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What is RV Trip Wizard? [2022 REVIEW]

By: Author The Drivin' & Vibin' Team

Posted on January 3, 2022

RV trip planning can feel overwhelming.

You’ll probably be traveling hundreds of miles across many state lines.

Figuring out where to stay and where to stop and how much your trip will cost can soon turn into a headache. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can bring the joy back to road tripping with RV Trip Wizard. 

What is RV Trip Wizard? 

RV Trip Wizard is an all-inclusive trip planning tool. The annual subscription service allows you to design fully customizable road trips down to the last detail. Unlike other RV trip planners, this one shows you all RV parks, not just campgrounds affiliated with a specific membership program. 

This unbiased inclusion means you can find the best and most affordable stops on your trip. If you have multiple memberships, you can rank them to find the best deals. RV Trip Wizard also shows you detailed information about all the campgrounds.

This includes cost, amenities, traveler ratings and tips, and more. 

The app also lets you search for and add overnight parking locations such as Walmart or other big box stores, Casinos, and rest stops. You’ll save money by free camping in areas you’re just passing through.  

Another useful feature is that you can add points of interest, gas station stops, and more for your entire trip.

It Knows Your RV, And Routes Accordingly

Before you plan, you will enter information about your RV, including height, weight, length, gas mileage, etc. The app then uses this information to help you plan the safest and most efficient route.

You can avoid low clearance routes and steep grades with just the click of a button. 

The planning feature also shows you a driving radius so you know exactly how far you can travel in a single day. The information for your trip radius is based on details you enter in the preferences section.

No more hunting for RV parks only to discover they are too far or not far enough for your trip needs. You will save time with this slick feature. 

One more feature worth mentioning is the cost estimator.

You can enter information regarding gas mileage and gas prices. The site then shows you a detailed estimate of what each leg of the trip will cost you.

It also includes the cost of your RV park stays, so you get an overall picture of what you can expect to spend. 

What Does RV Trip Wizard Cost? 

RV Trip Wizard is extremely affordable at only $49/year for the membership. You can also try it before buying with their 1-week free trial and free demo. 

Included in this cost is access to the complete RV Life Pro Suite tools. This includes the RV Safe GPS app and Maintain My RV. 

RV Trip Wizard User Review

RV Trip Wizard has received 4.9 stars from over 1,500 happy customers. Given all the hype, I tried it myself. It definitely lives up to all the great reviews. 

RV Trip Wizard is easy to use and extremely convenient, especially when planning a longer trip. If you aren’t tech-savvy, have no fear, they have a demo that walks you through every step of the process. 

Usually, planning a route for my RV trips is difficult and time-consuming. I end up wasting time looking up every individual RV park website. Not to mention trying to find a gas station that can accommodate our rig before we run out of gas while on the road. I no longer have these problems with RV Trip Wizard. 

The best part is that you can easily add points of interest to the trip. Adding these fun stops along the way can make a long-haul trip much more enjoyable. Plus, we don’t have to worry about missing out on anything along the way only to find out later how cool it would have been to stop. 

If you’re an RVer, you definitely need to add RV Trip Wizard to your trip planning arsenal. 

How to Use RV Trip Wizard

You can use RV Trip Wizard on almost any computer, tablet, or smartphone. With the interactive map, you can add points of interest to your trip and camping and gas station stops. 

Once you plan your trip, you can either print out detailed directions or send it to your GPS. The latter allows you to send your entire trip to Google Maps. This feature makes it easy to navigate on your smartphone. 

RV Trip Wizard is Definitely Worth It

RV Trip Wizard is a dream come true for summer adventurers and full-timers alike. All the features it offers make the small annual fee well worth the cost. Not only will you save time and plan a better trip, but also you will probably save money by finding the best parks or free camping spots around.

Discover the Best Free Camping Across the USA

To be honest with you,  we hate paying for camping . There are so many free campsites in America (with complete privacy).

You should give it a try!

As a matter of fact, these free campsites are yours.  Every time you pay federal taxes, you’re contributing to these lands.

Become a FREE CAMPING INSIDER and join the 100,000 campers who love to score the best site! 

We’ll send you the 50 Best Free Campsites in the USA (one per state).  Access the list by submitting your email below:

Are the maps downloadable or do you have to have internet service?

I need a phone number . I paid but can’t get on

This review sounds interesting! I would love to learn more about the features and benefits of RV Trip Wizard, so please share more details in your next post.

RV Trip Wizard Review (Plan an Epic Trip the Easy Way!)

This article may contain affiliate links .  We earn a small commission (at no additional cost to you) if you make a purchase through these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

What is RV Trip Wizard?

RV Trip Wizard is a trip planning tool that does everything you need to plan an awesome RV trip – map an RV safe route and find the best campgrounds, shopping, gas and stops along the way. RV Trip Wizard makes RV trip planning easy and fast. What’s more, your entire trip can be customized to your own personal travel style and RV size. You can set the filters to show your favorite campground amenities, membership clubs and even route preferences. To top it off, RV Trip Wizard keeps track of your trip cost too!

As a full time RVer, I have planned a lot of RV trips. Until now, I had not found a trip planner that really worked. Enter RV Trip Wizard – it does everything that I have been doing manually for years. And, it does it all in one place!

RV Trip Wizard is definitely worth the $65 per year. It is great for full timers, part timers and road trippers. We are now happily using it to plan all of our RV travels. And another thing, it creates a fantastic trip log! You can look back at your adventures and see where you stayed, the routes you took and the memories you made.

There is even a free 7 day trial so you can try out all the cool RV Trip Wizard features for yourself !

Sounds good right? So, let’s check out how RV Trip Wizard works and what makes it a fantastic RV trip planner.

Keep track of all the neat places you find to check out on day trips.

How does rv trip wizard help you plan an rv trip, rv trip wizard saves time..

RV Trip Wizard provides all the tools you need to easily plan an RV trip that is customized to your RV and travel style.

Have you ever started planning an RV Trip and found yourself jumping from the map, to campground reviews to a list of membership campgrounds? Then switching to a place to save your travel plans? It takes forever right? Well, RV Trip Wizard lets you do it all – in one place! You can map your route, find campgrounds, build your itinerary, read campground reviews and even add shopping, rest areas or attractions along the way. As a result, RV Trip Wizard saves a lot of time .

While you plan your trip, it’s easy to see your route, each overnight stay, and your daily driving distance. Exporting, emailing or sharing your trip in a variety of formats is easy too. Additionally, it is very intuitive to use, so you can jump right in and start planning your next RV trip.

See where your next stop should be at a glance!

As soon as you start planning your trip, you’ll know exactly where to zoom in and look for your next campground! How cool is that?

This is one of my favorite features! Here’s how it works. First, you add your preferred minimum, middle, and maximum daily driving distance (in miles) to your RV Trip Wizard settings. Then, as you plan, RV Trip Wizard overlays concentric circles on the map to tell you where your next stop should be! You can even set your driving distance radius to Classic (as the crow flies) or Advanced (actual driv ing distance ).

Save money by prioritizing your RV membership club campgrounds.

RV Trip Wizard makes it simple to find membership campgrounds on your route. So, you can use the ones that save you the most money. As a matter of fact, there are two ways to do this; use the map filters to display your favorite RV clubs or simply rank your preferred campground memberships.

Rank your RV membership clubs and instantly find your favorites on the map.

One of the first things you’ll want to do is to rank your membership clubs in the order that you prefer. This tells RV Trip Wizard which icon to show on the map for a campground.

Let’s say, for example, you are a member of Thousand Trails, Passport America and Good Sam. Rank your memberships based on your nightly rates as follows:

• Thousand Trails – $0 per night
• Passport America – 50% off
• Good Sam – 10% off

Now, imagine that a campground on your route is a Thousand Trails park and a Good Sam park. Since you have ranked Thousand Trails as your first choice, RV Trip Wizard will show the Thousand Trails icon for the park on the map. So you’ll not only know where all of your membership parks are along your route but also which membership will save you the most money at a particular park. Pretty sweet right?

Tip: If all of the icons on your map are the same green campground icon it is because you haven’t selected any preferred parks. To select and rank your preferred parks go to User, then Default Settings, then the Membership & Preferences tab.

Use filters to show only your membership parks.

Of course, there are times you only want to see specific membership club parks. After all, they can save you a lot of money. RV Trip Wizard filters make it effortless, simply choose the membership types to show. That’s it!

Easily customize your trip based on your travel preferences.

This is where RV Trip Wizard can really help you plan the best RV Trip for you based on your own camping style.

Love full hook up sites? Use the filters to show campgrounds that have full hookups. Want to go for a swim every afternoon? Set the filters to campgrounds with a pool. Prefer camping at State or National Parks? Yup, there are filters for that too.

See campground reviews, ratings and details right in RV Trip Wizard.

As you plan your trip, simply select a campground on the map to see its detailed information and reviews. Everything you need to know about the campground is right there! Reviews, hookup types, price range, amenities, wifi/data service availability, membership affiliations and even satellite maps. This is another feature that saves a lot of time!

When you select a park on the map, you’ll see a quick info box. It includes: the park rating and number of reviews, the mileage from your previous stop, the price range and all amenities. You can immediately add the park to your trip, see park details, or center it. Centering the park makes it the starting point for your daily driving distance radius so you can see how it fits in with the rest of your trip.

Want even more information about the park? Select park details and take a look.

What you’ll find when you open the park details box:

• RV Park info – address, phone number, website, number of sites and time zone.
• Membership affiliations.
• Satellite map link that takes you directly to a Google satellite map of the campground. This is very useful for looking at the park layout and surrounding neighborhood.
• Features – amenities and wifi/cell data connectivity.
• Reviews – The first few reviews are right in RV Trip Wizard. If you’d like to view more, a single click opens the Campground Reviews page for the campground in a new window.
• Nightly rate paid by each reviewer.
• Photos – Any photos of the campground that have been added by reviewers.
• Tips from other RVers.
• Weather averages for the area.

Add a custom route or stop to your trip.

Let’s say, you want to stay overnight at a friend’s house or a Harvest Hosts location. All you need to do is enter the address in the search bar or right click on the map to add a custom stop to your trip.

Or maybe you just want to go your own way. For instance, if you want to avoid a city or check out the scenic route. Nothing to it. Just drag the route to the road you’d like to take.

RV Trip Wizard estimates your trip cost as you plan.

While you create your itinerary, RV Trip Wizard calculates your estimated costs for gas, camping, meals and miscellaneous expenses.

You can enter an average cost for each item that will be applied to each stop. Or, for a more accurate estimate, you can enter your specific costs for each stay.

Fuel cost is calculated using your route’s mileage and your vehicle’s MPG. Now you’re probably thinking: That’s great, but how am I supposed to know the price of gas in each area I travel through? Well, all you need to do is right click on the map and click Check Fuel Prices. Then, just like that, you’ll see current fuel prices for your fuel type at each gas station in the area. You’ll know which gas stations have the best price so you can save money on fuel too!

So, camping nightly costs and fuel prices are easily available in RV Trip Wizard. You’re on your own for meals and miscellaneous expenses though:)

See elevations and gradients along your route.

Now this is really cool! RV Trip Wizard shows you the elevations and road grades on your route. This is a big deal for RVers. It is also information that is o ddly difficult to find outside of RV Trip Wizard . Encountering a very steep grade on a road trip in your car may be no big deal, but it can be another story entirely for a large RV.

Tip: Over a long trip the gradient shown may be fairly general. So, if you are concerned about a particular area, simply open up a new trip in a new window. Then map from point A to point B to get more detailed grade information over a shorter distance.

Map an RV safe route based on your RV size and weight.

RV Trip Wizard maps your route on roads that are safe for your RV size. This means you won’t need to worry about hazards like low bridges or steep mountain grades. Once you’ve entered your RV Info – height, length, weight and whether you carry propane – RV Trip Wizard does the rest.

And on top of that, it even tells you when to get gas along the way by using your vehicle’s gas tank size, reserve fuel capacity and MPG. Similarly, you have the choice to specify what type of roads to take or avoid.

A word of caution. We’ve probably all had GPS units or Google maps take us on some strange routes, so I’m not inclined to be too trusting of any mapping software. If you are traveling through any areas of concern in terms of route planning, it is a good idea to double check your route before hitting the road. Satellite, terrain, street view and Google Earth are great free tools for this. Also , if you are visiting a campground in a mountainous area a sk if they recommend a specific route.

Export, share or send your itinerary to GPS.

There are lots of options to export and share your trips too! Print it. Email it. Export it to .XLS. Send it to a GPS or Google Maps. Share a link. Share a copy.

Need offline access to your trip? No problem, export or print it. Want to send it to a friend? Email your itinerary or share a link to your route map.

One of my favorite ways to export my itinerary is via email. The email includes a day by day itinerary with links to google maps, campground details and contact information for each stay. This is especially handy if you use a map app on your phone. You can just click the link to map to your campground.

Web based app allows access from any web browser.

RV Trip Wizard is web based so you can access and plan your trips from any device with a web browser. There is no need to install an application. Using a full sized screen to do some of my planning is a great option to have. It also works well and is easy to use on my phone. Here’s how it looks on a phone.

Easily locate Points of Interest along your route.

Of course, there ‘ s more to planning an RV trip than just campgrounds. For instance, sometimes you’ll want to find a rest area or gas station along your route. Or a Camping World. Maybe a Cracker Barrel for a quick overnight stay. Well, the RV Trip Wizard points of interest filters have you covered. There are over 57,000 points of interest so it’s simple to find exactly what you are looking for.

Great for planning a cross country trip and full-time RVers.

Above and beyond all of the features we’ve already looked at, RV Trip Wizard is extremely useful for planning a long RV trip. For example, the classic American cross country road trip! And of course, for full-time RVers. Here’s why:

First, you can add unlimited stops to your trips. This is awesome. Have you ever planned most of a trip only to find out you can’t add any more stops to the map? Yeah, well, that’s not so much fun.

Second, it’s easy to add, rearrange or remove stops. So, if you make it halfway through your trip, and want to take a detour, all you need to do is rearrange a night or two.

Third, you can copy your entire trip. So, let’s say you’ve planned part of a trip and there are two routes to your destination that you might want to take. Just copy your trip, so you can add stops and compare the routes. Then weigh the pros and cons of each choice, choose a route and off you go!

Here’s a trick I use to keep track of all the sights I want to check out on our road trips.

Whenever I find a cool spot to visit near one of our stops, I add it to the comments field. So, when we arrive, I a lready have a list of p laces we’d like to see. Since you can add up to 7500 characters to the comments section there is plenty of room.

You can add day trips directly to your trip if you’d like to. I prefer to keep our RV travel days and routes separated from our day trips. It lets me easily review our RV travel routes and provides more flexibility to schedule our activities at each location. After all , a rainy day is great for a museum but not for a hike.

RV Trip Wizard is a great way to document your RV travels.

While I was planning several upcoming trips, I realized that I could use RV Trip Wizard to document our RV adventures. So I added all of our RV travels to RV Trip Wizard by year. I absolutely love how it turned out!

Now it’s simple to refer back to every route we’ve taken and every place we’ve stayed over the past 9 years! The best part is, all of my notes about each location and route are included for each stop in the trip. I’ve exported the trip to pdf, xls and email so I can look at our RV travel logs in RV Trip Wizard, in email or on my laptop.

Here’s how to do it. Create a new trip and name it. For example, Towing Home RV Travel Log 2021. Then start adding your travel routes, campground stays, costs and any notes. Before you know it you’ll be able to look back on all or your RV travels!

Is RV Trip Wizard Worth it?

Yes, absolutely. RV Trip Wizard includes all the tools you need to research and plan an epic RV journey! It’s a great RV trip planner for full-timers, part-timers and roadtrippers. RV Trip Wizard makes RV trip planning very easy and saves a whole lot of time in the process.

In addition to that, it helps you save money by prioritizing your RV membership clubs and locating the best gas prices on your route. As you plan, RV Trip Wizard estimates your expenses so you’ll have a good idea of how much your trip will cost before you leave.

To top it off, RV Trip Wizard plans an RV safe route so that you can relax and enjoy the adventure ! Sharing your itinerary is easy too.

At $65 per year, RV Trip Wizard is definitely worth it. There is even a free 7 day trial so you might as well try it out for yourself . I’m betting you’ll love it:)

So, what’s stopping you? Save time, save money and plan an awesome RV trip that’s customized to your travel style!

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Is RV Life Trip Wizard Worth the Money?

Rv life trip wizard is a planning tool specially designed for rvers. it’s helpful, but is rv life trip wizard worth the money yes here's why….

• 1 RV Life Trip Wizard is a planning tool specially designed for RVers. It’s helpful, but is RV Life Trip Wizard worth the money? YES! Here's why…
• 2 Why We Use RV LIFE Trip Wizard
• 3.1 Trip Planning Made Easy
• 3.2 Trustworthy Reviews
• 3.3 RV-Safe GPS
• 3.4 Maintenance and Fuel Economy Tracking
• 4 How Much Does RV Life Pro Cost?
• 5 When is RV LIFE Pro NOT Worth the Money?
• 6 Look through more of our Resources and Partners

Whenever I answer questions like these, I usually present the information and let you decide whether or not it’s worth it. I’m going to give you a more direct answer this time and say that in most cases, RV Life Trip Wizard is well worth the money. 

The reason I say this with more confidence than ever before is that Trip Wizard is now bundled into a suite of tools called RV LIFE Pro . You now get 4-tools-in-1 for one very reasonable annual payment. 

There are a couple of situations where RV Life Pro wouldn’t be worth it for you, which I’m also going to explain in this article. First, let’s discuss the benefits that make it worth the money, and then we’ll close with the exceptions.

There are affiliate links in this post – and we tell you why in the next section!

If you buy something through our links, we may get a small commission at no extra cost to you. It helps keep our lights on so we can continue to provide helpful resources for RVers. Read our  full affiliate disclosure here.

Why We Use RV LIFE Trip Wizard

Jennifer and I have been living our dream of the RV Lifestyle since 2012. We’ve always embraced a serendipitous style of travel and used to hit the road with only paper maps and a vague destination in mind. Planning, in many ways, was more stressful for us and took a lot of the fun out of the process.

However, when we discovered RV LIFE Trip Wizard (formerly known as RV Trip Wizard), we were quickly sold on the planning features that actually helped us travel more serendipitously. That may seem counterintuitive at first, but you’ll understand as you continue to read how the tool actually helps us not need to rigidly plan far ahead.

It is, of course, great for planning ahead, too! It takes the stress out of planning, which has led us to plan more than ever before. But when we do, we always leave plenty of room in our plans for serendipity to work its magic.

That being said, it’s important to note that we (RV Lifestyle) partnered and became affiliates with RV LIFE after we realized how useful it was to us and fellow RVers. We've been affiliates them for years now! We know first-hand how helpful it can be and since we are partners, our RV Lifestyle community can use a special discount code when signing up for membership! All the details are at the bottom of this post.

Why RV LIFE Pro is Worth It

I know you started off asking if RV Trip Wizard is worth it, but the real question now is “Is RV LIFE Pro worth it?” The reason for the change is Trip Wizard is now bundled with 3 other tools under the RV LIFE Pro umbrella.

The four RV Life Pro tools make it easy for you to discover, plan, go, and share your RV trips. The 4-in-1 membership includes:

• RV LIFE Trip Wizard
• RV LIFE Campground Reviews
• RV LIFE App (RV-Safe GPS)
• RV LIFE Maintenance Tracker

Just to be clear, you get all four of these tools in one with an RV LIFE Pro membership for a very reasonable price. I think most users would agree the price is actually cheap considering the value it brings. We’ll talk price at the end but first I want to explain why it’s worth the tiny investment.

Trip Planning Made Easy

These tools are specifically designed for RVers. You can customize your settings accordingly, including inputting your RV’s size and weight. 

RV LIFE Trip Wizard plots safe routes based on your settings. For instance, it avoids any low clearances, steep grades, or weight limits based on your RV’s height and weight. It also only populates campgrounds that fit your settings.

It first shows you which campgrounds fit your criteria, and then it takes you to the next logical step: more info on the campground. Trip Wizard shows you more campground info with a click and works seamlessly with RV LIFE Campground Reviews. 

My favorite feature of Trip Wizard is the travel rings on the map that show where you will end up at the end of the driving day. This is the part that helps us serendipitously decide what to do on the go based on what happens to be nearby.

Trustworthy Reviews

RV LIFE Campground Reviews are from real RVers like you and me. Unfortunately, public reviews like Google and Yelp can’t always be trusted. In too many cases, the “reviewer” is actually the one being reviewed!

However, RV LIFE reviews are very trustworthy. Fellow users leave reviews with the pros and cons of their experiences. Plus, they often include images so you can see the recent state of the campground. No more relying on the edited images on campground websites that were taken who-knows-when. 

RV-Safe GPS

The newest edition to the RV LIFE sweet is a doozie: the RV LIFE app. RV LIFE is an easy-to-use GPS app, like Google Maps or Waze, but it’s specifically designed for RVs. 

It will only plot routes and show gas stations, etc. that are acceptable for your particular RV.

You can use the app on its own by searching or entering a destination. Or, best yet, you can link it to your RV LIFE Trip Wizard and pull any planned trips into the app. The app then plots your planned trip on the GPS.

You can easily adjust the trip as needed. You can add or remove destinations, search for and add points of interest, and much more.

Maintenance and Fuel Economy Tracking

To top it all off, RV LIFE Pro helps you keep track of your maintenance and fuel economy with RV LIFE Maintenance Tracker. Simple graphics in the tool’s dashboard and emails let you know what maintenance is coming up, quickly and easily.

You can also track expenses by category and maintenance costs to see how well your RV is performing. You can track it by trip, season, or even over the life of your RV.

Another big plus is its fuel economy tracking. You can see how much gas your rig is consuming based on terrain, towing load, or generator use. This information is really helpful to have when budgeting for your next trip.

How Much Does RV Life Pro Cost?

RV Life Pro only costs $59 per year if you purchase the annual membership ( less than $5 per month ). The annual membership also comes with a 7-day free trial. The monthly subscription is $19.99 per month and does not include a 7-day free trial. BUT NOTE the discount code below!

In all honesty, just one of these tools is easily worth $5 per month, let alone all four combined. That is why I don’t hesitate to say that RV LIFE Pro is worth the money for most RVers.

And this is important – if you want to enjoy using all the RV Life Pro tools just add this coupon code: RVLIFESTYLE which gives you 25% off the price! If you already use RV Life Pro – your cost is already low and locked in.

–> Note that discount codes must be entered on a computer – if you try to sign up with the mobile app, there is no place to put the coupon code. <–

When is RV LIFE Pro NOT Worth the Money?

Hopefully, by now, you realize why RV LIFE Pro is well worth the money in most cases. But, of course, there are a couple of cases when it’s not worth it. 

The first case is if you’re an anti-planner. If you’re a free-flying RVer that enjoys leaving everything up to chance, then these tools aren’t for you. (Although, even you could use the RV Maintenance Tracker and that’s worth $5 a month on its own.) 

Keep in mind, though, that I’m not huge on planning yet I still love and use these tools all the time. 

The other thing I’d say is not worth it is the monthly subscription. Well, let me rephrase that. The monthly subscription is absolutely worth the money, but you get a much better deal with the annual subscription.

If you know for a fact that you’re only going to plan and travel within two months, then the monthly subscription can save you a bit of money. But if you expect to use the RV Life tools for more than two months, then the annual membership is definitely the way to go. 

Look through more of our Resources and Partners

You can check out our Partners Page right here — RV Lifestyle Partners

For more great resources, check out Our Favorite RV Lifestyle Travel Books .

Published on 2022-03-11

Mike Wendland is a multiple Emmy-award-winning Journalist, Podcaster, YouTuber, and Blogger, who has traveled with his wife, Jennifer, all over North America in an RV, sharing adventures and reviewing RV, Camping, Outdoor, Travel and Tech Gear for the past 12 years. They are leading industry experts in RV living and have written 18 travel books.

3 Responses to “Is RV Life Trip Wizard Worth the Money?”

March 02, 2024at6:51 pm , Steve Pinkston said:

Just wondering how how accurate the directions are since it can’t even get me from my house to the street I live on. I routes me over two ridges and through a deep ravine (all through forest) to a subdivision 1 mile away. I will find out beginning next week with a trip to Florida but will be prepared to switch to the phone if anythings seems fishy.

December 18, 2023at1:05 pm , J Dewey said:

No, it is not worth the money. Why would I follow the RV Life route of 500+ miles when I know an RV safe route of 233 miles exists? Are they in cahoots with the gas companies? This is stupid.

February 05, 2023at3:49 pm , Scott Creech said:

When in route & following trip wizard route are you using cell data while it’s running. My truck has built in gps but not able to input size.

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RV Trip Wizard Reviewed: The Good, Bad & Good-To-Know (Meta Review)

Discover what the internet is saying about RV Trip Wizard .

Yay or nay?

Upgraded Reviews scanned the web to find out what real users are saying about RV Trip Wizard.

See the highlights below and decide for yourself!

Table of contents

✅ pros, ❌ cons.

• ⚖️ Summaries
• 💸 Top Discount

💸 Top Current Discount

⚖️ final say.

Read the summaries of what reviewers think about RV Trip Wizard below.

Dislcaimer The display of third-party trademarks and trade names on this site does not necessarily indicate any affiliation or endorsement by Upgraded Reviews. If you click a link and buy a product or service on another website, we may be paid a fee by the merchant.

Author Upgraded Reviews

Posted January 28, 2024 — 7:00 pm

Categories Uncategorized

Full-time RV Travel Adventure

Easy Planning with RV Trip Wizard

In our group, traveling to and from Alaska, we chose to use RV Trip Wizard software because it has great features. Planning with RV Trip Wizard is easy. You can use RV Trip Wizard on any computing device, including your phone. And RV Trip Wizard software is powerful. The more information you include during your planning the more detail you can get out of RV Trip Wizard.

All of the planning for our RV trip to Alaska and multiple revisions were made using RV Trip Wizard RV route planning software. Each member of our group had their copy of the software and each time a change was made they could then send copies out to the different group members and then discuss the changes. The fact is that the RV Trip Wizard route planning software made planning our trip much easier than it would have been without it. I will discuss later how to use RV Trip Wizard and how you can use it to plan any RV trip. I will also tell you how to get a discount on RV Trip Wizard.

Who did the planning for our epic RV Trip to Alaska?

I am going to say right up front, that I didn’t do most of the planning for our trip to Alaska. I am also not an RV Trip Wizard expert. My friend Dave is the expert and I have put his video at the bottom of this post.

We have been on the road full-time for six years. During that time I have used multiple different route planning solutions. None of them equals the power of RV Trip Wizard. Here is a link to the home page of our blog. Our blog is dedicated to helping others by sharing things we know and learned while on the road. FoxRVTravel Full-time RV Travel Adventure

If you want to go directly to the list of all our articles here is a link. FoxRVTravel Search All Posts

I have companion articles that I am working on that are linked to this article. The first one is in this link How to Plan (and Take) an Epic RV Trip Across Canada to Alaska

How to plan an RV trip using RV Trip Wizard for first-time users.

After subscribing and entering the RV Trip Wizard program home page in the upper right corner enter the trip planning system by selecting the red “Go to Planner” button. If you haven’t already subscribed to RV Trip Wizard you will need a trial subscription to the program. If you only want to try RV Trip Wizard you can get a seven-day free trial . When subscribing to RV Trip Wizard, don’t forget to use the discount code ( TIGNER25 ) to get 25% off your subscription.

From the home page of RV Trip Wizard, in the upper right corner of the home page press the red “Go to Planner” button.

The planning tool will open with a new set of buttons allowing you to open a new trip using the “Create Trip” button or “Open Trip” button for a trip already created. In the next picture, you can see that for this version of RV Trip Wizard, I already have one trip created the indication is the red #1. In my normal working copy of RV Trip Wizard, the number is much larger because all the revisions from our friends are included in the planning software.

Select “Create Trip”, and this will open a new dialogue box so that you can give the trip a name, and start date (don’t worry if you are guessing you can always change these things later).

This will open a dialog box that starts with “Choose your Starting Location” From here enter the start city, either from your location or type in a start city (I typed in Great Falls Montana), or choose a starting location from a map.

The next dialog box allows you to set “Trip Settings”. This includes “General Information”, “RV Information”, “Route and Driving preferences”, and “Expenses. I entered our RV Information for size and weight and selected “Avoid tolls” and “Avoid ferries” under Route and Driving. You can change these settings later as well.

Start to plan an RV trip

Finishing the “Trip Settings” will open a map and visitation sequence on the next page. Here is where you can start planning your route. Before you start planning you might want to select the tool icon (it looks like a wrench) above the visitation sequence and explore the settings.

To plan an RV trip I recommend first selecting a start location and then next adding an end location. Or you could plan an RV trip step by step without first identifying an end location. If you are making a round trip I would specify the furthest point you intend to travel as your end location. Then create a new second trip for your return route. By identifying both the start and end location this allows the Trip Wizard tool to supply you with a proposed route.

To enter a location in your route use the search box (top center) and type in the destination. When found, use the “add to trip” button to place the destination in the visitation sequence. When you are planning your route to Alaska I recommend using Tok Alaska as your end location. I also used Tok as the starting point for my RV trip through Alaska.

This next dialogue box will accomplish the same thing as the previous one except that I made the routing to a campground giving me additional options. Notice the number of nights setting. You can add nights to a stop in multiple ways.

Map view from Great Falls to Tok including a green Driving Range Circle, more on that later.

This visitation sequence (to the left of the map) will then calculate the miles from Great Falls to Tok Alaska.

Using tools

One of the first things you might want to change would be miles to kilometers because nearly all of this route will be in Canada. This setting was selected under the “General” tab under “Trip Settings”. To change to kilometers at this point select the wrench icon and then “Trip Settings”. “Trip Settings” is the same “Trip Settings” that we encountered when first “Create Trip”

When planning an RV trip to a distant destination I recommend not selecting campgrounds until later in the process after you identify the cities you intend to travel through and stop at. This allows you to get a general idea of your route. You can always go back and add more detail to your trip.

The RV Trip Wizard driving radius circle

You may have noticed the green circle surrounding Tok on the map view. This is a straight-line distance circle. Based on the location that you have selected in the visitation sequence box. You can change this circle to a free-form smart circle by choosing the “Map Settings” button above and to the right of the map and selecting “Driving Radius”.

You can turn “Driving Radius” off or select “Advanced Radius” which calculates driving times based on speed limits.

Change the size of the driving radius in the “Map Settings” section. You can even create three different driving radius circles. Play with the driving radius to match the driving radius to your desires. Or, you may want to turn it off and on frequently while planning your route. All these options are under the “Trip Settings” and “Map Settings” dialogue box.

Adding a stop

At this point, we only have the beginning and the end of our route sequenced into Trip Wizard. To make the route planning tool useful, you are going to need to add (and remove) stops along the route. Adding a stop is nearly identical to the sequence we used to put Tok as the final destination. The only difference is that you will need to select a previous location (in our case Great Falls) to put Edmonton between Great Falls and Tok.

As a review, type Edmonton in the search box then after the dialogue box opens select “Add to Trip”.

Go ahead and add Whitehorse as another stop along your route between Edmonton and Tok. Don’t forget to add Whitehorse after your stop in Edmonton.

At this point, your visitation sequence should look like this.

You can re-order stops

The easiest way to re-order stops is in the visitation sequence. You can drag and drop by placing your cursor at the far left side of the stop in the visitation sequence and then drag the stop to a new position. The route on your map view will automatically change.

Planning an off-route detour

You don’t have to plan your RV trip using my method of selecting a starting point and an endpoint. Instead, you could plan it step by step without first identifying the destination. The advantage of using my method is that you will have a quick very direct (perhaps not the most direct) route to your destination. If you want you can use the RV Trip Wizard direct route it doesn’t mean that you can’t deviate from the direct route.

So far we have only added stops along our route between Great Falls and Tok. This might be a good time to introduce a detour to an off-route destination. We didn’t go to Dawson City on our trip but you would add Dawson City to your route the same way you added Whitehorse. This will redraw your route between Whitehorse and Tok to include Dawson City.

There is a reason that this created an out-and-back route to Whitehorse. There is a ferry crossing across the Yukon River at Dawson City to go to Tok. At the very beginning of this tutorial, I selected avoid ferries. To get from Dawson City to Tok it involves a ferry. The only way to avoid the ferry is to return to Whitehorse. Since we are talking about crossing the Yukon River it might be closed in May as well. Make sure to anticipate these possibilities when planning your route.

Editing a stop

As you scroll over the location in the visitation sequence one of the three slideout buttons is shaped like a pencil. Select this slideout button and a dialogue box will appear where you can add all kinds of information to that stop. In the upper left corner of the dialogue box is an icon that looks like a padlock. Selecting this allows you to lock the location dates you have selected for this location. I recommend using this lock function when you have a reservation at a location so that the dates cannot be accidentally changed.

Stay the night

Locking the dates as in the edit stop function described above is only one way to change the dates. When you first add a stop to the visitation sequence one of the options will be to identify the number of nights you want to stay at that location. You can also change this in the “Edit Stop” dialogue box (upper right corner), add a number in the night text box, and press save. This will add nights to your visitation sequence.

As you add nights to your visitation sequence the arrival date will change at your destination. Unless of course, you locked your destination date. Then attempting to add nights to your visitation sequence can create an error that will need to be resolved.

Deleting a stop

Changing or deleting a stop is just as easy as adding a stop. Scroll over the visitation sequence box this will bring a slideout box out to the right side of the stop that has three options. The trash can is for deleting the stop. The lock symbol means to lock the stop to the route and the pencil icon means to edit the stop. You can also delete the stop in the “Edit Stop” dialogue box.

Be careful with the lock button

I mentioned the lock button briefly before. If you can’t change the nights or delete the stop you may have the lock engaged.

Multiple routes

I recommend that you divide your routes into smaller sections. A really good way to do this is to create multiple routes in RV Trip Wizard. In our example, our first route is from Great Falls to Tok. Then starting in you could create a route from Tok to (as we did) going to Homer. A good third route would be from Homer back to Tok. One benefit of multiple routes is that you use the same roads going to and from places like Homer which require traveling both north and south on the same road. When this happens the map looks a little confused.

Revisiting the Trip Settings

I zipped right past the trip setting (twice) in this tutorial. Return to “Trip Settings” and explore how powerful RV Trip Wizard can be. In addition to avoiding locations too small for your RV, RV Trip Wizard can even alert you when your travel leg exceeds the available fuel in your RV. RV Trip Wizard is a very powerful tool.

Wait there’s more

How was that for an infomercial talk? When you subscribe to RV Life Pro you get RV Trip Wizard, RV Life Safe RV GPS, RV Life Maintenance, RV Life Master Class, and RV Life Campgrounds.

Video about RV trip planning

Dave Tigner has lots of helpful hints about RV trip planning and RV Trip Wizard in the following video which is part one of several videos he has on the subject.

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As you know, our blog income is zero – this allows us to be independent and just tell the truth.  We do not get income or commissions. No, we don’t make paid endorsements.  We don’t make recommendations but instead, we will tell you what we like (or dislike). The links are only provided as a quick reference to help our readers.

Special Deal on RV Trip Wizard: Even though I am not an affiliate of RV Life our friend Dave Tigner is affiliated with them. Dave is in the video included in this article. You might have even seen Dave at the Quartzite RV show presenting Trip Wizard at the RV Life booth. If you use the discount code ( TIGNER25 ) you will get 25% off the price of Trip Wizard and Dave will get a small commission on the purchase.

RV Life Trip Wizard make sure to use the discount code ( TIGNER25 ) for 25% off the price.

Tigner Adventures Website

Tigner Adventures YouTube Channel

FoxRVTravel Full-time RV Travel Adventure

FoxRVTravel How to Plan an RV Trip Across Canada to Alaska

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4 thoughts on “Easy Planning with RV Trip Wizard”

Pingback: How to Plan (and Take) an Epic RV Trip Across Canada to Alaska - FoxRVTravel

Pingback: How to Plan (and Take) an Epic RV Trip Through Alaska - FoxRVTravel

Excellent article! We are linking to this particularly great content on our site. Keep up the great writing.

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