Tom
For Frank Mickey Stampede Park Campground: ...TENTS ARE NOT ALLOWED. I cycled in and was told I could not stay in the campground in my little one-man tent because "tenters are messy, noisy, they party, they litter, they burn camp equipment". Unfriendly but polite, the operators refused to admit me.
As a result, I didn't stay in Ponoka, I didn't have supper there, I chose not to do any business in the town, and simply rode away.
Posted Nov 13, 2017 by Tom from Leduc, Alberta Canada. This is the subjective opinion of a traveler and not of AllStays LLC.
BallPlayer
For Frank Mickey Stampede Park Campground: If you want to be treated like a five year old child, and chased around with people yelling at you and demanding things from you, or even leaving you nasty voice messages, stay here! If you want an enjoyable camping experience, laid back, fun times - stay somewhere else.
We are a ball team who camped here this past weekend for our 3rd year this year. Each year it gets worse and worse and the people are awful, not accommodating, demanding, rude and have no idea what customer service is. Every year during the Ponoka Slo Pitch tournament, they ban fires (and they have a different reason every year.) This year there isn't even a fire ban anywhere else in the province but there is here! No exceptions!!! If you don't immediately stop and register at the "office" prior to entering the site they "green gator" will chase you down and they will give you a verbal lashing like no other. God forbid you check out the sites before handing over your money "oh and don't forget that you MUST take a copy of the rules," and if you don't they chase you down and force you to review them in front them. They stormed onto our site counting tents and demanding everyone who hadn't registered immediately walk down to the office and register now or tents will be removed. Oh and don't drive more then 15km/h, if you are going 16km/h they can remove you from the site.
In the 3 years we have camped here we have NEVER, not paid for our camping, we have NEVER, not cleaned up our site when checking out, we have NEVER, caused any problems, we have NEVER received a noise complaint we have NEVER broken a rule, yet we are harassed and treated like children and frowned upon and it's only getting worse.
My question would be if you hate people so much why do you work with the public, it was no surprise that this year out of the 180 sites, maybe 40 were used, of course they had us move all of our tents because we didn't pay for "powered stalls" that remained empty the whole weekend. And it gets less and less every year.
They even went as far as to leave us nasty voicemail, anyone who has been to a ball tournament knows after a good Saturday night your site can look disheveled, but yes we clean it up every single time, every single bottle, can, piece of garbage, everything. and yet, long before checkout we are getting demanding voicemail to clean up our site, which would have been left spotless regardless.
I don't pay money to these people so they can sit over my shoulder all weekend and harass me, and we won't be paying them next year. Unfortunately that means the town of Ponoka also loses out on the money spent by our teams in town - because the people running the place leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth. It's a great ball tournament, but the people who run the campsite need to take a chill pill, and let people enjoy themselves a little.
Posted Jul 21, 2016 by BallPlayer from Edmonton. This is the subjective opinion of a traveler and not of AllStays LLC.
