Ohio's New Online Reservation System!

More and more states are doing that. In many the reservation fee is waived if you call in the day of the start of the stay (or if you call from the courtesy phone they may have at the park entrance, or something like that). It still stinks, in my opinion, even though I understand why they do it that way; it often makes it impossible to drive around a campground you've never been to and see what sites look nice to you and what ones would be annoying to camp in.

As to why they do it, things are much more straightforward for them if everyone is in the system with their sites. The rangers then can walk or drive around and readily compare the physically occupied sites to the ones that are known to be reserved and see if anyone is camping without paying, or in the wrong site, or whatever. It also should help avoid problems with more than one party claiming the same site, whether done accidentally or maliciously.

You have never been to an Ohio state park then. There are no courtesy phones when you come in. Rangers need to cover multiple parks so you might see one drive through the park on a weekend but they are not checking sites to see who paid and who didnt.

DrewE wrote:

dhull wrote:
k.

As to why they do it, things are much more straightforward for them if everyone is in the system with their sites. The rangers then can walk or drive around and readily compare the physically occupied sites to the ones that are known to be reserved and see if anyone is camping without paying, or in the wrong site, or whatever. It also should help avoid problems with more than one party claiming the same site, whether done accidentally or maliciously.

I have never seen or even heard of an issue with people in the wrong sites. Maybe it happens, but it has to be rare. Not so sure this is all that more effective, usually if something is wrong, it's the computer. I personally see no reason for rangers or whoever to be that particular about who is where as long as everyone is happy.

As to the new website, wow is it SLOW!!!!! I wrote my letter.

Its pretty typical. They take something that was user friendly and working perfectly fine and then F it all up. Sounds like my company where they want to change it just to change even though nobody asked them too.

I always tell them I have been using amazon forever and the site looks the same to me, it works, nobody is complaining so why change it?......I usually hear silence after that

Loving God's Country! wrote:
Has anyone else tried to use the new Ohio state park reservation system yet? I am so disappointed In the new system! It is definitely not user friendly at least in my opinion! There are no more campsite photos and there are no more site maps to work from. I have since sent an email to them asking them to bring back the old system!

Is there any one else that feels the same way I do? Just curious!

Sounds like their new system is almost as good as reservecalifornia.com

RGar974417 wrote:
So if you're on the road and you stop at the campground you can't get a site even if they have many open sites?

Yes, if the site has not been reserved, you can. They call it a "same day reservation". That way they can still charge the res fee of $6.50.

According to the website, some parks still hold back a few sites for walk ups.

So if you're on the road and you stop at the campground you can't get a site even if they have many open sites?

Everyone should write them and let them know, its the only way they will know and might do something about it.

The new site definitely sucks. I hope they update more parks with site pics. I'm happy that they kept the rewards program and I didn't lose my points.

The revamped site is terrible from what it was prior. Its slow and not user friendly at all. The old system was so nice and easy and as usual they replace it with something that is garbage. I also wrote them about it.

dhull wrote:
And you can no longer do a walk up site! All sites must be booked either online or by phone so you must pay the reservation fee. We used to do the walk up after hours or just pay at the park office to get around the reservations fee. No longer....
We discovered this last December when we showed up at East fork state park.

More and more states are doing that. In many the reservation fee is waived if you call in the day of the start of the stay (or if you call from the courtesy phone they may have at the park entrance, or something like that). It still stinks, in my opinion, even though I understand why they do it that way; it often makes it impossible to drive around a campground you've never been to and see what sites look nice to you and what ones would be annoying to camp in.

As to why they do it, things are much more straightforward for them if everyone is in the system with their sites. The rangers then can walk or drive around and readily compare the physically occupied sites to the ones that are known to be reserved and see if anyone is camping without paying, or in the wrong site, or whatever. It also should help avoid problems with more than one party claiming the same site, whether done accidentally or maliciously.