Utah's crowded Zion National Park may require reservations

One issue at Zion is you have to stop at entrance to either pay or use the pass and drive all the way thru it to get to Bryce Canyon. Then pay to get back thru Zion on the return trip.

donkeydew wrote:
you have to ride the trams in the summer and if you ever get behind 3 or 4 tourist bus loads waiting for a tram and at each stop along the way you will pray for a reservation system.i almost learned japanese waiting in line the last time. this was in may i can only imagine the problems after school is out.

Exactly why we take our yearly "big" trip once school is back in session! Thankfully we dont have to deal with those crowds

Funny story about japanese tourists, we were in california at Calico Ghost Town a few years back and we saw 3 huge tour buses pull up, and out came hundreds of Japanese tourists. We thought that this was gonna be a heck of a crowd, They scrambled to all the shops, and took pics in front of signs, etc... And then almost ran back to the buses. They were there maybe a total of 15 mins. We just sat there (10:00am with 96 degree heat) sipping our cool drinks, watching the spectacle. :h

you have to ride the trams in the summer and if you ever get behind 3 or 4 tourist bus loads waiting for a tram and at each stop along the way you will pray for a reservation system.i almost learned japanese waiting in line the last time. this was in may i can only imagine the problems after school is out.

I went to a land use meeting where this was the primary discussion several months back. Arches NP was the primary topic there, but it was also discussed that this was becoming necessary in Zion as well. The proposal that gathered the most support was for a reservation in regards to date, and time at which you would be allowed through the gate in order to prevent the long lines that sometimes go for miles down the road at Arches. The flexibility issue was discussed, along with problems the reservation/lottery creates in places like "The Wave", where people have died from heat exhaustion having to hike in heat they might not venture out in if they felt the didn't have to because of the "reservation" for that specific date.

Unfortunately, crowds are getting to big. There are already limits in many parts of the park implemented through the permit system. Simple fact is there are more people than the park can absorb, and the crowds get bigger every year. Not really any good options that will be fair for, and meet everyone's needs. I think Arches will see visitor limitation plans implement prior to Zion. The news article wasn't really very well researched as it has been discussed for a couple years now:Arches Reservation Proposal

It will only get worse.

More baby boomers retire every day. Many people who quit camping when their kids hit their teens are now getting back in to it. New units are flying off the dealer lots so fast the RV industry can barely keep up. Campgrounds everywhere are full.

bartlettj wrote:
without a guaranteed spot to camp.

This isn't camping spot reservations. Zion already has that.

This is about implementing possible reservations for day use. If you get to the park, don't have a reservation and that days quota is already filled, you and your family will not be able to enter the national park.

When we got to Zion last November, the ranger at the gate told us "I hope you have a campsite reservation, because your trailer is too big to go thru the tunnel and our parking lots for a rig that big are full"

We had a campsite reservation.

Iceland is having a similar problem in the entire country. The number of tourists has almost tripled in 5 years, partly due to the country's transition to a tourism based economy and partly due to the interest generated by Game of Thrones. They are trying to determine the best way to control it as their once uncrowded beauty is being overrun.

It is necessary in a lot of state parks on the west coast. I think reservations are a positive thing if they are implemented properly, because it allows people to have a site reserved before driving a long way to a remote location without a guaranteed spot to camp.
One way to get around reservation system abuse is to do a lottery system instead of direct reservations.

I think an hour based system is horrible, and a daily system is still a bit limiting, perhaps allow a 3-5 day pass which would allow for changes of plans and to accommodate things like inclimate weather, travel delays, etc. Then you fight the reservation abuse problem by allowing first come first serve if a certain percentage of reservations haven't used by hour X (or perhaps better allow some first come first served every day and increase the pool if reservations go unused). It's not like the park can only accommodate 25k visitors a day and 500 more makes it not work.

Btw when I talk about flexibility I'm thinking of my upcoming trip, originally it was only going to be me, the wife and our two boys but my niece heard my wife and sister-in-law talking about the trip and begged her way to coming with us, if you had a hard reservation system we'd have to what, leave her in the trailer while the 4 of us went into the park, that seems a bit too harsh.

We've heard so much about the abuse of reservation systems on this forum. I wonder how they would combat that, if they even try.