We joke that we joined in on the pandemic trend of buying a camper, but in all fairness, we’ve actually been thinking about buying one for years and finally decided that there was no better time! We are glad we did and were so grateful that Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park in Luray, Virginia hosted us for our first RV adventure! I’m excited to finally share all the details and pictures with you, and let’s just say this trip will be hard to beat!
Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park in Luray, Virginia is set in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains with amazing mountain views all around – the drive to the park is absolutely stunning and my eyes couldn’t take in all the scenery fast enough! It’s located just down the road from beautiful locations like Luray Caverns, Shenandoah National Park, and Skyline Drive – all of which we will be exploring during our next visit!
Good morning from Jellystone Luray!
The check in process was quick and easy. Since we had never been to the park before, a guide happily showed us to our site. We had a mountain view site, right near the playground – which satisfied my love of the mountain views and the girls love of playgrounds. It may have been our first outing, but I don’t need to take 100 trips to realize you want to be as close to the playground as possible when camping with active kids. We were able to make meals, take care of the baby and just chill at our rig while the kids played on the playground just yards in front of us.
Not to mention the playgrounds were a great way to take advantage of the beautiful weather we had during our stay!
Campfires, water slides, and bears, oh my!
Jellystone’s theme is Yogi Bear – and friends! The girls loved seeing Yogi, Boo Boo, and Cindy rolling around their decorated golf carts, meeting them up close and taking “Hey Hey” rides with them.
I’ll never forget the the evening routine of my girls and their newfound friends chasing Yogi down in his golf cart for the Drive-by Glow Party!
Fun For The Family
From sun up to sun down, Jellystone offers fun for the entire family! From the morning Pledge and Yogicize at the outpost to water slides, jumpy pillows, an 18-hole mini golf course, pedal boats, and playgrounds, to three pools, zip lines, outdoor movie theater, gemstone mining, lazer tag, and varied daily activities like tie dye T-shirts, ceramic painting, dance parties, Hey Hey Wagon rides and much much more!
You can easily keep track of the daily activities, weather, map, and park info on the Jellystone app. The activities schedule for the day was easy to get to and included the itinerary of free and paid activities for the day. (At check-in you are given a printed itinerary as well, but it was nice having the app with us as we bounced around the park.) The paid activities were all reasonably priced and were an absolute blast for the kids. You can opt to purchase a bundled fun pass to save an additional percentage.
Keep Cool At Jellystone
The pools were of course a hit! Everything was clean and in great condition. They did close the pool for an hour each afternoon to clean (part of the park’s COVID policy i’m sure) but that gave us time to grab a late lunch or ice cream! The splash pad was down while we were there, but I look forward to taking the girls when we go again later this summer. (yes, we loved it so much we already booked our next trip!)
Summertime Favorites
There is a little cafe – Nathan’s Famous – serving up those summertime favorites like hot dogs, burgers, and fries. They also have an ice cream counter – which of course we visited daily!
Overall, we loved how the park invited us to spend quality time with our kids, while also getting to be kid-like again ourselves! Did we jump on the jumpy pillows? You betcha. Did we slide down the water slides? Oh yes we did.
Three Ways To Stay
Jellystone offers full hook-up RV sites (from pop up campers to fully decked out RVs), campsites for tents, and a variety of cabins! We didn’t see any of the cabin interiors, but they were meticulously maintained on the outside and were adding gorgeous new cabins near the rec center during our stay!
Beautifully kept cabins! 
Clean and spacious sites!
Special Themes + Events
Who doesn’t love a good themed event?! Jellystone offers themed weeks and weekends throughout the year – something we will consider when we plan our next family adventure. You can check out the 2021 themes for this campground HERE. We have already heard amazing things about the Halloween weekends in October, but you need to be on your game, because those weekends book up super fast.
Things To Note
- Cell signal is slim to non at the park. They do offer wifi, but it’s pretty spotty in most areas of the park. We stayed at the top of the hill near the playground and were able to pick up a decent wifi signal most of the time.
- The park is very walkable – we did rent a golf cart (which both of my older girls had in their lists of the top 5 things they loved about this adventure) and it certainly added to the whole experience, but it’s not a MUST in terms of accessibility to the activities (the only exception being Laser Tag, it is quite a hike as it’s located at the very top of the hill/park).
- Golf cart parking is available all over the park, regular car parking is not.
- Pool Cabanas – Jellystone offers beautiful new pool cabanas with couches, tables, chairs, and a mini fridge to rent. We didn’t end up renting one, but there were several times where I needed to take care of the baby by the pool where I thought it would have been nice!
- Fishing pond – if you like to fish, be sure to bring your gear! There is a little fishing pond at the front of the park near the waterslides stocked with fish!
- The Jellystone Store offers a variety of items for your stay – and if they don’t have it, there is a Walmart just a few miles away.
- Laundry is available next to the pool, but only takes quarters, and we didn’t see a change machine. We didn’t need to use them during our stay, but that’s a nice option!
- The two “Comfort Stations” or bath houses, are open 24/7 and were super clean.
- There are plenty of day trip options, including Luray Caverns, Luray Zoo, Shenandoah National Park, and Skyline Drive just to name a few!
- The pool closes from 2-3PM for cleaning each afternoon.
- The Fun Pass allows you to prepay for a bundle of activities. It helped keep us on top of things and plan out our day according to the schedule and what the girls had on their Fun Pass card. I do highly recommend it!
- Dog park! We didn’t have our pups with us this go round, but overall the park is very dog friendly and even has a Bark Park for the visiting pups.
- Curbside trash pickup – every day from 10-11am – my husband loved this haha.
To learn more about Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park in Luray, Virginia and plan your own family adventure in the mountains visit the website HERE!
Feel free to leave a comment or send me a message if you have any questions about our stay.
Disclaimer: We were hosted by Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park in Luray, Virginia, but the thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.
