Little Manatee River State Park Campground
Kiva R.The Dyrt PRO User
Reviewed Mar. 16, 2023

I wanted to love it but I’m disappointed

I was really excited to stay here. I heard so many great things about this park, but we were incredibly disappointed in our site. The site looks like a bulldozer drove thru here and knocked down all the trees and brush last month and left all the debris around the perimeter to rot. Most other sites do not look like this and I’m including photos of ours and another empty one for contrast. We are here for 4 days during spring break but the site is so ugly we won’t be hanging around camp much. Most of them are beautiful so it’s the luck of the draw, I guess. The check-in was easy and the staff at the gate was super sweet. Camp office has ice and firewood but they close at 5 so plan ahead. Bathhouse is new and really nice. Because I think the rest of the park is so nice I’m still giving 4 stars but make sure to look at site photos and avoid mine, which is 17. The other photos in my review are of site 22 and it’s beautiful.

Edit: I came back to remove a star because I went back in n the website to see if any other sites were available since a ton of spaces around us were empty. I could only see availability for “tomorrow” and I could see that a spot that is available tomorrow and the rest of our time here is also empty today. I called the front gate to ask if we could move because of the condition of our site. The lady was VERY offended and said the debris is from a hurricane 6 months ago. I get it. That’s not the issue. The issue is that had I known the site was this bad, I wouldn’t have booked. That shouldn’t have made her mad. But it sure did. She told me I’d have to go online to make a change to my reservation, which I had already tried to do. After talking it over we decided to leave early so I called back a few minutes before 5. She answered an told me she was helping someone in front of her and she’d come back. She came back after 5 and when I told her I wanted to leave early and the website wouldn’t let me cancel my reservation early she said was closing because it was now after 5 and I’d have to call her tomorrow or I could call the main reservation line. I did. They said only the local camp office can help. We will not be back to this park. We drove from out of state to camp 2 days in basically a trash pile and be told we should be happy about it.

Site17
Month of VisitApril
  • Review photo of Little Manatee River State Park Campground by Kiva R., March 16, 2023
  • Review photo of Little Manatee River State Park Campground by Kiva R., March 16, 2023
  • Review photo of Little Manatee River State Park Campground by Kiva R., March 16, 2023
  • Review photo of Little Manatee River State Park Campground by Kiva R., March 16, 2023
  • Review photo of Little Manatee River State Park Campground by Kiva R., March 16, 2023
  • Review photo of Little Manatee River State Park Campground by Kiva R., March 16, 2023
  • Review photo of Little Manatee River State Park Campground by Kiva R., March 16, 2023
  • video of nice (modern) bath house
    Play button icon