Carowinds Camp Wilderness – Nope

May 29th, 2022 Charlotte, NC

Before I share why I would personally not return to Carowinds Camp Wilderness I have to give huge kudos to their on-site staff.

Every single person we met who works here was outstanding. They were polite, helpful and did everything they could to make our stay as nice as possible.

First off, if you are not from the area you may not know that Carowinds is a large theme park in Charlotte, NC. Although this park is called Carowinds Camp Wilderness do not confuse it with Fort Wilderness at Disney. It is not anything like a Disney property.

The signage when you drive in is pretty and there is space to park as you sign in. But when you walk in to register you can see that the park has seen better days. The camp store is dated and has limited offerings.

The sites are tight, which is not all that uncommon in a park near an urban area. They are marketed as paved, which they were at some point in the past, but on many sites they are so badly eroded that it was very challenging to get all of our tires and pads on the very small paved area.

There is very little room to park your tow vehicle once you are unhooked. We parked across the front of the site, but were so close to our neighbor’s site that they had to ask us to move when they were leaving.

There was no grass on our site. Luckily we have our outdoor rug to keep some of the dirt out of our rig. That worked for a day or so, then the rug became a muddy mess as well. I swept it several times a day but it was a losing battle.

We were disappointed to see that while there is a grill, there is not fire pit or fire ring at the site and once you get your rig on the pad, the grill is incredibly close to your home. We used it, carefully, but it is not well placed on the site.

The picnic table, while large, is falling apart. If we did not have a cover, it would have been unusable.

Then – it rained. It rained hard and every site in our row became a river of mud. The owners need to do some serious work on the drainage if they don’t want to lose the entire line of sites at the back of the park. See where the picnic table is? That is the site our neighbors left the night before. Completely underwater.

They have a pool and it looks clean, but it is dated and uninviting. For goodness sake — you own a water park right next door! Call some folks over to update it!

And although they promote good wifi, it simply does not exist. At all. We tried every device and called the phone number they have on the check-in paperwork, but we were never able to connect. Our neighbors said they had the same experience.

Again, very nice people. Carowinds is lucky to have the staff the do. But unless you are coming simply to be close to the theme park and do not expect anything other than a space to sleep at night. I’d avoid it.

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