National Parks Reservations

raindove wrote:
We have reservations for next week.... waiting and watching to see what happens, as I'm sure many others are.

How much longer can this stupidity continue? I hope you get in next week!!!

I was told by Recreation.gov last week that they were handling it on a day by day basis. They are basically contacting the people who have reservations that exact day or the next day and advising them. If you have reservations for a future time (further away than a couple days), then you will have to wait till then to see if you get in. We had plans for this pas weekend. I called tuesday and was given that information. We could not wait for the day before or day of to find out if we were going to be able to get in as we had a couple hundred mile drive there. I canceled on tuesday and was charged the $10 fee. Poor management if you ask me. They should at least give more notice than 24 hrs or at least waive the fee if you are within a week of the shutdown.

bob_nestor wrote:
... I see someone spent a lot of time updating web sites to point out that they're closed, even taking down useful information like maps. ...

None of the web sites were changed and nothing was taken down, you just can't see them. In simple terms they use a simple redirect to send you to a page saying "we are closed". The redirect is just a simple line or 2 of text in a file you can not see but the server(s) read that file every time someone tries to get to any page on the server. It probably took the IT person 10 minutes to implement it.

For the geeks: mod rewrite in the htaccess file.

tandk wrote:
We have reservations at Zion the 17th and are hoping they are open by then! So, we are just waiting...

I am sure recreation.gov will be getting lots of phone calls about this!

Is there anyone answering the phones? I see someone spent a lot of time updating web sites to point out that they're closed, even taking down useful information like maps. Seems if they were really shut down they'd have either turned off the servers or just let them run until they crashed. Going thru all this effort to make the point that you can't get specific information because they're "in shutdown mode" seems pretty childish to me. But then all of what goes on in DC seems a bit childish.

We have reservations at Zion the 17th and are hoping they are open by then! So, we are just waiting...

I am sure recreation.gov will be getting lots of phone calls about this!

recreation.gov 877-444-6777

Yes, thank you for the reply.

Thanks for the info. We have reservations for Arches NP next weekend and wondered what happened if we couldn't get in.

We were told today that our payment for a Corp of Engineer park will be refunded to our credit card after the date of the reservation if the parks do not open before then and are unavailable to use.