First Week With Our Winnebago Revel - The Good And Bad - Travato vs Revel

hi we're lynn and owen of van trekking lifestyle and we're all about traveling around in our little van seeking out adventure if that's something that excites you like it does us think about subscribing so if you watched our video last week then you already know we bought a revel and we put our travado up for sale what were we thinking like the line for my favorite movie one of my favorite movies don't accuse me of thinking don't go accusing me of thinking i've done anything in the sword in today's video we'll share with you what we were thinking yeah and we'll take you along with us as we buy our revel it was a really good purchase wasn't it it was a really good experience yeah yeah and we'll also let you ride with us on our shakedown trip and we'll also share with you whether we think it was a good decision or a bad decision to switch from our travato to a revel and stick around to the end and we'll give you our first comparison of traveling in the rebel versus traveling in the travato [Music] so in fact we actually do quite a bit of thinking about traveling and planning and what we want to do with our time and what we want to accomplish about every two years we sit down and we try to make a plan for the next two years and two and a half years ago we did that and at the time we were spending five to six months per year parked in florida in an rv park enjoying it and we loved it but we just felt like we wanted to travel more and we wanted to see more and we wanted to accomplish more and that led to us downsizing to the travato van and it was everything we thought it was going to be we traveled all over north america in that little van and we have seen more and done more and that two-year plan we nailed it we just absolutely nailed it so when it came time for us to sit down and plan the next two years we quickly came to the conclusion that we're not finished with exploring and chasing adventure we actually want to do more we want to do more adventures we want to get off road more we want to see more we want to go to places we cannot well probably will not go in the travado so the rebel fit everything so after all a bunch of talking and thinking and trying to figure things out all we had to do was look at our channel name van trekking lifestyle we're living in a van and we still are we're chasing adventures and it truly is it's our lifestyle it is our lifestyle and we love it so the seed for downsizing was sewn and it seemed like all dirt roads were going to lead to a brand new revel for us so we decided on a rebel and owen has worked hard trying to find us one but it's not easy especially during these covered times it's one of the hottest commodities to actually try to find and buy and we found i bet we found three and all three of them were sold out from underneath us before we could get there and we were about to give up in fact at the end of our shenandoah trip we were supposed to continue on to maryland to pick up a revel but the owner of the business decided they wanted to keep it as a show van in their showroom and so they refused to sell it to us and i got to tell you i was a little bummed out whenever i found that out it was um not something i was expecting i thought we finally had found one i was pretty bummed for a couple of days owen was truly bummed about the rebel that was in maryland but i really think things happen for a reason so a couple days after we got home he had actually found another one that was even closer to our house so lynn's right she woke up one morning and i was looking at pictures of a rebel in greenville south carolina actually greer south carolina in adventure motorhomes i called them they still had one available it was a silver one but we were going to go ahead and do that but while i was on the phone giving kelly the money for the deposit the deal on the tan one that they had which is the one that we have now fell through and she said if you want it it's yours and and i guess like lynn said it was meant to be things happen for a reason here we'll show you that buying experience come along with us as we go by our van we're in here doing our pre-delivery inspection this young man is todd how you doing brother he's been here at this dealer for two years now three years two years 19 years old and he's the one that showed us how to use our van that's pretty cool and you love camping too right i love it i love it you bounce down the road if you're gonna get on so that's what [Applause] we had a great buying experience with bob letford's adventure motorhomes probably the best experience that we've ever had buying an rv and we highly recommend we do highly recommend them it only took a little bit of time as you can see we spent the night there the night before got up did our test drive and then the only thing left to do move everything out of the travado into the revel and head towards well myrtle beach for a shakedown trip and we'll take you along for just a little bit of that adventure but then later we'll come back here and we'll share with you the things we learned about what we love about the travato steel and what we love about the revel we're excited it's so exciting we just emptied everything out of the truvado and we moved it over here let me show you our new van we moved it over to the 2021 revel and we have everything set up for a three or four day trip which is what we're heading out for now now we're going to move the travado back over here to park it and leave it here behind lock behind their locked gates while we go on this trip and then when we come back we'll loop back through and pick it up take it home clean it up and get it ready to sell [Music] you look happy maggie looks insane and i look a little different because i'm in the passenger seat we're now about two hours away from our destination stopping at some groceries and get checked in and then we've got to figure out how to pack all this uh 10 pounds worth of crap and a 5 pound bag it's going to be an effort in minimizing and putting things all over the place so lynn took over and she's driving for a while and if you've watched us for any amount of time at all you know that we work diligently on the travado to get rid of all the rattles well this thing this thing's got enough this guy rattles like rattles are on sale at walmart we're gonna have to figure this out i know there's several things that people say we need to do with some of the cabinet doors and other things but just listen we'll have to find that because i can't hear that well and i can hear it so it's going to drive them in crazy but it's uh it's good that we're both driving it's comfortable to see here and i think she's pretty comfortable over there aren't you back to driving if you didn't know a shakedown trip is when you buy something like that you always want to take it out for two or three nights right after you buy it make sure everything's working properly if not arrange with your dealers so that you can go back in and get that addressed immediately without having to get in line for service for us nothing was wrong it was a perfect sweet little revel so everything was not exactly perfect without the van as we were driving we noticed that the tires that came on the van if you got up to 45 and 70 it would shake so it wasn't perfect so driving back to greer south carolina i called the manager who happened to be our sales person too and told her that apparently the tires were bad something was wrong she said pick some place you know stop and get them balanced and get the van aligned and then send me the bill and i'll reimburse you for it that was a wow moment for us we have never heard an rv dealer say that 36 that tire is no good absolutely no good yeah is that the biggest is that the biggest number you've ever seen and the bigger bigger the number the bet the worse the tire is it should be no more like 20 right so what causes that it's a brand new tire just a bad tire but it got better than that as you can see when i took the tires in to get them balanced the manager of the shop that we use said that all four of the ko2s were bad meaning that no matter how hard they tried those tires could not be balanced they were bad from the factory and they probably never should have made it onto a winnebago rebel and i thought ah crap we're screwed so i called her back again said kelly we have an issue lynn and i were sitting there and i said all four tires are bad they can't be balanced you know what she said go find four tires that you want make sure they're perfect put them on the van and send me the bill and i'll reimburse you for it now that was really a wow moment yeah why don't you tell everybody where we are we're at bass lake in blowing rock one of our favorite little walks around the area yeah and we sold the travado to a young couple who's from johnson city tennessee this is about halfway they were so nice and we've talked to them so much we just we decided we'd meet them here all right so which one is driving it home cool thanks for buying the van we really appreciate it believe it or not this is a really sad day over my shoulder we just sold the van the nicest couple well just like that we're back to being a one rv family so that's a happy and sad day really sad i didn't think i would be that sad it is it is so sad but it looks like the van is going to a really nice young couple yeah with a family they already have their first trip to go to uh palm beach and florida with it so thanksgiving to see his mom so that's that's awesome it is one to a good family and it's their first rv yeah and i think they're both excited about it and we're excited we are too yeah that is really really awesome will and lee thank you so much for buying the van it really does mean a lot to us that it's going to somebody that's going to love it as much as we have [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] after our shakedown trip we learned that the travado actually beats the rebels so far at a few things and we want to share those with you right now the first thing is the bathroom is a lot bigger in the travado the toronto has less rattles and noises and road noise but we had to work on that i'll say though travato also has a lot more cabinet storage the travado cost a lot less money and talking about money gas prices are a lot cheaper than diesel and you don't have the expense with the travado of def and you don't have the expense of really expensive oil changes the beds in the trovato are a lot easier to make up the quick connect on the travado so that we can connect up a griddle or anything else to the back of it it's really a cool little feature that we're gonna miss and most of all we were very comfortable in the travado we actually loved it we went more places in that little travato than any other time in our life and truly we miss it right now but when you consider that there are many things about the rebel that are better than the travato and of course the biggest one of those is that the rebel is four-wheel drive it's our main reason for buying it it also has diesel we mentioned that's a negative but it's also a positive because a diesel engine is known to last much longer than a gas engine i'll take the next few two because mainly just guy things you don't have to change the oil as often it costs more money when you do but you don't have to spend time going in to get service for example our first oil change isn't due until the 20 000 mile range also the little ports that you feel with def and diesel are locked away so no one can mess with that and that's pretty important it also climbs mountains a lot better yeah i had to um slow down yesterday not to leave her completely it doesn't care about seven or eight degree mountain climbs at all it seems to be perfect with that another plus for the rebel it has a stainless steel exhaust pipe and unless you have a rusty one on your travado like us it may not mean something to you but eventually the one that comes with the travado unless you replace it it's going to start rusting and it's not going to look like it belongs on a vehicle that costs that much money the revel also has less badging this thing has a much better towing capacity and the hitch is stronger and one of the real big pluses for me is that the van is shorter and it's easier to park have an apple carplay in the stereo system and the the user experience up front on the dash it's so much better than that old thing that was in the travado now the newer travatos are getting better and better but this is awesome up here we also believe that the mercedes is a lot safer on the road due to the safety features yeah if you remember back on one of our trips right before we went on natchez trace we were almost in a head-on accident on interstate 10. it was on that day that i knew eventually we would get something that had collision avoidance and had safety features like we have in our other vehicle it's all lithium and there's no propane on board the next one's kind of an oxymoron we said we didn't like the bathroom as well as we did in the the travado but we actually like the shower a lot more the next thing that is a very big positive for the revel is the garage we love having all this space back here um we're not really exactly sure how we're going to use it yet we're going to go on a couple of trips and just kind of see how it works the other thing about this big garage we can lift this up gives us this lounge area but it also lets us put our bikes back here if we want to make short trips there are a lot of things we can do here and it's a big plus we're kind of up in the air whether the bed will be better in the revel or not but it is a whole lot better for snuggling it's easier to get to all the low point drains the refrigerator in the revel is a lot easier to load things into but it is smaller than the trovato the next thing is really small for a lot of people but what i learned in our travato if the owning lights were on and the awning was in you couldn't see them so you couldn't use the light when you just didn't want the awning to be out but then a lot of times maggie would bump the button and the awning lights would be on and we'd be burning up the battery and we couldn't even see it this one you can leave the awning in and turn the lights on and use it as illumination outside and it's really cool and i haven't even told them in this yet but with the app that comes with it you can even dim the lights so they're less bright or brighten them up all the way yeah awesome and speaking of apps one of the good things about the revel that's better than the travato and i know the travato is getting better but the version we had we have apps for just about everything that we really want to see here we have an app that will tell us how the batteries are doing we have an app that controls the air conditioner and we can even control the awning the lights bring it in and out and set a lot of the features of the awning with an app that's connected to that for a guy that uses a phone for just about everything that's really cool another good thing is there are lights and locks on the running board that's really cool if you have a real big expensive cooler if you want to lock the bikes when we're out there and we want to leave them we can leave it under the awning and lock them to the running board it's going to come in handy and it's a really neat feature so the last thing on this list that we've created so far and that's pretty important this is so far we've spent three nights in our van so we don't know it very well we just know what we think right now and if you're thinking about getting one this is probably pretty close to how you're gonna feel as well but that bench seat is sitting up there is a real big advantage we've used it many times to eat lunches and dinners and to go out for take out and stop and eat it also provides a place that we can put our grandchildren and put them in seat belts and feel like they're safer it's probably the most comfortable seat in the entire van and it is one of the best things about this and it's maybe one of the best one of the reasons we got the revenue yeah definitely being able to take our grandkids and you know we're using this van more as a daily driver just because it has a bathroom especially during cove there are a lot of reasons we bought this revel and we just listed a few of the things that we think are better than what we just sold but i'm sure we'll find other things that we like better and we'll probably find things that we don't like as much as the bravado but we'll keep everybody updated as we go we really appreciate you guys being part of our journey if you haven't already subscribed to the channel take a moment and do that leave us a comment and let us know what you think of the rebel until next week happy tales there's a first for everything and today is the first day we're going to empty the cassette toilet and the rebel let's see if this is easier or harder than what we've been doing with other rvs but you have to do do two different things instead of just one so we do yeah we've got the usually i connect one hose through the black tank and then pull the plug for the uh the gray tank and that washes out the black tank hose and bob's your uncle is pretty easy this one we gotta do this don't step on a turd heavy no it's a crappy job though i gotta tell you that's just gross so as lynn says nobody wants to see us pouring our crap down a hole no matter how easy it is it wasn't that hard to do um it would be a lot easier if you didn't have to have one foot close to the uh the sloshing that goes along finish doing it push it back in the right way it's in take the gloves off put that there what's your thoughts about the dumping you kind of always know when you're emptying like the travado you know you're emptying your uh your black water waste the poop but you never really have to see it because you know the hose goes in pull the plug you don't see it i don't know there's a way not to see it there it's all liquid and it's okay i don't i don't mind it i didn't throw up i guess that's a good thing and it's a lot easier from the perspective of just doing that but i could also go into the uh men's bathroom and do that and mold and grow and make a lot of noise i just don't know how would you do it how would you pour that much in a toilet without flushing it i think it flushes automatically when it fills up have you never filled one up before i don't think let's go back to our campsite

Channel: VAN TREKKING lifestyle

Views: 16,739

Rating: 4.9536953 out of 5

Keywords: Travel VLOG, Winnebago Travato, Travato 59K, Retired Van Life

Id: mF0hSnG6UJA

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020