Reservation timing

Your best bet for a Florida state park reservation is as follows:
You need to go on Reserve America at exactly 8:00 AM eastern standard time eleven months prior to your starting date.
A day or two ahead of time you can see what sites will be open.
On your computer have a split screen. One of the screens should be the US official time, (so you can watch the count down.
On the other screen you need all your ducks in order and have the site that you want all picked out. At 7:59: 59 click the button and say a prayer.
My wife used to have six or seven browsers open and and click them as fast as she could. Normally she would gt a site.
We also had a group of friends who worked together with each of us having the others info and credit card numbers.

This may sound like nonsense, but believe it or not we would be able to snow bird the entire winter using this method (two weeks at a time per state park)

Thankfully a few years ago, we bought a lot in a RV park in Key Largo and ever since have been happy campers and able to sleep late on those 8:00 am days.

Guy

To answer the question about when snowbirds leave, there usually heading back home by the end of March - some leave earlier and some leave later. The spring break crowd shows up anytime after the middle of February to the middle of March.

If you want a park site in Florida in one of the popular parks, those south of Orlando and near to coast in particular. Or any park near or on the coast. During snowbird season which runs traditionally from Thanksgiving to sometime in spring, depending on the weather up north. You better make them as soon as the reservation period opens.

Many state parks accept reservations a year in advance. So if you want a site in a popular destination during a popular time, plan way ahead.