Oilman J

Hi folks,

My wife, 3 year old girl and myself will be touring round Ontario in June of next year to decide if we are going to "go for it" and try to move over.

I have not booked the RV yet, but have been using the "fetchrv" website to do my pricing. any one used the site? It works out cheaper than going direct to the companies who they use, so works for me!

Also, having never been to Ontario , we are unsure of how we will get on with a big RV if we go for one of them. I feel we could manage in a regular six berth van and they are much smaller to get round towns and small roads etc. The only thing the small van lacks is the likes of generators for power if we are patked up somewhere without an ele hook up.

Lastly, our girl only being three when we go means she still needs a car seat. Has any one got any idea if they can be supplied? I guess we could bring our own over if need be. Just more luggage though!!


Any feed back would be appreciated.

Also any opinions on areas to see in Ontario.
We will be spending three weeks on the road, starting in Toronto, working north to Ottawa and Montreal ( to see friends) and then back to Toronto to complete the trip.
We dont need to be close to anywhere in particular if we emmigrate over as I work all over the world with my company. All we would want is to be near good schools and a maximum of 90-120 mins from a big city and 15-25 mins from shops etc as a maximum too.
Budget for a property, in the region of $300-400,000 CAD.

As I say, any feedback on the above would be appreciated.

Regards

jamie

ray1968

Why an RV - why not car and then hotels in different spots?

fledermaus

Just don't park it anywhere near my house

Visit Peterborough and area. Peterborough sucks but the surrounding areas are good. Also Port Hope, Cobourg, Belleville. Go further north to Haliburton, Muskoka and Algonquin.

Not sure why you need an RV though, especially for the staying with friends part.

Oilman J

Reason for the RV is so we can spend as much time as we want in any area we like. If we go for hotels we will need to pack and un pack all the time.
As for staying with friends, we will ony see them for a couple of days, not the full three weeks.

fledermaus

Won't you need to book the RV park too??

Auld Yin

I have some friends who bought a very nice RV three years ago and went off on a cross-Canada trip. Had a great time but said the biggest problem was, that once they had checked into the RV park and hooked everything up, everything had to be unhooked if they wanted to go into town or do some touring. They said it was a pain in the you know where because the size of these vehicles makes them difficult to park in towns or driving down country roads etc.
They bought a small second-hand car to tow behind the RV and now find their touring much easier for getting around.

johngrimes

The wife and I hired an RV for 2 weeks in May 08 around Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It was great except i did all the driving. It was ok once i got used to it, set cruise control and away you go. Your child will love it. Watch the film RV with Robin Williams....I did to old trickds of driving off with the wife on the loo and the braked hard.....made me laugh! The cost of fuel was about £350 for the 2 weeks and then RV sites cost about £20 per night. Parking was only a problem once...but then i just parked accross 4 bays put my money in the machine and walked away. Ours was a 4 berth 23ft long and was ample room. Regards the car seat might be best you bring your own.....another suggestion is go to Walmart buy a cheap one use it, put it all back in the box clean and like new get a gift recipt and buy something else in the shop....that's what i did in America...just keep it clean and don't take any labels off!!

We are going back to Nova Scotia in May 10 for a week to set up houses etc before we move over on the 3rd June 10. This time we looked at an RV but we have managed to get car hire, accomodation and flights at a good price.

We used Canadream, have a look on the Canadian affair website as the have money of the RV's flights etc at the moment.

Good luck with whatever you do.

John

JGK

Many Families Holidaying in RV's seem to tow a family car with them. Once the RV is located in the park/sit the car is used for the shorter trips

tallperson

Regards the car seat might be best you bring your own.....another suggestion is go to Walmart buy a cheap one use it, put it all back in the box clean and like new get a gift recipt and buy something else in the shop....that's what i did in America...just keep it clean and don't take any labels off!!

Maybe it is just me but I am really shocked at this!! Some unsuspecting person is going to come along and buy that seat assuming it is new. How cheap some people can be.

ClanickP

Hi.

We hired an RV when we went to BC in 2008. It was one of the biggest you can get because we had 4 children with us. We went in October which is not the best time of year to go but thought it would be great. Things did not go as planned and ended up after 24 hours back in a hotel in downtown Vancouver.

Firstly take your own car seat for the youngster like we did. Our youngster was 13 months old and fearing the worst when we got there decided to take our own. Just a cheap one. Not only for the van but it can also be taken on the flight over and used in the plane as a car seat so to speak. The one we arranged to hire in the van was completely filthy and fitted very poorly into the seat.

The RV which you will be hiring will be very noisy and rattley in the back due mainly to the kitchen and hob etc. Our van was brand new so I cant assume that the one you will be hiring will be any different. We tried to dampen the noise with towels etc but because they cannot be dismantled we found it very difficult to keep quiet. This was a very big problem as our daughter was sitting right next to it.

We ended up hiring a 7 seater and forsaking the 800 quid or so we had already spent on the RV.

RV's are great but we quickly realised that we are a hotel family and not an RV family.

Maybe in the summer with light evenings and a bit of warmth things could of been different but we wont be doing an RV holiday again.

Good character building stuff though,,,,48 hours to remember

Hope this can be of some help.

ClanickP

Welsh Tony

We hired an RV last June for our recce. 10 weeks and 12500km!!
We didn't know which province we would like to settle for so we looked at the whole of the east coast. We picked ours up from Cruise Canada (which was cheaper direct than from “Trailfinders” which use Cruise Canada). Last year the costs were $72 per night and $0.23 per km.
We picked ours up from Bolton $50 taxi ride from Airport booked by Cruise Canada. You could not pick up on the day of arrival on long haul flights so we stayed in hotel first night.
We chose 25' RV sleeps 6.
We chose this one as there are 3 of us (me, misses and 5year old boy). Which with this configuration allowed us to sleep in the double at the back and he could sleep over the cab.
This would mean that you would not have to keep taking the car seat off the rear seat to convert the table into the bed, but you would need to decide if the lack of rails would be an issue with a high bed for your 3 year old.
Car seats are readily available. We bought one from Canadian Tyre (Just around the corner from the RV centre).
The rear seats are not three point harnesses, just lap straps, so normal car seats tend not to work.
We found one $90 which has straps that drop down the back of the seat and attach to a special anchor point behind the seat cushions to hold the seat upright and the lap strap goes through the centre of the seat which means once it is attached it can stay put and you can use the five point harness within the seat. We ended bringing the car seat home (Air Canada say that if the child is sitting in the seat on the plane it can be taken without affecting your baggage allowance, this may be the same with other airlines). We did think of going to Cash convertors to sell the car seat over there but they do not buy car seats as a safety issue as they cannot guarantee the condition of the seat when they sell it. Cruise Canada will not hire you a seat (but they did have some shoddy ones out the back) because of this same issue, they cannot guarantee that is has not been dropped/damaged.
Parking was not an issue. The 25’ RV fits exactly into a standard car space in supermarket (their spaces are much bigger than ours!). I am an HGV driver over here so driving it was a doddle, it was no bigger than our 7.5t Lorries.
You have to be aware of “all day parking” sites in the big cities. Signs stating $5 all day are fine but several we went to would suddenly claim as much as $75 because it was bigger than a car. Drive off, go around the corner and find another one. We never paid more than $8 for all day on the entire journey (even at the beach)!
We did not book a single RV site on our journey. We only had one night where all the local sites were full and we had to travel a little further to find on and this was on New Brunswick Day.
Hooking up took three minutes. Pull out electrical hook up line. Pull out hose and attach. Attach waste if going full hook up. When leaving same in reverse, bit longer if going to dump tanks (five minute job).
Cruise Canada does not have generators in Canada (only fitted on Cruise America RV’s).
Most sites have power hook ups but if you feel like a bit of “boondocking” as we did, you can get an inverter from Canadian Tyre which will power your Laptop etc for $25 (if you don’t take one with you).
We had never done this thing before and we found it a great experience and are looking to go back again this year.
If you need more info feel free to PM me.

Lemons

We've travelled across Canada many times in a 28' RV we bought for $20,000 (for that price we thought it would last a few months at best, but it just kept on going!) You should have no problems navigating the route you are proposing, although the Montreal road system is a bit of a challenge (get a GPS if you can).

You shouldn't have to book any sites in June, even in the height of summer we've never had a problem finding a pitch.

The biggest challenge we had was finding a park close enough to town - we did find a site in Ottawa near a bus route into town, PM me if you need details!

lcar

We spent a month touring Ontario by RV in 2008. I can safely say it was the best holiday we've ever had, and we would do it again tomorrow.
We were keen to spend time in areas we were interested in moving to, in a more 'real' environment than hotels.
We are a family of 6 (children aged 4 to 11 at the time), and hired a 28 foot RV sleeping 6 from www.motorhometravel.com.
My OH did all the driving, and we must have driven at least 4 thousand miles around the southern and central half of Ontario.
We did take a child car seat, but found it did not fit well on the seats, and did not use it for most of the journey.
As we used the seating area for sleeping every night, we did not put the table up every day to drive.
It was slightly inconvenient having to stow everything and remove all the pipes constantly just to go to the supermarket, but the benefits far outweigh the inconvenience.
We did book RV parks for the whole of our trip, after spending a lot of time researching and deciding where we wanted to go. For the peace of mind and relative lack of hassle, I would recommend pre-booking, though it may not be essential. The parks we stayed on did seem full though (mid July to mid August), so we were glad to have reservations.
Parking wasn't a big problem, as spaces are so much larger.
I have heard that Walmarts generally will not turn an RV away overnight, if the manager is asked politely and the family buys supplies from that Walmart.
We stayed at Sunset Cove Resort on Rice Lake in Peterborough area, and White Cedars at Eganville west of Ottawa - both simple but recommended. Also other campgrounds further north and west - Lake Bernard near Sundridge is a lovely resort if you're going that far.
Good luck. PM if you want any more info.

Jo.Ru_onway

I'm not sure but i think someone has mentioned on here before that uk car seats for kids are recognised under a different safety thingy so are not legal as not Canadian standard ( you know like a standard safety mark on a crash helmet ) sorry if i have this wrong, perhaps you can rent them from car hire places - if not im sure they could tell you if its ok to use a uk one.

Almost Canadian

From Lincolnshire, nuff said