AirVenture First Come First Serve Policy - Time for a Change

[turbopilot]

Give our Membership Services number a call - they can answer your questions:

1-800-564-6322

- Hal

Ok, this number worked. Here is the deal for sites with electrical and water. You cannot reserve one of these sites until June 28th. But you can reserve a site over the phone beginning on that date. This is different than than the process of staking out a site without electricity starting June 28th. You have to be present in Oskhosh to stake out a site without electricity.

If you reserve a site on the phone after June 28th you begin to pay $55/day for the site whether it is used or not. You pay until August 4th. So if you are willing to pay the price you can have a nicely located site with electricity and water waiting for on opening day of AirVenture. So going that route you are basically paying $300/day for a reserved site for the duration of the event.

[Tom Casper]

We have usually arrived the Thursday or even Friday before the show starts and have had luck getting electric the last few years. Until last year I had thought it was first come first served in person ONLY for electric. They changed that without much publicity and last year when we found that out we called Monday prior to the show and got electric. Even that was a little pricey for us so this year we will just grab whatever non electric site looks good a few days prior to the show and use a generator. You can run a generator in most all areas from about 7am to 10pm if I recall and I think we can live with that, even though it may be a bit noisier for us. We have a Honda but I am sure the folks next to us will have a 10,000 rpm unmuffled Chinese special. We think the trade off in price and space is worth it, remember the electric sites are fairly restricted in size.

[Rod Schneider]

I'll chime in here with an on the scene report. We arrived on Thursday, July 24, and found a spot on row 54 big enough for a motor home, a camper trailer, and two tents for our group. Row 54 is only 6 or 7 rows from the east edge, and about a three minute walk to the show!
A casual stroll through the prime spots in Paul's Woods revealed license plates from California, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Idaho, along with closer states, and, yes, Wisconsin. I don't really see a "local" advantage as much as a "arrival time" advantage. First come, first served seems like a fair enough way to do things. Last year, we were around row 12 and had no complaints