Hello. On order and waiting.

[Epigram]

After spending much of October and November 2018 travelling many miles looking at California Oceans, Beaches, Transporters and Marco Polos, I finally decided do some “skiing”, i.e. spending the kids inheritance. At the beginning of December I ordered a new Marco Polo on a factory order.

An estimated delivery date of early March during the dealer purchase discussions slipped a month as soon as the deposit was paid. It is now due April 2019.

We are fortunate to have a small apartment in the Alpes and spend a lot of time there in the summer and winter months. To distract me from the wait, I have decided to do the other sort of skiing - the stuff with the snow. I am hoping the MP will arrive in time to start new adventures at the end of the ski season.

The weather is not good for skiing today, my mind has drifted back to the MP. I have decided to write this and register on the forum even though I don’t yet have the “collateral” of a vehicle, I have at least parted with the deposit!

During my purchase deliberations I spent time looking at the MP and California club forums. Many thanks to all you people that have put up informative and helpful posts. It is very clear that many MB dealers know little about the campervan side of the vehicle, it has been left to the networking some pioneering forum members to sort out basic issues.

I would like to think MB dealers are reading the forum and taking note. Perhaps their sales / service training should include covering (and responding to) some of the issues raised in the forum? It would also give them feedback to improve customer service.

Thanks also to contributors who don’t own MPs but have put product rivalries aside to be extremely helpful in bringing their wider experience of campervanning to this forum. After all, the vehicles are the means to the pleasure and enjoyment we hope achieve in our respective pastimes.

I am building up a list of questions but I will use the grey skiing days to trawl the forum threads before I ask.

I would be grateful to forum members if they added details of their travels and places visited to the thread to help convince my wife that I have made a sound decision!

.

 

[Roy C]

Currently we are camping with the MP at Fylingdales in the North Yorks Moors - just a few miles from Whitby and Robin Hood’s bay. We decided to do a bit of a test run of winter camping since we have the auxiliary warm air heater. Whilst the temperatures are not as low as the Alps the van has coped well with 5/6 degrees day time highs and 0 degrees nightime lows. We have no roof topper and didn’t even have the heater on overnight but managed to say perfectly snug under the duvet. This morning I turned the heater on via the remote so we could crawl out of the duvet to a toastie van. With a topper and the heater I can’t see any temperatures being a problem.

Last year, our first with a campervan, we did Lake District in May, Car Fest in July (amazing festival by the way), Peak District in July, Northumberland in June. This year aside from the current trip in North Yorks Moors we have Norfolk coast booked for February, British Grand Prix camping booked for July and surfing in Cornwall for two weeks booked for August. Planning on Snowdonia at some point to do zip lining and the trampoline and traversing activities in the old slate caverns.

We still get fly to far way holiday destinations but the van gives us so many little breaks to look forward to.

 

[sashko]

Probably, You must buy roof cargo box, because there is no enough place inside for two pairs of the skis. We have twintip skis.

 

[mptripsaway]

Great post Epigram.
We ( my wife and I) have owned our factory ordered MP since Jul 2017 which I think is one of the earlier ones in the UK and we have enjoyed many trips away in it, as well as it performing admirably as my daily drive, I have posted once or twice on some of our longer trips which you may or may not choose to read.
Being retired from FT work we have the flexibility to make full use of our MP and just this week we have decided to set the compass south and head for a six week break to Spain, we leave next Thurs with nothing pre-booked other than the ferry crossing, that (for me) is what a campervan is all about. Which brings me too my question....Just realised my question should be in a different thread so I've moved it to the correct forum.

 

[Epigram]

Great post Epigram.
We ( my wife and I) have owned our factory ordered MP since Jul 2017 which I think is one of the earlier ones in the UK and we have enjoyed many trips away in it, as well as it performing admirably as my daily drive, I have posted once or twice on some of our longer trips which you may or may not choose to read.
Being retired from FT work we have the flexibility to make full use of our MP and just this week we have decided to set the compass south and head for a six week break to Spain, we leave next Thurs with nothing pre-booked other than the ferry crossing, that (for me) is what a campervan is all about. Which brings me too my question....Just realised my question should be in a different thread so I've moved it to the correct forum.

Thanks for the welcome. I will look out some of your posts. I seem to remember seeing your post re the Tour de France last year. Did you get to see it? Our apartment is between two of the classic mountain passes (Col de Galibier and Col d’ Izoard) so we see it go by most years. If it arrives in time, I am hoping to get the van parked near one of the steep sections to see more action. Have a great trip to Spain.

 

[Epigram]

Probably, You must buy roof cargo box, because there is no enough place inside for two pairs of the skis. We have twintip skis.

Thanks. The van will probably be garaged during the ski season so no need to put skis in, but I do plan to get it up into the mountains between spring and autumn so that we can go on longer hikes.

 

[Epigram]

Currently we are camping with the MP at Fylingdales in the North Yorks Moors - just a few miles from Whitby and Robin Hood’s bay. We decided to do a bit of a test run of winter camping since we have the auxiliary warm air heater. Whilst the temperatures are not as low as the Alps the van has coped well with 5/6 degrees day time highs and 0 degrees nightime lows. We have no roof topper and didn’t even have the heater on overnight but managed to say perfectly snug under the duvet. This morning I turned the heater on via the remote so we could crawl out of the duvet to a toastie van. With a topper and the heater I can’t see any temperatures being a problem.

Last year, our first with a campervan, we did Lake District in May, Car Fest in July (amazing festival by the way), Peak District in July, Northumberland in June. This year aside from the current trip in North Yorks Moors we have Norfolk coast booked for February, British Grand Prix camping booked for July and surfing in Cornwall for two weeks booked for August. Planning on Snowdonia at some point to do zip lining and the trampoline and traversing activities in the old slate caverns.

We still get fly to far way holiday destinations but the van gives us so many little breaks to look forward to.

Thanks RoyC. Your being at Robin Hood’s Bay has reminded me that we walked the Coast to Coast in May a few years back (I have never been so wet in my life) and I think revistiting a couple of sections to see some of the views we missed is definitely on the cards.
Unfortunately, I dare not talk about surfing in Cornwall in front of my children, I will lose the van before it arrives! I am glad to hear you van copes well with low temperatures - nothing like being warm when it’s cold outside!

 

[GeorgeG]

After spending much of October and November 2018 travelling many miles looking at California Oceans, Beaches, Transporters and Marco Polos, I finally decided do some “skiing”, i.e. spending the kids inheritance. At the beginning of December I ordered a new Marco Polo on a factory order.

An estimated delivery date of early March during the dealer purchase discussions slipped a month as soon as the deposit was paid. It is now due April 2019.

We are fortunate to have a small apartment in the Alpes and spend a lot of time there in the summer and winter months. To distract me from the wait, I have decided to do the other sort of skiing - the stuff with the snow. I am hoping the MP will arrive in time to start new adventures at the end of the ski season.

The weather is not good for skiing today, my mind has drifted back to the MP. I have decided to write this and register on the forum even though I don’t yet have the “collateral” of a vehicle, I have at least parted with the deposit!

During my purchase deliberations I spent time looking at the MP and California club forums. Many thanks to all you people that have put up informative and helpful posts. It is very clear that many MB dealers know little about the campervan side of the vehicle, it has been left to the networking some pioneering forum members to sort out basic issues.

I would like to think MB dealers are reading the forum and taking note. Perhaps their sales / service training should include covering (and responding to) some of the issues raised in the forum? It would also give them feedback to improve customer service.

Thanks also to contributors who don’t own MPs but have put product rivalries aside to be extremely helpful in bringing their wider experience of campervanning to this forum. After all, the vehicles are the means to the pleasure and enjoyment we hope achieve in our respective pastimes.

I am building up a list of questions but I will use the grey skiing days to trawl the forum threads before I ask.

I would be grateful to forum members if they added details of their travels and places visited to the thread to help convince my wife that I have made a sound decision!

.

Welcome Epigram, it’s great that we can help. Personally, I find owners forums, whether it’s for campervans, cars, hifi or whatever, an immensely valuable resource and one of the benefits of the internet. My experience of salesman today is that one day their selling computers, then next month it’s water coolers and after that they’ll be selling cars. In the main they are completely uninterested in what they’re selling (as long as there’s commission) and have little or no knowledge of the product. Unfortunately, this is particularly true in the case of the Marco Polo! During our five minute handover (was meant to be a couple of hours) with the dealer, he started by saying that it was clear I knew far more about the MP than he did. During our test drive I was able to fill him in on lots of the finer detail of the ‘van which I had gleaned on this forum.

To rub salt in the wounds, the salesman kept phoning me to ask why I hadn’t given him loads of positive feedback!
But I mustn’t complain because I got over 20% discount on an MP with delivery mileage.

Your suggestion that forum members post details of trips is a good one and I will try to post something after our travels later this year.

 

[RFT]

Welcome Epigram. Last summer we did a couple of thousand miles in a single trip around Europe stopping at: Annecy, Verona, Riva del Garda, Portofino, Alassio, Nice and Cannes. Marco behaved impeccably, albeit we included 4 nights in pre-booked hotels.