Going thrugh Reserve Americaw works well if you intend to stay at popular parks. It does not work well if you intend to stay for an entire week.
This is because all Fridays and Saturdays are quickly reserved for the whole season. This leaves a Fri and Sat ''donut hole'' and makes it impossible too book 7 days in a row.
It seems like as soon as a booking range is openend all the weekends go, leaving odd openings for the rest of the period
Precision Guesses
Joe&Jan and--Penny, our city dogpound escapee
2003 Hurricane 30Q V10
2004 Jeep Liberty & VW Cabby toads, Blue Ox, Brake Buddy
we have had that problem with Ontario provincial parks reservation system for quite a few years now, the reservation system has taken the ability to be spontainious out of camping, our most popular parks are booked solid from end of june to labourday weekend up to 5 months ahead (the opening of the booking window) what has be found with is a significant number of people were booking and changing their bookings, bumping forward, or booking long stays then canceling the first week( to beat the 5 month window) alot of abusive practices to gaurenty a site"just incase" they decide to go, and then canceling or to get the popular site ahed of the reservation time,,,, basicaly alot of cheating which screws everyone else. the park system has put in a few blocks and extra fees for changes to try and stop this practice but the determined still do it. now these changes have reduced or should I say opened a few sites up by reducing the abusive or fraudulant practices of customers but the sites still book fast.
our park system has also dedicated an average (so they say) of 10% of all campsites as "non-reservable" meaning they in no way (by net or phone) can be reserved its first come first serve, however they tend not to contain 10%of the best sites in any park.
check out our reservation system http://www.ontarioparks.com/english/reservations.html
you can read about some of the (suposide)loophole closures and see how the site works, you may want to make an inquirery to your parks as to wether they have these possible available loopholes open for abuse or wether they have means to prevent it in place.
Relaxin, hikin, canoin, enjoyin life
headin down the road with a 25 foot starcraft, canoe, camera & fishing rod,'86 gmc 1 ton crew cab 454 "Sheila" a few pics from 2004
I see your point but we only camp from Sunday to Thursday so never have a problem getting a good site by just showing up. My neighbor reserves every weekend from Memorial day to Labor day which irratates the heck out of me cause that is misusing the system, but I guess that is his right.
I think a lot has to do with the price of fuel. There are a lot more folks taking advantage of there more locale camp grounds and are finding that state and locale camp grounds will provide them there weekend get away's and at a cost that offsets the traveling gas cost of previous years. I have talked to a few New York State park people asking them if there business is down from previous years, they all seemed to say the same thing. The Monday thru Thursday crowd is down but the weekend bookings are all filled. So over all there business is way up over the previous years.
We are park hosts in an ID state park.
In our reservation parks we see that to some extent.
You can reserve up to 90 days in advance though and usually there are enough sites available so you can get a long term (one or two week) reservation.
Clay (WA5NMR), Lee,(Wife) Codi, Brandi (Shelties) and Damncat (damn cat)
Full Timing in a 2004 Winnebago Sightseer 35N, Workhorse chassis, Honda Accord toad
Just Bob wrote:
I saw the title of the post and thought "Oh Boy", another cop post.
Geeeezzzzz, what a letdown.
Not me, I thought they were talking about Medicare!
Deen - Vancouver, WA
'02 Dutch Star 4090 (41+', triple slide)
435/1200 ISC Cummins/Banks PowerPak
'08 Honda Civic/dolly
'05 Honda Odyssey/dolly
NRA Benefactor Life Member
FMCA f47302s, Life Member: Good Sam, Newmar DP Owners Group
51st yr of RV'ing
Maybe a lot of people don't have even leave to take a week off, but can do long weekends? Maybe they like spreading their leave over several long weekends rather than an entire week.
For the MA state parks you have to be quick or you'll get stuck with the donut weekdays. On Reserve America they open bookings for 6 months in advance and it's on a day-by-day basis. You have to plan ahead and jump in and make your reservation as the exact day the 6 month point hits the final day you want or it'll be gone.
I plan most of my trips to the parks starting in November of the previous year and setup reminers to go in and book as soon as I can.
For starters, I think Reserve America stinks! I recently used it to reserve a space in a park where I thought the park would be full. They told me on the phone I was lucky as I got the last space. When I got to the park there were literally over 100 empty (non-reserved) sites that could have been reserved. Maybe that many people canceled or failed to show. Want to buy a bridge? I have never had a good experience when trying to reserve a camp site with Reserve America. And when I have mentioned Reserve America to the campgound hosts where I have stayed, not a one has good words for them.
Many campgrounds do not allow all of their sites to be reserved. I just stayed at one where about half the sites were reservable and half were first-come, first-served. The campground had something like 80 sites. There were 10 or so sites that were reserved for the weekend without anyone in them.
My advice is to just go and see what you can get or call the campground directly and ask about available sites.
Robert
'07 F-350 PSD, SB, SRW, 4X4
'07 HH CE 35 CKQG Plan 2
"Being retired means waking up with nothing to do,
. . . and going to bed with half of it done!"
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