Wilderness Lakes Thousand Trails

Stayed 15 nights at the Thousand Trails Wilderness Lakes RV Resort in Menifee, California. The suburban community of Menifee has grown around this campground with many new stores and restaurants. The local Target has a large grocery, meat and deli, and looks new. Menifee Cross Trail at Altergate Park leads to a scenic vista overlooking Menifee and has restrooms, picnic area, and a large dog park at the trailhead. A day trip through the Cleveland National Forest on CA State Route 74 (Ortega Highway) to Dana Point and Laguna Beach was the highlight of our stay. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 63.4 Mbps download speed and 6.01 Mbps upload speed. Verizon cellular service clocked in at 29.9 Mbps download speed and 4.44 Mbps upload speed.

The park is so full that you have to grab the first available. Apparently everyone stays here during the winter months.

Signal is great for Verizon, OK for AT&T and T-Mobile, but only AT&T has any spare bandwidth. Signal means nothing if everyone around you is sucking up all of the available bandwidth. From time to time the Roku has enough bandwidth to run great on the Verizon hot spot, however, most of the time it's just stop and go. I would use AT&T all of the time but I've got limited data as a hot spot. T-Mobile is also hit and miss. I haven't tested sprint beyond number of bars as I don't have a hotspot for sprint.

The WiFi in this section is worthless. It's slow as heck and not worth anything as it's way less than 1mb for speed (up and down). I'm told other parts of the park are fine for WiFi, but unfortunately we can't move without taking the chance of losing our spot.

Internet issues aside, this is a beautiful park. Flat, lots of trees, lots of wide spaces and geese. I don't mind the geese because we invaded their territory. A few goose droppings are part and parcel, so live with it.

Everything that you need is within 5 or 6 miles and much under 3 miles. Hero par has a great dog park and lots of nice people with good dogs. Opal, Tanzi, Barkly, and Bernard are regulars (along with others) and our dogs just loved their time there.

The campground is easy to get to and the town is big enough to have all of the important retailers and shops while small enough to seem like it's not that urban. If we were ever coming back to this area, I'd want to figure out the best WiFi reception areas. During the last few days of our stay, enough people pulled out so that Verizon was not terrible.

I've made a video review of Wilderness Lakes in California. https://youtu.be/KMdXho0v2d4 It's a big campground, and it's full of birds. All kinds of ducks and geese will be your guests often. There's a lot of activities and amenities at the campground: two pools with spas, a lodge room, a billiard room, a fitness room. Bingo, crafts, movie or game nights, a train ride, a cafe... a lot to do. Tennis, pickle ball, basketball, volleyball, two playgrounds.. We really liked our stay there. I'm showing every corner of the campground in my review.

Seems like the TT CGs in California are more trailer park than campgrounds. Lots of activity in the 4-6 am time frame people going to work it seems. Lots of dicks/gees and their associated droppings if you like that sort of thing (not for me). The showers/rest rooms are through the park. Problem is there is only one stall for a toilet and a shower. So if someone is in there you have to wait your turn. The staff were nice so that is a plus. At night the road it is located on is more of a drag strip than a road so you'll hear that throughout the night into the early morning hours. Lots of places to eat and shop within a few miles. Stater Bros was a nice food store and close. Cellular internet was good. Seemed the chicken farm was not operating when I was there. Other complained about the flies from there but I did not experience them too bad but there are lots of bugs as there are a number of ponds (for the duck and geese). Sites were gravel and pretty level (with LOTS of duck/goose droppings so be prepared to bring that into the rv or have it stuck to the bottom of your exterior rug and then of course they will do their business on top of the rug as there are ALL over the place - it is a bird sanctuary after all). LA is probably 55 miles or so but give yourself a number of hours to get there (more for Hollywood and the beach or airport) due to there is traffic everywhere you drive.

This is probably one of my favorite thousand trails parks. The only downside is the geese were in mating season the first time I stayed and they were very very noisy! It's a great park that's rather large with lots and lots of places to park many of them right next to the water. Great pool and hot tub and very friendly staff. The little store is handy and the lady that runs it is fantastic. Overall I look forward to going back.

We stayed here as part of our Thousand Trails membership and paid no nightly fee. This place used to be about as middle of nowhere as you could get in the greater Los Angeles area but it's being surrounded by subdivisions and shopping centers now. Not a bad thing though. It's still quiet and rural near the park.

We found Wilderness Lakes crowded as it was over the Holidays. But we found a nice site anyway. Like many Thousand Trails, there are lots amenities and activities with many of those geared towards families. Lot's of birds here with all the canals, which are a little gross but no worse than most small urban lakes. Flies are a constant battle too. The nearby chicken farm is probably the reason (flies don't breed in water).

We enjoyed our stay. Visited Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm (about an hour and a half drive) and took advantage of all the shopping and dining in the area. Two suggestions: Watch out for sights that looked to have been flooded. When it rains, some sites flood. Second, be prepared to kill flies.

As the 106th RV park in a row that we stayed at before ending our journey around the country - I was very happy it was this one! Some other reviews covered nicely - the park is a bit dated, but lots of things going on. They have a cafe, store, activities, area to rent games for kids, very nice pool and organized nice staff. Pretty much the only negative is there are not enough 50 amp spots. We checked in on a Saturday night which meant we were on 30 amp and we never felt like moving...so we made due. Pretty hot days, but it was fine. FHU though so that was also great.

Bathrooms were fine but a bit dated. There were multiple laundry rooms which was convenient since we were in the back of the park.

On the weekend there were train rides which were on a tractor pull cart - kids really liked it.

Good cell coverage, wifi was paid so we did not use it. Free wifi in lodge that was a bit slow.

I would highly recommend this park in the SoCal area!

Having been to numerous TT parks now, it’s hard to say you really enjoyed one. This was one of the few. Most the full timers were kept near the back. We got a great spot next to the park. Lots of kids around, our two had a great time and made a lot of friends. Activities were a bit hokey, but over all, very friendly place to stay. Good grocery stores 5-15 minutes away depending on what you want. Good cell on ATT. Old and a bit dilapidated, but Highly recommend.