Thanksgiving Alliance

Wildwood, Florida - Temperature Highs: Low 70's, Lows: 50's and sunny everyday.  Yesterday marked the second full week we've been at the Alliance Coach campground in Wildwood, Florida.  We pulled in to have a few factory warranty items checked and didn't expect to be here such a long time. It's likely we'll be here a few days next week too.  Our Thanksgiving feast, here in the coach in the campground, began with boiled shrimp and champagne followed by a fabulous feast of turkey and dressing, sweet potatoes, green beans, salad and topped off with apple pie.  Lovely... thanks to Marie Calendar and her frozen dinners.  No cooking, no cleanup and no leftovers.  Gotta love it.

Alliance Coach is a what's referred to as a "Premier" Monaco dealer.  Unsure exactly what that is, I only can surmise that they are a bit like a "regional" shop for Monaco/Navistar, providing a full array of services, particularly important for those of us who are still under factory warranty but far away from the dealer through which we purchased our coach.

Alliance Coach campground.

Staying in the Alliance Coach campground is free to service customers. Sites here may be used when traveling through (without service) for a small nightly fee.

The new and used inventory is on the left in this picture.
The campground is on the opposite site.

I must confess it's been pretty enjoyable being here at Alliance Coach. The benefit of being among one's RV'ing peers is educational and we like seeing the motorhomes coming through. Our daily review of the new and used inventory is fun too.  Alliance Coach has about two dozen class A units with 2013's coming in regularly.  We've met some nice people here in the campground  -- plenty we'd enjoy seeing again along the road.



This sign is adjacent to the "Pet Walk" area. 
Inviting, eh?  This sign is about 20 yards from our site.

Our first week here, a troublesome accident did occur when someone's black tank emptied during the night/early morning hours.  The company attempted to do a cleanup, using bleach, but it caused us to stop walking Lexie and Ozzie in the area. We were forced to find another walking place.

Fortunately, Alliance has control of an adjoining property that includes a nice long stretch of concrete roadway, free of traffic, that leads to an empty building.  We put the pups into their stroller (which they love) and ride them about 100 yards to the concrete roadway for their walks.  Sometimes, we walk around the grassy lot where the motorhome inventory is parked. The grass there is cut (or mashed) close to the ground and there is no auto traffic.



The unused clean, smooth concrete roadway where we walk Lexie and Ozzie.

None of our warranty repair issues are major... just some little things that need to be completed before the factory warranty runs out in a few months.

One of the things on our list is to get a new faucet to replace the one that developed a leak, was deemed "broken beyond repair" by a Kentucky dealer and replaced with one that didn't match because that dealer didn't have the one we needed.  It will have to be ordered from Monaco.


This is the original bathroom faucet.

The temporary replacement faucet. 

Other items on our warranty list were:

1. The "Park" light on the instrument panel doesn't always come on. The problem is intermittent.
2. The big living room tv sometimes goes black.  An intermittent problem.
3. The fuel gauge doesn't seem accurate sometimes. An intermittent problem.



We also needed to replace our coaches windshield wiper blades -- not a warranty item. Wayne has had no luck finding them... even through windshield wiper manufacturers.



The "devil" commode.
The problem lies in that little lighted switch mounted
on the wood just below the tissue roll.
The yellow light (in this picture) is warning...

I suppose the worst of our problems, though, is with the commode.  Our motorhome has an electric commode. 

An electric toilet is not, I repeat "not" a good idea.  There's just something about using the words "electric" and "toilet" together that seems unsafe to me.

Furthermore, a half-broken electric commode is a real drag.  I wish it would be either "fixed" or "broken" because it sometimes flushes and it does what's called a "lock out" and won't allow flushing.

For the benefit of our "non-RVing" friends, a normal camper toilet simply dumps into what's referred to as "the black water tank".   This one uses an electric pump to push the flush waste into that same "black water tank"...

The intermittent problems, of course, cannot be repaired because they can't be found until they are completely broken.  

As for the toilet, it was first thought that the problem was remedied by replacing the little lighted switch seen in the picture. I was skeptical and never thought for a second that the devil commode was fixed.  Anyway, it was Wednesday before Thanksgiving and we chose to stay put through the weekend and it's a good thing we made that choice.

Turns out I was right and the devil toilet locked us out yet again.  We're waiting for parts from the manufacturer.  They should be here early next week.  Meanwhile, our only fee payable to Alliance Coach was $2.49 for a new Blue Ox tow pin that Wayne bought.  We can't complain.