Reserving a campsite at Killbear Provincial Park next summer

tinkybean wrote:
I decided to call killbear directly this morning, they assured me if I book in February I won't have a problem finding a site in my desired campground. They actually cut down a lot of trees this year due to beech bark disease, so apparently it has changed many of the sites privacy and shade. They said they will update photos on ontarios parks soon do reflect the changes.

We were there on May.24 weekend, Blindbay gate was closed,so drove through Harold Point and Lighthouse Point, cutting down of alot of trees is an understatment,some sites looks like a clear cut.
The logs were piled up at the day use beach parking lot, didnt take a picture,there were 3 piles of logs, each pile was at least 100feet long 20feet high.
Hope OPP's updates the picture soon to reflect the cutting.

I agree something has to be done. I will also write ontario parks about my concern regarding people "cheating the system" it's definitely unfair to all the honest people that want to reserve for the time they actually intend to stay!

Exactly

I vote to put you in charge of Ontario PP :-)

hone eagle wrote:
Interesting and thanks for your insight.
I have filled out the online survey and commented that they should raise prices for the most popular parks (closest to T.O.) until people move farther out to less populated parks,just a few bucks a year until equilibrium is reached.
I know not fair to cash strapped families but its all I got

interesting thought, however where the handfull of parks that they closed are concerned the smartest thing they could have done was offered special deals for those parks, and for other less popular parks as well, a little focused marketing could never hurt as well.
weekend warriors only provide a 2 day income out of seven,most stay within 3 hours drive of home, most bring everything with them, as its only 2 days and who wants to spend time shopping when you only have 2 days,,, or realistically 1 full day and one half day. so the benifit for the surrounding community is minimal
an incentive for longer term campers to head out the extra distance, in specific parks, each based individually, the most common that would attract would be to have lang stay deals, say you have a week off, you could stay at killbear pay full price,, or,, drive an hour more, another $20 or so in fuel, but book your first 5 days and get the 6th for free, book anther 4 and get your 11th for free and for every 4 paid after that you get another free (up to the max stay)so if you go for 6 days you pay for 5, 11 days you pay for 9, if you go for 16 days you will end up only paying for 13. they could in some cases if called for take it a little farther and ad a free bag of firewood with each day over X# days, the object would be to put people on sites for as long as possible, even if that means taking an empty site and only collecting a fee for 5 out of 6 days its occupied, the savings to the campers are not huge but its enough to offset fuel costs in getting there or more for longer stays. the loss to the park is in reality nothing ,, as the site would have been empty anyways, so there is only gain for them. the surrounding towns could also kick in and offer to pay for a free day or half price day, or coupon for free firewood for say a 2 week stay, or whatever amounts, through the local business association, because if you stay somewhere for a week or more its pretty much gaurenteed you will end up in town shopping, fuel, groceries, browsing local shops, perhaps at a festival, or whatever,, it puts people there with their money for an extended period of time.

a false gain could be argued on the parks behalf as the camper would have spent the money at another park, however, by moving some campers out of the more popular parks and on to less used / popular / distant parks that will free up space for more people to get in to the more popular parks, thus reducing the demand on them to expand, by better utilizing the facilities they have. I have friends who can barely afford to go camping due to the cost, and fuel(=distance) to them is a factor in the cost and the more popular parks are the ones close to them.
as for the parks to give the discounts, the gains for the surrounding communities means quite a bit especially for more isolated communities, my last trip (last week) we spent over $500, food refreshments, went out for ice cream, bought a new lawn chair to replace a broken one, a couple more water toys for the kids, had a bicycle repaired, went to a local festival for a day, spent over a hundred there. a little less income for the park could translate to more for the community, therefore more taxes for the government, possibly less support money from the government

looking at your location (essex) we were at rondeau last week of september for 5 days doing some bird watching there and at peelee point, it would be nice if the feds would see the need for camping parks and put in maybe 150 to 200 sites at peelee point.
we also volenteered on the great canadian shoreline cleanup that was held the same saturday we were at rondeau, (what a mess the beech was)

Interesting and thanks for your insight.
I have filled out the online survey and commented that they should raise prices for the most popular parks (closest to T.O.) until people move farther out to less populated parks,just a few bucks a year until equilibrium is reached.
I know not fair to cash strapped families but its all I got

hone eagle wrote:
relaxin- do you think using a lic plate number as part of the reservation will curtail the abuse?
I too have noticed 'full parks' are not quite full ,very aggravating. Myself it wouldn't bother me one bit if they just said 'no refunds' period.
cancel res. ? too bad so sad.

the plate of the vehicle that would be arriving, one account per household, the address should match the credit card address, and in the computer system as it maintains your information of past bookings, have it red flag changes(to be reviewed) if they are done more than once in every few years, so if for some reason like work changes you have to alter a reservation, than thats one thing but if you are constantly changing reservations, basically securing a site and then canceling a portion, in particular the front portion of your stay, ods are,,,,,, and if you do it every year or several times per year, that should be questioned.

I have come accross lots of sites that on the site callander are booked at the time I am booking lets say from a tuesday on for 2 weeks, then suddenly a couple months later the arrival date changes from the tuesday to the following friday,,, so now if I wanted that site or a site that one may have accommodated me for the previous weekend forward, or whatever.
since they put in the losses to be had on canceling, that slowed some of the cheating, and increased the parks income from those who can afford to cheat, and the 30 day wait time to make the first change(which leaves a 3 day window for someone else to book the site) however you can create 2 accounts and use like I said the spouce's card and still do rollover bookings from the day it opens in the spring to the date you want in july on that one perfect waterfront site.

Another thing they should do is in most popular 10 parks only allow one stay every 2 years during peak periods (june 15 to labour day) at a maximum of 2 weeks(14 days) this would open up opertunity for those who can never seem to get in at some places and boot out those who spend a month at the same place every year (like really there is alot of other parks).

the reservation system needs to be rethought as to site specific, and possibly only allow 50% bookings that way, and allow park staff to shuffle (before entering) to maximise the use of sites. You can enter a weeks worth of dates and most parks are booked solid so it appears,,, if you go into the site availability callender, in most cases you can put together a week with sites that are open at different times, which means moving once or twice during that week, in an rv that's not a bad as moving a tenting set up, I have done it complete start to finish in 2 hours which included one tent,,, but if they could do a little shuffle they could make it possibly so you don't have to move.

theres no way they can make everyone happy, they have a bunch of idiots (liberals) pulling the strings which progressively screws everything up worse and worse every year, they have been dipping into the parks profits that were suppose to be used for programs for kids improvements and expansion,,,, for their own little feeble political games like the typical bunch of theives they are, and they even closed a few simply because they have no clue how to run a business or improve a business.
one of this province's greatest assets for its people and the politicians are ruining it.

I decided to call killbear directly this morning, they assured me if I book in February I won't have a problem finding a site in my desired campground. They actually cut down a lot of trees this year due to beech bark disease, so apparently it has changed many of the sites privacy and shade. They said they will update photos on ontarios parks soon do reflect the changes.

relaxin- do you think using a lic plate number as part of the reservation will curtail the abuse?
I too have noticed 'full parks' are not quite full ,very aggravating. Myself it wouldn't bother me one bit if they just said 'no refunds' period.
cancel res. ? too bad so sad.

loulou57 wrote:
Book as early as possible online..or you will not get a site anywhere.

We got caught this year....we are going for the last week in july and the first of august. When we booked our site, there was nothing available in Ontario south of Timmins.

Also...don't assume that the sites you don't need to reserve for, first come first served sites, might have anything electrical or for a trailer. We have found now that these sites are small, non electrical and would never accomodate our trailer.

look at the "site availability calender", you can put something together but would not be in the same spot for the whole trip.
once you are in a park, some parks do have good non reservables, wait for one to open (by inquiring at the office) and move to it so you can stay the rest of your stay on one site, I have done that and it works fine, 11 day stay one move 4 days in, emptied the tanks while I was at it, no big deal.

you could always do like a handfull still do,,,, cheat, open a second account with the wifie's credit card and book the site as soon as possible, then roll over the booking rotating back and forth from her to your account and cancel as soon as possible so you don't loose to much money ;)
or book it a few days before your actual arrival day and cancel the first few days later.

over the past couple years I have found a booking from sunday night forward to be one of the easiest to get, I usually watch for the previous 2 to 3 weeks the pattern of bookings, how heavily it is filling, whether its weekenders or full week plus res's pick several from 1 to 10 and be on and have everything entered at 6:59 am, and wait till 3 seconds after 7 (using the governemnt of ontario's clock).
I just came back from 10 days at inverhuron, a nice site with the lake just on the other side of the trees from us, I opted to arrive thursday instead of friday and have to be challenged by all the friday bookings that would be occurring. was the second choice site, our first choice was booked for a couple weeks a few days before we did our booking.


I know the parks are making money off the cheaters now with extra charges, but personally I think they should automatically loose their reservations for the year and be banned from the reservation system for 2 years, and loose 50% on any changed reservation automatically from that point forward. It does make it harder for the rest of us to get a booking at all in some cases, or to get that 1 out only 5 water front sites at all, ,,,, and when you arrive its empty and you find out that the person changed their booking at the last minute taking 3 days off the beginning of their stay,,, if they had not done that you would have gotten the site