Wednesday morning, 12MAR, we (and everyone else in the RV park) headed the 15 miles north on I-75 to THE RALLY in Perry, GA, sponsored by the Good Sams RV Club.
http://www.therally.com/
The official Rally runs for four days, Friday through Monday. But you can pay for an extra two days (Wednesday and Thursday) if you want to get set up early. And since they expected 3500 RVs (ranging in size from pop-up trailers to million dollar busses) and 8000 folks, arrivals and parking is done by assigned time periods (0700 to 1000, etc). Turns out that even though website indicated that everything started Friday, the seminars actually started on Thursday, and new RVs were open for tours Thursday late afternoon.
Since we were one of the first parked, we got to watch the circus unfold all morning long as the volunteer staff tried to keep the RVs moving and park everyone as close to possible, as quickly as possible! First, if you were towing a vehicle, you had to disconnect before proceeding past the gate. Having the husband and wife in two different vehicles seemed to cause big problems for some couples. If you were pulling a trailer, you had to get into your spot quickly, disconnect and get the towing vehicle out of the way. There were some close calls, like the man who literally backed into his wife, and the guy who had twenty people yelling at him and stopped inches from putting his RV into the ditch.
Then after lunch we rode our bikes over to the Fairgrounds even though nothing was open for display. The chaos here was almost as good as the parking of the RVs we had witnessed that morning. Imagine pedestrians, RVs, people on bikes, people on mobility devices, golf carts, fork lifts, cars, and tractor pulling trams all trying to maneuver in a confined area at the same time. And then add to all this the fact that many of these people are somewhat older and have poor eyesight and/or slower reaction times, and things get real interesting at times.
The Rally itself was overwhelming for us as first timers. There are four main things to do throughout the day – attend seminars, view the exhibits of products for sale, participate in the free entertainment and social activities, or tour the hundreds of new RVs on display. There are four blocks of time for seminars starting at 0830 and going to 1530; but the exhibit hall and the RVs are only available from 0900 to 1700! So if you go to seminars all day long (including lunch), you have very little time for the other stuff.
We soon discovered that the person(s) presenting the seminar was always selling something (surprise, surprise!). Some presenters were very good about giving you unbiased, useful information; but others were no better than hucksters. And you had to make time for the exhibitions at the expense of the seminars, because that is where you often can talk one-on-one with factory reps and get tons of free advice (if not free repairs). Examples:
---our TV antenna was impossible to move. Five minutes talking to technician and some silicone spray, problem solved.
---our supplemental braking system for the Toad had drained the car battery recently. Take the Toad and system to factory trailer at 0800. End result, entire new system at no charge.
---electric system for hot water tank not working. Went to booth, technician told Dan how to trouble shoot it, and gave him all the possible parts that could cause problem.
But beware, the exhibitors have some very good prices and not so good prices. There were items that were 50% or less; but there were items that were the same, if not more, than we had seen elsewhere. For example our supplemental braking system for the Toad - the cost at the show was $200 dollars more than we had paid. And of course, there were many items that we had never seen anywhere else (even on the internet). End result was that our credit cards were maxed out and we had to write rubber checks (just kidding)!
Also, throughout the day there was entertainment, games, activities and social events sponsored by the major corporate sponsors (Camping World, Good Sams, Ford, etc). Corrie would check them out now and then, but Dan tended to ignore them. Until they had casino day, where you could play Texas Holdem! This was not a full fledged tournament, but a two hour session where you tried to win your table (first prize was ten raffle tickets to put in the barrel). Dan signed up for the first session of the day, thinking you could only play once; but no – you could sign up for all of them! Which he immediately did, and wasted his entire day playing poker. Best he did was third out of nine people; seems those wives who know nothing about poker, routinely kicked his butt.
To top it all off, each evening at 1900 was free entertainment. This usually consisted of some has-been (Dan's opinion) from the 50s or 60s. The “biggie” for our Rally was Frankie Valli. We would head over each evening to check it out. Usually Dan would lose interest after two songs and head back to the RV, Corrie never lasted more than an hour. One evening we did take part in an attempt to break the world record for most people dancing to the same steps for five minutes. There were about 1200 people on the dance floor and we were supposed to be doing a modified foxtrot. From our vantage point, few if anyone, was doing even close the same steps?
While we attempted to get back to the RV for lunch and dinner, it seems to us that most people were very happy to spend the entire day and early evening on the fairgrounds. Even though many of them had health issue and needed mobility devices to get around; they seemed very happy to eat lunch if not dinner consisting of philly cheese steaks, slices of pizza, corn dogs, funnel cakes, fried twinkies, peach cobbler, etc, etc. Anyway, after five plus days of rallying we are burnt out, and will be leaving early on the last day Monday, 17MAR, rather than staying to the bitter end. Oh yeah, in the middle of all this we had to endure two nights of tornado warnings. Perry was spared, but Atlanta just up I-75, took a major hit (in case you missed it on the national news).
http://www.therally.com/
The official Rally runs for four days, Friday through Monday. But you can pay for an extra two days (Wednesday and Thursday) if you want to get set up early. And since they expected 3500 RVs (ranging in size from pop-up trailers to million dollar busses) and 8000 folks, arrivals and parking is done by assigned time periods (0700 to 1000, etc). Turns out that even though website indicated that everything started Friday, the seminars actually started on Thursday, and new RVs were open for tours Thursday late afternoon.
Since we were one of the first parked, we got to watch the circus unfold all morning long as the volunteer staff tried to keep the RVs moving and park everyone as close to possible, as quickly as possible! First, if you were towing a vehicle, you had to disconnect before proceeding past the gate. Having the husband and wife in two different vehicles seemed to cause big problems for some couples. If you were pulling a trailer, you had to get into your spot quickly, disconnect and get the towing vehicle out of the way. There were some close calls, like the man who literally backed into his wife, and the guy who had twenty people yelling at him and stopped inches from putting his RV into the ditch.
Then after lunch we rode our bikes over to the Fairgrounds even though nothing was open for display. The chaos here was almost as good as the parking of the RVs we had witnessed that morning. Imagine pedestrians, RVs, people on bikes, people on mobility devices, golf carts, fork lifts, cars, and tractor pulling trams all trying to maneuver in a confined area at the same time. And then add to all this the fact that many of these people are somewhat older and have poor eyesight and/or slower reaction times, and things get real interesting at times.
The Rally itself was overwhelming for us as first timers. There are four main things to do throughout the day – attend seminars, view the exhibits of products for sale, participate in the free entertainment and social activities, or tour the hundreds of new RVs on display. There are four blocks of time for seminars starting at 0830 and going to 1530; but the exhibit hall and the RVs are only available from 0900 to 1700! So if you go to seminars all day long (including lunch), you have very little time for the other stuff.
We soon discovered that the person(s) presenting the seminar was always selling something (surprise, surprise!). Some presenters were very good about giving you unbiased, useful information; but others were no better than hucksters. And you had to make time for the exhibitions at the expense of the seminars, because that is where you often can talk one-on-one with factory reps and get tons of free advice (if not free repairs). Examples:
---our TV antenna was impossible to move. Five minutes talking to technician and some silicone spray, problem solved.
---our supplemental braking system for the Toad had drained the car battery recently. Take the Toad and system to factory trailer at 0800. End result, entire new system at no charge.
---electric system for hot water tank not working. Went to booth, technician told Dan how to trouble shoot it, and gave him all the possible parts that could cause problem.
But beware, the exhibitors have some very good prices and not so good prices. There were items that were 50% or less; but there were items that were the same, if not more, than we had seen elsewhere. For example our supplemental braking system for the Toad - the cost at the show was $200 dollars more than we had paid. And of course, there were many items that we had never seen anywhere else (even on the internet). End result was that our credit cards were maxed out and we had to write rubber checks (just kidding)!
Also, throughout the day there was entertainment, games, activities and social events sponsored by the major corporate sponsors (Camping World, Good Sams, Ford, etc). Corrie would check them out now and then, but Dan tended to ignore them. Until they had casino day, where you could play Texas Holdem! This was not a full fledged tournament, but a two hour session where you tried to win your table (first prize was ten raffle tickets to put in the barrel). Dan signed up for the first session of the day, thinking you could only play once; but no – you could sign up for all of them! Which he immediately did, and wasted his entire day playing poker. Best he did was third out of nine people; seems those wives who know nothing about poker, routinely kicked his butt.
To top it all off, each evening at 1900 was free entertainment. This usually consisted of some has-been (Dan's opinion) from the 50s or 60s. The “biggie” for our Rally was Frankie Valli. We would head over each evening to check it out. Usually Dan would lose interest after two songs and head back to the RV, Corrie never lasted more than an hour. One evening we did take part in an attempt to break the world record for most people dancing to the same steps for five minutes. There were about 1200 people on the dance floor and we were supposed to be doing a modified foxtrot. From our vantage point, few if anyone, was doing even close the same steps?
While we attempted to get back to the RV for lunch and dinner, it seems to us that most people were very happy to spend the entire day and early evening on the fairgrounds. Even though many of them had health issue and needed mobility devices to get around; they seemed very happy to eat lunch if not dinner consisting of philly cheese steaks, slices of pizza, corn dogs, funnel cakes, fried twinkies, peach cobbler, etc, etc. Anyway, after five plus days of rallying we are burnt out, and will be leaving early on the last day Monday, 17MAR, rather than staying to the bitter end. Oh yeah, in the middle of all this we had to endure two nights of tornado warnings. Perry was spared, but Atlanta just up I-75, took a major hit (in case you missed it on the national news).
2 comments:
So the question is-would you go to another rally? We would have gone to this but it was just to early in the year for us to leave the southwest warm weather.
We will definitely do it again (probably next year's)! We will more judicious in trying to catch every seminar of interest. Will spend more time with the exhibitors and talking to tech reps. Apparently, Good Sam's and FMCA alternate every year during spring at Perry, GA. So we would like to catch FMCA, since it is totally focused on self-drive units (ie not trailers). - Corrie & Dan
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