Mighty Campers review: all you need to know when renting a Mighty camper

When we decided to go road tripping through Australia for three weeks, it wasn't even a question that we'd do that with a campervan. We booked the Mighty Deuce at Mighty Campers Australia and drove it from Brisbane all the way up to Port Douglas.

This is our Mighty Campers review.

 

Mighty Campers Review

Specifications and what's included

The Mighty Deuce is a 7-meter converted Mercedes Sprinter with an automatic gearbox that rides on Diesel. It comfortably sleeps two in the living room area that can be converted either in two single beds or one double bed.

There's a small pull-out bed in the front for a child but it has to be older than four years old. Children younger than four cannot travel in the Deuce.

The Deuce comes equipped with two indoor tables, a sink, a stove with three fires, a small bathroom with chemical toilet and shower, full-cabin air conditioning, a television (but no antenna), hot and cold water, a fresh water tank and a waste water tank, a solar panel, a slide-out bbq, 12V power and 240V outlets as well as a table that slides into a bar on the exterior of the van.

Camping chairs and a camping table can be rented as extras, as can things such as awning and a satellite phone.

The Mighty Deuce does come with linen, towels, cutlery, crockery, and cooking utensils included.
 

Booking your Mighty motorhome

The booking process on the Mighty Campers site is pretty straight forward. You select how many people will be traveling and when, what you want the pick-up and drop-off location and time to be and where the driver's drivers license is from.

If you already know what kind of camper you want to rent, you can also select the type in the search box.

You're then taken to a list of available campers for which you can check the full details for each RV. At this point, it's also possible to indicate whether you want the camper to have a toilet and shower or not.

When you've found the camper you want to book, hit “book now”. Next, you'll be asked to choose your insurance package as well as any extras you want to add on.

We had the Mighty Inclusive Pack which is the most inclusive insurance package and also covers the extra driver fee, linen exchange, and the rental of a camping table and chairs. This package comes at 51 AUD/day at the time of writing.

A word on the extras

While some extras could be useful to rent, like a satellite phone, others you're better to get elsewhere should you need them.
 

WiFi

For example, the Mighty Deuce has an internal WiFi hotspot. When you get the Inclusive Pack, you get 1 GB of data but if you want more, you have the option of purchasing extra data. It's ridiculously expensive, though. At the time of writing 1GB extra costs 35 AUD, 5 GB extra costs 65 AUD.

If you do want WiFi throughout your trip, consider buying or renting a mobile hotspot. I've personally been using Solis Wifi for years and although their daily passes don't allow for heavy downloading or uploading, they're sufficient for using Google Maps, checking your email, or posting things on social media.

One thing to keep in mind is that you'll only be able to get WiFi when you also have cell reception. We've been in many places in Queensland where we didn't have any reception at all – and you don't even need to drive far from a town for that.
 

Gas refill

Another you might want to pass on, is the gas refill. The Mighty guy who helped us when we picked up our van even told us to get the gas refilled at a campsite because it would be much cheaper than if we'd have them do it.

He said that if we didn't buy the prepaid gas bottle refill, they'd charge 3 AUD/liter to fill it back up when we turned in the van. The prepaid refill, however, costs 38 AUD and when we had our bottle refilled at a campsite, it also cost us 30 AUD, so it was cheaper but not that much, and we had a big bottle.
 

First Aid Kit

You might be tempted to add a First Aid Kit to your booking for 35 AUD but there's no need to. We didn't as we figured there's no way they'd let people drive around without one (in Belgium at least, you're obliged to have one in the car) and indeed, when we went to pick up our van, we were told that there was a First Aid Kit inside and that we'd only have to pay for it if we were to use it.
 

Picking up our Mighty camper

We picked up our camper at Mighty Campers Brisbane, after having spent two days in the city, and were pleasantly surprised by how quick and smooth this went.

Now, a week or so before we had to pick up the van, we got an email that allowed us to check in online just like you would for a flight. So I filled in our driver's license details and such online at home, which meant that didn't need to be done anymore when we got there.

What I also liked was that we didn't have to wait for our turn even though other people were already being helped when we got in. Another customer service representative came up to us with a tablet and we did all the “paperwork” on the tablet.

Once everything was signed, we got our confirmation via email and stepped outside to check out the van.

First, we walked around the van together with the customer service rep to see if it had any damage. With our Inclusive Pack, we were fully covered but the guy still made sure to make a note for every dent and scratch he saw.

After that had been done, we got a tour of the van with an explanation of how to use everything. As we'd already rented an RV twice before, this went pretty smoothly.

We loaded our bags and off we were.
 

Inside our Mighty Deuce

Front cabin

Our Mighty Deuce had a spacious driver's cabin with comfortable seats, several drink holders, USB plugs, a radio, air conditioning, and quite a few small storage spaces. Boyfriend found the automatic to drive smoothly.

The only thing about the front cabin we didn't like so much was the radio and sound system. For some reason, we rarely managed to get a clear radio signal and the sound boxes were some of the most basic available. It wasn't all about that bass in there.

We did solve the radio problem by plugging in one of the USB sticks with music we'd prepared at home.
 

Dinner area

The front cabin seats could be turned all the way around to face the living area which was handy, as there was a removable table right behind the driver's seat at which we always ate. On the other side of the table was a bench.

This little area was also equipped with two 240V sockets, a cup holder, and a storage space for small items. Underneath the bench, you could find the safe. We found it rather difficult to open and close it, so we didn't use this.
 

Bathroom

Right behind our dinner area, was the bathroom. It had a chemical toilet which had a much bigger “tank” than the RV's we've had before, a bit of storage space for bathroom products, a small sink, and a shower.

Because the bathroom facilities at the campsites we stayed at were always great, we didn't use the shower. We did use the toilet regularly and it worked just fine.
 

Kitchen

Opposite the bathroom, lay the kitchen. You probably wouldn't build a house like this but in an RV, this is a very common setup.

The kitchen consisted of different storage areas filled with cutlery, pots, pans, plates, and even things like a toaster and a water kettle. It had a gas stove with three fires, a small but large enough fridge with a freezer compartment, and a microwave.

We used this kitchen a lot. Aside from when we were visiting my friend on Magnetic Island and the last few days we spent in Port Douglas, we always had lunch and dinner in the van.
 

Lounge area/bedroom

Behind the kitchen, was the lounge area/bedroom. I wonder if anyone ever uses it as a lounge area, though, because converting it is a bit of a hassle. It's not hard but we did get tired of making the bed every day.

So how does it work?

Basically, the lounge area is a box-like U-shape that you can open from the top to use as storage space but it also has pillows on top of it so you can use it as a seating area.

In the middle of the U-shape, you can create a table by sticking a pole into the floor and putting a tabletop on top of it. It's the same system you use to create the dining area.

To create the bed, you remove the pole, let the tabletop rest on the edges of the U-shape, and then put the dining area tabletop on the bottom part of the U-shape to create a rectangular flat area. You then put all the pillows on that flat area and tadaaa, you have a bed.

The issue we had with this system is that you can't leave the bed up. First of all, you can't reach the storage space below it when you do and secondly, you can leave the first tabletop but you need the second one for the dining area.

While we did use the storage space and would have had to open up the bed daily anyway, we wish there would have been an extra table top so that we didn't have to break down the dinner table every time we went to bed.

I'm usually up before Boyfriend is but if I wanted to have breakfast at a table, I either had to kick him out of the bed or go sit outside. It would have been nice if we could have just let the dinner table up.

That being said, we did sleep blissfully well in there. I'd been a bit worried that the pillows would be too hard and that it wouldn't be dark enough in the cabin as it only had curtains but no real blinds. Neither was the case.

We'd brought movies on USB sticks and could plug those into the television screen, so we watched a movie almost every night and were very comfortable doing so from the bed.

And while the curtains weren't true black-out curtains, all the campsites we stayed at were dark enough that that didn't bother us. Plus, it gets dark pretty early in Queensland so we didn't mind getting up a bit earlier than we usually do when on holiday.

As for the linen, we were provided with a nice big sheet to put over the bed and two cozy double duvets. There was no fighting over who got the largest piece of the duvet in this van :-)

The head pillows were rather thin but we had three, so I just used two on top of each other. Boyfriend didn't mind having just one.

Good to know: storage space is lined along the two sides of the van above the bed area. We had plenty of room to stow away all of our clothes.
 

Outer features

While most of the things you need are inside the van, the Mighty Deuce also has a few interesting features outside.

Pull-out bbq

There's a pull-out barbeque that's actually a grill on gas. It's hidden behind a little door that you simply open with one of the keys. I can't really say anything about it as we found it more practical to cook inside.
 

Outside table

If you do want to cook and eat outside and you didn't get a camping table, the van comes with a tabletop you can slide into one of its sides to create an outdoor table. As we had a proper camping table, we didn't use this either.

 

Outside light

What we did use and find very handy, was the outdoor light. You switch it on and off from the inside of the van.
 

Trunk

I'm mentioning the trunk of the van as an outdoor item because while you can access it from the inside through a little door in the U-shape, it's not very practical and you probably don't need to.

The trunk is where you store the camping table and chairs, the water tubes, and, in our case, your bags.

It's not high as it's underneath the bed/seating area but it did comfortable fit all of the stuff mentioned above and we did bring two 75L trekking bags.
 

Necessary practical stuff

And then there are the things like the plug that lets you hook up your campervan to a power source, the little door that gives access to the gas bottle, the tubes that let you refill the fresh water and dispose of the grey water, and the door that lets you remove and clean out the chemical toilet.

I'm not going to go into these as they all just did what they have to do.
 

Dropping off our Mighty van

We dropped off our campervan at Mighty campers Cairns as we were flying back home from Cairns. This too went smoothly.

We were asked if everything went alright and were refunded the water refill cap we replaced after it somehow mysteriously disappeared. The customer service representative went to check the van to see that there was no new damage and that we had emptied and refilled everything we needed to empty and refill before he offered to call us a taxi to go to the airport (we took an Uber instead).

We were sent a confirmation of our rental closure via email and that was it.
 

Thoughts on our Mighty Deuce

If the Mighty Deuce had been our very first RV, I think we could have been thrilled. Now, we were just happy with it. So why was that?

Well, during our first two RV rental experiences, the motorhomes we got were impeccable. They were super clean and seemed as good as new. Not so with the Mighty Deuce. You could see that it had been used a lot and that Mighty Campers probably didn't have the time in between rentals to fix little things.

We also felt like it could have been cleaned a bit better in de bedroom area.

That being said, my friend who lives in Australia and has rented a campervan there before, told us that ours was actually in a great condition in comparison with the one she'd once had and that vans get rented so often over there that it's quite impossible to keep them looking as new.

So the only real critique I have is that the cleaning team could have done a better job.

Other than that, we spent a great three weeks in our Mighty Deuce. It drove smoothly, had everything we needed, and everything kept working well throughout our trip.

If you then also take into account that Mighty is a budget brand and that the rental of this campervan cost half of what it would cost to rent one for three weeks here in Belgium, you know you get a good deal. If you're considering them for your trip, I'd still recommend them.
 

And that's it for my Mighty Campers review. As always, don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.
 

PIN FOR LATER

 

We received a discount from Mighty Campervans on our rental of the Mighty Deuce.