Full-Time Van Lifer’s 3-Year Review of the Winnebago Revel

In February 2022, we celebrated three years of full-time living in the 2019 Winnebago Revel! Ironically, our celebration took place in a Comfort Inn as a local RV repair shop was trying to figure out why we had battery drain.

Did we really spend three whole years sleeping, working, and living in the Revel?

Yes! My husband and I don’t have a stick-and-bricks home to go back to other than the homes offered by friends and family. Sure, we’ve taken time out in paid accommodations here-and-there for health, to escape the heat, and when visiting loved ones. We also sometimes rent coworking space when we sit in a location for a month or longer. We spend as much time in our Revel as our previously-owned condo, so it is truly our home!

What can I tell you about the 2019 Winnebago Revel after three years and 56,000+ miles traveled?

The Good

It’s holding up better than expected. I don’t believe most RVs are designed for full-time living, and we’ve taken our Revel into some of the harshest environments.

Most of our time is spent in freezing temperatures and snow during the winter. Our diesel heater ran so long at the top of 2021 we actually hit the heater’s time-out limit after about two months.

We enjoy traveling dirt roads in every direction in the summer, searching for solitude.

I’m happy with how well the Revel holds up to outdoor elements and how we use the rig. We’ve only had to tighten a few screws here and there. The motors I expected to start dying by now are still humming, including those in the refrigerator/freezer, air conditioner, water pump, galley drain pump, and ventilator fan.

It keeps us warm. Winnebago did a great job with the insulation and diesel heater choice, so I can hang out in the van with shorts and a tank top in sub-zero temperatures. In our 2018 Winnebago Travato, I wasn’t freezing my butt off. However, I still had to wear a beanie and a puffy jacket and keep a blanket over my lower half to keep warm.

It allows us to go almost everywhere we want to go. On occasion, I wish we had a more spacious RV. But at just over nineteen feet in length, it is easy to fit into most parking lots and spaces, campsites, trailheads, residential driveways, and more. By upgrading to a longer and wider RV, we would definitely eliminate many fun opportunities, and errands around town would prove more challenging at times.

Winnebago service. I’ve called their technical support line more than once, and I always get the answers I need. They’ve also helped me walk a mobile RV repairman through troubleshooting steps.

Winnebago also didn’t balk at our claims when we took our Revel in for warranty work. They quickly sent our replacement parts, and we didn’t pay a cent.

Mercedes service. I love that when I call, they know who I am and everything about our chassis. Mercedes twice towed us to the closest service shop within our one-year warranty with zero hassle.

At every Mercedes location that we’ve been to, they’ve offered us a private office for waiting and working. Plus, they’ve been dog-friendly.

Every employee would ask us if we wanted snacks, water, or coffee. Depending on where you have your Sprinter van serviced, they will also wash it for you at no cost.

The Not as Good

The living space is tight, even for a tiny person. I’m five feet, four inches tall, and 120 pounds. I’m pretty sure at one point, I’m going to break off one of my pinky toes because I keep kicking my feet on the same piece of particle board that makes up the back of our bench seat. I might even end up with a concussion because I’ve repeatedly hit my head on the same spots of our upper shelving.

If the shower walls weren’t there, it would really open up the space and minimize the bruising. We haven’t even used the shower once.

There are too many chassis warning lights and beeping sounds! The Mercedes Sprinter certainly offers some excellent safety features. But I still don’t like it when the van makes me second guess my choice to change lanes on a busy freeway with audible alerts when it’s all clear. And when sensors break, they are so expensive to replace!

Also noteworthy, fewer repair shops are certified to work on a Mercedes, unlike a Ford or Ram.

We stay winterized for almost half the year. The Revel is advertised as a four-season RV. However, the RV manual, any RV repair shop, and our experience tell us that winterizing is highly recommended if you plan to be in freezing temperatures.

We were hoping the Revel would allow us to keep the plumbing operational during the winter as we travel from ski resort to ski resort. You can read more about our unfortunate experiences and why we winterize here.

My personal opinion is that if you plan on using a Revel in places like the Sierras or the Pacific Northwest, you’ll probably be fine when lows stay in the high twenties or warmer. Plumbing will start to bust in states like Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, where temperatures are often single digits and negative. My firm advice is to winterize, and don’t chance costly repairs! It also sucks when you’re ready to go out for a powder day, and you have to deal with a watery mess and repairs instead.

We can’t fit all of our outdoor gear to protect it. You can purchase all sorts of racks and boxes for storing equipment on the RV’s exterior, and there is a sizable “garage” space underneath our bed. We’ve made some changes to our Revel that you can read about here to try and make all four seasons of our outdoor gear fit securely from thieves and weather. However, we still can’t manage to eliminate our monthly paid storage.

Our biggest challenge is with our mountain bikes. While we have an exterior bike rack, we haven’t found an appropriate cover so that the bikes aren’t damaged from winter road grime.

We can’t store the bikes underneath our bed because other gear and items we need for full-time living are already consuming the space. Even if there was space in the garage, the bed must be lifted for the bikes to fit. In the raised position, the bed is unusable. So, the bikes will continue to live in storage during ski months.

Features we don’t use

The interior shower. The wet bath includes a shower and cassette toilet. The space also came with three bamboo shelves positioned in the upper half of the closet, so you have the option to use the wet bath as storage instead. We use the cassette toilet and two of the three shelves but not the shower.

We thought a shower was a must-have when we bought our first RV, but we quickly discovered the nuances of having one. You need to completely dry the space every time you shower unless you want mold to form from the lack of ventilation. It’s also annoying to have water everywhere living in little square footage. You quickly learn that your bathroom is your kitchen is your living room is your bedroom is your office is your mudroom is your garage.

There is a powered roof vent, but it will take hours for the wet bath to completely dry, if it does at all. You can wipe the space down with towels, but then you have towels that need to air dry. If you can’t hang them outside due to weather, they’ll be inside the van building up unwanted moisture. The best method we found for drying out a wet bath is opening up all the doors and windows in the van. This is also weather dependent. Don’t forget about drying the shower curtain!

Also, showering can consume a lot of water. We prefer to use public showers to conserve water for drinking, cooking, and washing dishes. It won’t take long to blow through the Revel’s 21-gallon freshwater tank after a couple of showers and other water needs. I also have a lot of hair, and it takes too many gallons to shampoo and condition it and rinse all the product out. I’ve seriously considered shaving my head to minimize my water usage.

The awning. When we bought our first RV, the Winnebago Travato, we thought the awning was going to be one of the best perks of our new rig. Now, we consider it an expensive feature that could easily be destroyed.

The Revel’s Carefree awning is designed to retract when it senses motion beyond a predetermined threshold. Suppose you experience a strong wind gust or sudden increase in wind speeds. In that case, the awning might not retract fast enough before damage occurs.

We spend most of our time in mountainous areas where wind gusts whip through out of nowhere. Once while sitting in Olympic Valley on a sunny, windless day, we decided to open our awning. Without warning, a wind gust twisted our awning one way, then the other. It slowly retracted, but I was afraid to reopen the awning for fear it would not close again.

I think the awning might be safest to use in places with gentle breezes or wind speeds that increase slowly. Since we are often in areas with gusty winds, we rarely use it.

The shade the awning offers is also limited by the position of the van to the sun. While I suppose you could move the van as the sun moves for optimal shade, this is often unrealistic depending on the setup of your campsite or wherever you happen to be.

I’d rather have something like an E-Z UP. It is far less expensive to replace if destroyed and can be more easily positioned to create shade where you need it.

The fold-down exterior table. On the sliding door side of the galley is a table that can be dropped down for use outside. However, the sliding door must remain open when the table is down. Sometimes, I want to use the table in another location. Like the awning, I’d rather have a table that I can position anywhere.

After three years, am I happy with our Revel purchase?

Yes, absolutely! After living in the 2018 Winnebago Travato for six months, my husband and I traded it in for the Revel in February 2019. You can read more about why here. We are still happy with our Revel purchase and thankful for the lifestyle it has allowed us to achieve. No regrets!

Do we have any plans to sell our Revel and buy a different RV?

Living in a van for three and a half years and owning three (Chevy Express AWD, Winnebago Travato, Winnebago Revel) has taught us a lot about how we would live best in a tiny space. We’ve found that the Revel is actually a little too fancy and inflexible for us.

We want a modular living space that can be reconfigured for our needs throughout the year. And we also wish for components that are easily repaired and replaced using the limited tools we have space to carry and our skillset. We are exploring the idea of building a simple, custom van that is better suited to our needs. We’ll see!

It’s hard to believe we’ve lived in our Revel for three years, and I’m excited to keep going. Purchasing the Revel and calling it home is one of my favorite life decisions!

Update: We sold our Winnebago Revel!