We have a group of intrepid music festival attendee’s that regularly participate in the long, late summer weekend of the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Our goal as a group has been to attend the event in ’style’ by leasing a ‘crew/band’ or ‘entertainer’ bus. Unfortunately, our group has been stymied in reaching for an actual bus as the tranportation and accomodation medium we desire. Call it an ego thing, but our group can be as large as 12 people. The standard layout for a ‘crew/band’ or ’sleeper’ bus with 12 bunks would be ideal. However, we have found that the tour bus leasing companies have some other criteria that has precluded our group from attaining this goal.

Primarily, the tour bus leasing companies are interested in leases/rentals that run for longer than 1 week. This makes sense considering the scheduling problems and best return on their investment for the buses. We have mentioned before the ‘prestige’ factor as well. Tour bus leasing companies are interested in ‘bragging’ rights when it comes to the actual entertainers that employ their services as part of their overall marketing plan. As a result, for both the 2006 and 2007 festivals, our group ended up with renting class “C” motorhomes.

In 2006, our group’s vehicle was a 31 foot Class C Winnebago from “happytravelersrvrentals.com”. We were required to rent it for a whole week as part of the standard ’summer season’ rental agreement and the total cost including fuel was around $1700.00. Our group was 7 people and with the cab over bed (2 people), fold out couch (2 people), dinette table converted to bed (1 person) and queen bed in back (2 people), we managed to fit the group. This vehicle did have one slide-out, so it did feel roomy enough. Camping at the Philadelphia Folk Festival is a ‘no services’ situation. We did almost reach full capacity on both the ‘grey’ and ‘black” water storage tanks.

For 2007, we rented from “endlesssummerrv.com”. The vehicle was a 28 foot Class C motorhome from Dutchman. This vehicle did not have a slide-out, but did have a four bunk configuration in the back bedroom. As our group had a last minute cancellation of one couple, the group size was only 5. Sleeping arrangements were no problem, but without even one slide-out it did feel cramped a bit. Once again, without any camping services we came close to capacity on the grey and black water storage tanks. Fees including gas totaled about $1800.00 for the week.