-park privileges like all 81 of the Thousand Trails campgrounds. The current Ultimate Odyssey II contracts do not have included Encore Bonus Parks with 28 day stays, but instead all Thousand Trails contracts now have access to a similar program with over 100 Encore Parks, called The Trails Collection (TC), for $214.00 per year. Those TC Encore parks can be booked for 14 day stays at a 60 day booking window. Another difference is that the Ultimate Odyssey I contracts had 180 day booking windows for Thousand Trails, NACO, & Encore Bonus Parks, but only had 90 day booking windows for Leisure Time Resorts (LTR), Mid-Atlantic (MA), and Outdoor World (OW). The current Ultimate Odyssey II contracts now have 180 day booking windows for everything except The Trails Collection Encore parks. Another change is that all upgraded contracts before 08/01/17, did not reset the dues, but all of the new upgraded contracts sold on or after that date now resets your yearly maintenance fee to match the rate that a current Camping Pass is selling for. Therefore, this upgrade reset our dues from $639.41 in 2019 down to $585.00 starting in 2020. All three updated contracts sold prior to 08/01/17 gave lifetime, free yearly Ready Camp Go (RCG) Platinum Cards, but you do have to call in each year to get your free renewal membership & log-in pin number. These RCG memberships allow you to rent about 100 selected Encore parks at 90 day booking windows for $20.00 per night. This is the reason I tell people to make sure you get a copy of the actual upgraded contract you are wanting to buy, especially used ones, because many contracts with the exact same names still have different perks & benefits depending on the date they were sold.

I have not found a single Thousand Trails Membership Specialist that is even aware of any of the information in the above paragraph, and I talk to all of them as I visit the various Thousand Trails campgrounds. The reason is Thousand Trails/ELS only trains Membership Specialists about the contracts that are currently being sold as new, and there is a high turnover rate among Membership Specialists. These are the reasons why Membership Specialists seem to be unaware that the Basic Elite, Elite Connections & Ultimate Odyssey contracts sold prior to 08/01/17 are all different than the Elite Basic (notice the name change), Elite Connections & Ultimate Odyssey contracts sold on or after 08/01/17.

We like both the Ultimate Odyssey I and Ultimate Odyssey II contracts, but they also do have different benefits, so my wife and I became the first Thousand Trails members to become Double Ultimate Odyssey members by adding/merging both the Ultimate Odyssey I & II contracts to get the best of both. We were allowed to purchase our second new Ultimate Odyssey contract for the hugely discounted price of $2,150.00 on 03/08/19, only because we had already purchased 3 other TT contracts in the past: a resale Platinum Plus for $3,000.00 plus a $750.00 transfer fee in July 2009; a new Elite Connections I for $3,645.00 in September 2014; and a new Ultimate Odyssey I for $6,850.75 in March 2017. Corporate Sales didn't even know what to charge us for the second Ultimate Odyssey contract, since nobody had ever made such a request before, so if you follow in our footsteps, and should they even allow it again, you likely will not get this same price. In fact, all contracts we have purchased in the past would now cost you more because the prices keep going up. Our second Ultimate Odyssey contract was a no brainer upgrade for us when you look at the cost/benefit ratio, because not only did we keep all 27 of our contracted Encore Bonus Parks (from the 2 previous upgrades); it sets all campgrounds to a 180 day booking window from now on; we get the lower reset on our maintenance dues starting in 2020; 10 more years of free cabins valued at $3,000.00 (this gives us 3 weeks of free cabins each year because of the 3 different upgrades); six more free $500.00 vacation credits with RPI valued at $3,000.00; five (05) more free weekly cabin rental rebate certificates worth $1,500.00; one (01) free year of The Trails Collection valued at $214.00; two (02) additional free years of RPI added on to our current membership worth $350.00; and so on. As I stated before, the great thing about TT contracts is that EACH UPGRADE CAN ONLY ADD, NOT TAKE AWAY BENEFITS; so there is no fear of losing any benefits already acquired (they stay grandfathered for your life/lives), when acquiring new & higher levels of membership benefits through contract upgrades. Therefore, this one-of-a-kind Double Ultimate Odyssey Upgrade has set my wife & I up for an even better retirement as full-time RVers.

ONCE YOU SEE THE TREMENDOUS VALUE IN THOUSAND TRAILS, IT IS TIME TO BUY IN OR DO AN UPGRADE

Every membership level of Thousand Trails is a bargain when purchased new from Thousand Trails; therefore, the used ones purchased as resale deals from current Thousand Trails members are even bigger bargains. Just remember the used contracts are stripped of many of the Thousand Trails/ELS developer perks & extra benefits, and you will be charged a $750.00 transfer fee to put the contract into your name(s). Also, make sure you know what you are actually buying, and that goes for both new & used, but especially the used contracts. The math doesn't lie, and we are the living proof it REALLY WORKS exactly as advertised. Here are the links to the other three (03) contracts that are currently available, as well as the reciprocal program for any & all Thousand Trails memberships, whether purchased new or used.

The three (03) other current membership levels being sold as new contracts, besides Ultimate Odyssey, are Camping Pass, Elite Basic, & Elite Connections. To see all the details of these other 3 membership levels, simply click on the links shown here.

As of March 2017, Thousand Trails offers the new reciprocal program known as The Trails Collection. It essentially gives all Thousand Trails members access to about 100 more Encore RV Resorts with no nightly camping fees for an extra cost of $214.00 per year. Currently, when you do an upgrade, you will get one (01) year of The Trails Collection prepaid, and then it will go to $214.00 per year. To see all the details of this reciprocal program, simply click on the link shown here.

If you want to start off with a Thousand Trails Camping Pass, then simply click our INVITATION & REFERRAL LINK, watch the video, and get started. If you do, you will get an EXTRA $100.00 discount as our referral (so you only pay $485.00 for your first year), and we will get a $50 referral fee which helps to pay for the cost of this website; it is a WIN WIN for you & us. If you want to buy a higher priced contract such as as the Elite Basic, Elite Connections, or Ultimate Odyssey from Thousand Trails, we strongly recommend you only purchase them from Membership Specialists/Sales Agents located in the state of Oregon, so you do not pay any unnecessary sales taxes. You can easily complete the entire sales transaction with Oregon online; no driving to Oregon is required. In fact, all contracts are signed electronically anyhow, even if you drive into a local Thousand Trails, and get slammed with state sales taxes. If you call a Membership Specialist in Oregon or drive into any Thousand Trails campground, tell them to list Donald & Deborah Potts/Member No. 298854970 as your friend that referred you, and you will still get the EXTRA $100.00 discount. The Membership Specialists in Oregon have either Tues & Weds or Weds & Thurs as their days off and their work hours are 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 PM (PST).

MAKE SURE YOU DOWNLOAD OUR FREE GOOGLE EARTH MAPPING FILES FOR THOUSAND TRAILS, AS WELL AS MANY OTHER CAMPGROUND CLUB MEMBERSHIPS

Back in 2010, when we first started living fulltime in our RV, we saw that it was very hard to plan RV trips because each campground membership & discount program used their own maps. So, I started creating Google Earth Mapping Files for all of the various camping systems, and that includes Thousand Trails. Google Earth is the best free map program with satellite imagery, GPS coordinates, street level views, and it only takes one click to bring up the Google Maps view from Google Earth. I plot all campgrounds onto Google Earth, so you can see the locations, see the address & phone numbers, zoom in on actual camping sites, click on the live links to jump to that campground's booking page, and you can add or remove all other campground memberships with the click of a button. These mapping files have been shared all over the internet from camping blogs to facebook and so on. I have given hundreds of copies of them to people I meet in campgrounds. These Google Earth Mapping Files have been downloaded over 150,000 times during the past 10 years now. Here is the page to download these files (which are updated often) as well as the free Google Earth Pro software. You are going to love these programs, everyone does. I spend countless hours creating these files, and I do not charge for any of them. All I ask is that you give our information as your Referral Friends if joining or upgrading with Thousand Trails. The small referral rewards we collect help to pay for this website.

Also, take the time to visit Our Articles page for many ways to save $100s of dollars per year on your internet services, TV services, and more.

Thanks for any & all Referrals you give us. Referrals don't cost you anything extra, in fact you get an EXTRA discount you would not have gotten without giving a referral, and we certainly appreciate your help. Thank You!