Santa Cruz Ranch RV Resort

We are staying here temporarily until our house is ready to move into so we aren’t vacationing and really don’t want to be here, so my review will reflect that. The pros are that it is a good location. You are a short drive from restaurants and shops, hiking and the beach. The amenities are good and they do a good job of keeping everything in working order and clean, even though everything is clearly old. The pool looks clean and they heat it. The washers and dryers work well, there aren’t any that aren’t working. There is always someone on the grounds cleaning and maintaining it. It is quiet, even at night.
The cons: It is pretty run down. Everything is old (but kept up). The grounds are mostly weeds and hedges that are kept mowed and pruned. The biggest issue for me is that there is essentially no internet although they have free wi fi, you can’t get it on it very often so if you have to work or carry on with your business, forget about that. If you are on vacation, it might not be as big of a concern. It is close to the freeway and some sites back up to it so freeway noise can be an issue.

This is a beautiful park, nice trees great pool and very close to Santa Cruz. Very quiet and the staff is super nice.

This is not a campground, its a trailer park rented by the month full of RV’s. The property is mostly occupied with old and decaying RV’s with low income families. There are people that live in cars on site even though the local government warned them. They have been sited by the local fire dept. of several serious violations, one is the ability to safely evacuate the park (there are so many dead or dying cars cluttering/​blocking the service roads that it impossible to pass a small car through. The monthly tenants have cars up on blocks for months and several work on vehicle of all sorts during day and night hours. The park is a mess due to lack of maintenance. The smell of sewage daily. The local police visit weekly due to drug trafficking. I took a job in the area and apartments are almost non-​existant so I used my RV till I found a apartment. I wasn’t there a week and my RV and car both became flea infested. I had both professionally cleaned but the fleas returned and the pest man said it was due to all the flea infested feral cats. He said all the cat had to do is walk through my site and the flea eggs would be falling off these infested cats and you would pick up the eggs on your shoes and cary them into your car and RV. Once I moved out of the park I had to have my RV fumigated. Management is a joke. The place is a dump. Water pipes are breaking all the time. High voltage Romex wires (not in conduit or rated for out door use) are ran on top of the ground, exposed to weather, because the old wires in the ground have rotted and shorted out or burned. I had one of these wires behind my RV and the maintenance man would cut the grass with a lawn mower with this wire running through the grass. OMG. I wouldn’t dare go into the pool. It wreaks of chlorine. There is only one cause of chlorine smell in a pool and that is high nitrates. Humans create nitrates, its called urine. This pool is full of the low income family kids peeing in the pool all week. The rent is very cheap (the reason for the type of clientele that lives here) for the location. It is right next to HWY 17 and it does get noisy at rush hour. What is so sad is that it sits in a great location and has so much potential. The owners should shut down the place, pull a construction loan, evict everyone including the managers and rebuild its mechanical infrastructure, raise the rates and don’t rent to monthlies. I wouldn’t stay a night just due to the flea infestation. There are several nice RV parks in the area, you’ll do much better elsewhere. What a nightmare of a place.

I would give it less than one but you can’t. I HATE the management here!!! Sure the pool and hot tub is nice and clean and are the people who live here are mostly nice. But besides the grounds keepers people who work here are horrible nasty you know what’s. What’s new is you can’t say anything bad about this place according to management. People are getting kicked out left and right and the place has gone downhill since I have moved here last year in spring. Rumors are flying neighbor against neighbor, everybody hates the manager and her so called friendly staff. My friends are getting kicked out and they did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing. In fact almost everybody I know is getting kicked out. Beware of this place and it’s manager!!!

This is one of the worst campgrounds that we have ever been to. The bathrooms and showers are old and in dire need of bring remodeled. You’d think that for the money that they charge per day, they could at least replace shower curtains when they start to get moldy! The campsites are so close together that there are only inches between your slide out and your neighbors. You might as well forget opening your canopies! They had multiple pet waste bag stations and every one that we stopped at was empty. And their motto on their home page states «We believe everyone deserves their dream vacation»? It sure wasn’t there for us!

Every time I’ve come to this place, I end up leaving angry about something regarding the service, the dirty showers and gross bathrooms and last, have they considered hiring employees that actually work? Like groundskeepers and friendly people that run the office and reservations,? And why would such a large reputable company hire such a anti social and down right mean Resort manager? It makes no sense to me. She (the over controlling manager) has single handedly destroyed this nice place. Good job ENCORE maybe you should stick with timeshares. I won’t be back…

My boyfriend, myself and my children have been tenants here a scrrv for about 2 years. At first the management and the people were nice and relaxed. This pleasent place has taken a turn for the worst. This is my opinion and what we experienced. It all started when the new manager started her job, with her bull dozer in tow. Her main focus has been to get rid of whomever she can, because they want this to be a pull through park without perm residents. So corp hires her to clear as many tenants out as possible. Otherwise they would have to pay to relocate them. Showing respect, class and common decency was not a requirement.
We changed our site to a larger one. The reason we were able to do this was because of the office staff person who was kind enough to bump up our spot on the waiting list, because she needed her car fixed. So, we’re getting ready to move in, and instead of waiting for the maintenance staff to clean the site we worked on it ourselves. We asked one maintence staff about a very small dead tree that was in the spot (Which we have pics of) if we could get rid of it, his response was sure, great, thanks for doing my job for me. Then apparently he ran to the office and told them we were cutting trees down???(apparently he was jealous we got the larger spot, that is what I was told) then the mgr. called us by phone, and started yelling and calling us names and threatening us with police and jail time. The next day the managers boss (from corp?) the manager and her two office staff employees show up on my front porch and just started accusing and would not let me get a word in. They were so off base on what took place. I tried to tell them that the maintenance staff guy said it was OK, and their response was you don’t go to them with questions, that they are nobody, if you have questions come to the office to get the answers. I had no idea that the maintenance staff for this park had the «nobody» status. I assumed if I had questions regarding the park maintenance I would go to them. I didn’t realize I should of gone to the gal in the office whose wad busy over charging everyone for a transient occupancy tax that shouldn’t even apply to us. They are charging us incorrectly.
WOW, I have never experienced such an in justice, I thought if you lived in America there were laws to protect people from corp sharks like this. Thats why they have tenants do 7 month move outs so the tenant has no rights at all. These people, some on fixed incomes and low income families are walking on eggshells, fearing eviction daily. It has really brought the worst out in many people and has created such unhappiness along with back stabbing and senseless gossip. It is so expensive to live in Santa Cruz County! A lot of these tenants have no where else to go and this company is taking advantage of the lower working income for no other reason other than greed!

This place is horrible. It used to be nice. Peaceful. Now its full of one of the «employees» friends who all look to be on meth. One set continually yells at each other at the top of their lungs and can be heard yelling cuss words at their children who scream right back at them. One of the «maintenance» people, if you can call them that, was seen beating his child in the middle of the road. The «maintenance» people also drive around on their little cart like they’re qualifying for NASCAR. The bathrooms are always broken. The hot tub and pool are just nasty. The manager is a flat out bitch. This is a horrible place to stay.

I have stayed here for the past three weeks and have been very impressed with the park.
1. Clean, well kept. The staff takes great pride in the care they provide to guests and in their maintenance of the park.
2. Coffee always available!
3. Restrooms always cleaned (for some reason, guests think it’s okay to not flush at times and/​or throw paper everywhere, which park cannot control, but they are so on top of it). Showers warm with good water pressure.
4. Hot tub clean, warm, wonderful. Pool sparkling and kids love it.
5. Warm, professional staff.
6. Very, very convenient to everything. I am able to bike to grocery store, movie theater, CVS, Jamba Juice, park, library, and the metro center, which easily takes me either to Santa Cruz (love, love love) or San Jose via the 17 express for $ 5.00.
I will definitely stay here when I return to area.

This place is a joke. Recently stayed here thinking we would be surrounded by redwoods. The good: staff is very nice. Decent wifi. Bad: most sites have permanent residents, sites are so close together you have to coordinate with your neighbor do your pop outs don’t hit each other. It smells like sewage most of the time. Sometimes the smell is so strong it actually smells in our rig. Neighbors working on the cars, playing loud music, and fighting couples. A nightmare. I would highly recommend finding another spot to stay.

If you’re looking to camp, this place is a joke. Their tent site is essentially a dirt plot with a picnic table. I wasn’t expecting this place to be beautiful but I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be a lame as it was. My biggest complaint: NOISE. All you can hear all night long is the freeway. It made it very hard to sleep. Motorcycles revving up before dawn, other occupants with no consideration for other people by being loud in the middle of the night. It was just overall unpleasant. They shouldn’t even offer tent sites to be honest. Never coming back here. Stay at your own risk.
The upside is that its a close drive to Santa Cruz.

Poor hook up.
Electrical at ground level.
Had to get down on the wet ground to hookup to the 30 Amp. service.
Same with water hook up.
This is a AAA two diamond RV/​campground.
I don’t think so.

Very clean and well maintained. No issues with hooking up sewer and electrical. Great pool and even a small rec room.
We are new to RVing and are trying out new places we find online. One downside was this place was right in town. We were expecting something more woodsy and secluded. There was also lots of noise from the freeway. I only note these things as an FYI and did not take then into account for the Star rating.
The place itself was clean, had easy check in and was easy to get in and out of with our 27 foot RV.