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Best RV got a 335SS last week so my wife and I checked it out on Saturday. The exceptionally wide staircase entrance is a far more attractive feature than you'd suspect from floorplans and on-line photos/videos. It makes the RV seem much larger. I strongly recommend personal inspection of the 335SS.
My wife also loves the outside handrail on the stairs. IMO the inside of the staircase, next to the door, will be a great place to store shoes & slippers for changes when coming inside, to minimize tracking of dirt inside. It is also nice for the bath to have entries from both the hall and bedroom.
Overallthe 335SSis a very livable design. My wife thinks it is more than we need for vacation use, which is true but I really need its bedroom nightstand for my BiPap and humidifier. KZ and Forest River now offer comparable vacation-market 5th wheels (Durango 2500 & Wildcat Sterling edition respectively) with similar nightstands, but none have the impact the Cruiser 335SS stair entrance provides.
The hall closet would be a great place for a stackable washer/drier if Crossroads will put the plumbing and air exhaust for washer/drier preparation there. It would be very easy to slightly enlarge a Cruiser 335SS into a Rushmore or even Seville model.
Theonly minor quibble I have with the 335SS , based on 30 minutes inspection, is that its living room airbed/couch has reverted to medium-height armrests. Those are simply too high for me to rest my head on while lying down. The armrests on all Keystone Montanas and Laredos couches I checked out last fall were all at close to ideal heights for my head when lying down on them. Cruiser couch armrests were too high in 2010 models, got lower enough on the 2011 models, and now are back up too highin the 335SS.
But this is fixable - I can get my own couch. I know Crossroads changes the furniture for whoever the current low bidder is, but such constant changes will probably get me to order a model without any furniture when I buy.
What is more serious is that there is no emergency exit in the bedroom of the 335SS I saw. The front section emergency window exit is in the hallway across from the bathroom, right at the top of the staircase.
That would be a mortal threat in a fire emergency, because it would be necessary to open the bedroom door to exposure from toxic gases from a fire in the main area (notably the mid-section kitchen) to get out of the RV. Burning plastics in an RV fire create incredibly poisonous gases, because of their higher concentration relative to stick house fires. This can cause really serious lung injuries even if they aren't fatal, and also make you unconscious much faster. Try dragging an unconscious spouse a few feet through a hot, dark, poisonous soup while being careful not to inhale.
There might as well not be any front section emergency exit at all. It would be fastergetting out by the exterior door because that is almost as close to the bedroom, and much easier to get out of than a window exit.
I don't know if the 335SS emergency exit location meets applicable codes, but it certainly does give Crossroads significant legal liability exposure in a fire personal injury/wrongful death action based on design defects, and this is within my professional knowledge from 30+ years as a civil litigator.
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