recreation.gov

[vector]

Maybe it's just me, but the recreation.gov website is a bust. When I use Safari, the bottom "banner" crawls with vertical movement of the page, so some of the information on the page is blocked by the banner. Data entry that needs to be included to make a reservation is hidden behind this annoying banner. Switching to Firefox does no good, as once a campground is chosen the site reverts back to the introductory splash screen. It is impossible for me to make a reservation on this site. Has anyone else experienced this difficulty? I'm left with the option to call, but being on hold for an extended time has its own frustration.

[scrubjaysnest]

NPS and ACOE get you for $10 if you cancel.

[PawPaw_n_Gram]

Active Networks subsidiary Reserve America again won the umbrella contract for Recreation.gov. That is for the web site hosting and computer services. I've been able to see the 'campground' side of the system - it is Active Networks software nothing like what we see on Recreation.gov.

The individual agencies award their contracts for campground reservation on different schedules. National Park Service, US Forest Service, US Army Corps of Engineers are all different contracts, though if they choose to leave Reserve America, their new provider would be required to provide interfaces to work with both the Recreation.gov user reserving system, and the Active Networks campground software. A difficult and expensive thing to do.

Individual contracts is why the US Forest Service charges a $9 reservation fee, while NPS and USACOE do not. Different contracts pay different amounts per reservation/ change/ phone call to the provider - Reserve America.

The Recreation.gov web site operator does not provide any data about campsites, details, pictures, etc. They do not own any of that data.

Individual agencies and regions have hired many contractors responsible for providing information about different campgrounds/ campsites. Some agencies/ regions/ campgrounds choose to use their own employees or volunteers to do such things as campsite descriptions/ photographs. Some hire contractors.

That part of the system is not standardized.

Plus, once an agency has new information, getting Recreation.gov updated is another somewhat complicated/ picky process. I've been told that updating one campsite photo requires a completely new set of campground photos. I offered to update photos of campsites at a NPS campground where I hosted, and was told it was too much work for them to bother even if I provided the photos for free.

[agesilaus]

PawPaw_n_Gram wrote:
Recreation.gov has been with the same provider since 1997.

That provider is Reserve America, and 1997 they won the first contract with the National Park Service. Other federal agencies have come on line since, a huge contract was the US Forest Service in 2005.

In 2009, Reserve America was purchased by Active Networks.

In 2013/14 - the Recreation.Gov interface was moved closer to the Reserve American interface (how the web page looks), but did not implement some Active Networks options now seen on Reserve America.

The search changed slightly - one thing which bothers me is that I can no longer search on a large area for a specific type of site - such search an entire state for 50A/W/S sites.

I've only had problems with banners and such blocking parts of the page due to the way certain web browers are setup. Safari is one which doesn't always 'play nice'. There are some others.

I thought Warren Myer (Coyote blog) who runs campgrounds out west commented they he had to have his people (working at Federal CG) go out and rephotograph all the sites. That was because the contract changed hands and the old contract owner took all that data with him. But I cannot find that quote. His site is poorly indexed.

The contract was up for bid in 2014 tho.

Link

But I haven't found a link saying who won the bid. However I found one saying that the website changes were made in 2013-4 so that doesn't seem to be linked to the RFP.

I have to say that the Recreation.gov site has improved, meaning you can now make reservations fairly easily so they fixed some of the bugs from the change-over.

[coolmom42]

vector wrote:
Tried Chrome this evening after the post and all works find. Thanks for the responses!

Great!

You might be OK with the current version of Firefox or IE, if your installed versions are out of date. But Chrome is the best browser IMHO.

[PawPaw_n_Gram]

Recreation.gov has been with the same provider since 1997.

That provider is Reserve America, and 1997 they won the first contract with the National Park Service. Other federal agencies have come on line since, a huge contract was the US Forest Service in 2005.

In 2009, Reserve America was purchased by Active Networks.

In 2013/14 - the Recreation.Gov interface was moved closer to the Reserve American interface (how the web page looks), but did not implement some Active Networks options now seen on Reserve America.

The search changed slightly - one thing which bothers me is that I can no longer search on a large area for a specific type of site - such search an entire state for 50A/W/S sites.

I've only had problems with banners and such blocking parts of the page due to the way certain web browers are setup. Safari is one which doesn't always 'play nice'. There are some others.

[riven1950]

Made a reservation there using Firefox 2 days ago. No problem

[scrubjaysnest]

Firefox works fine for me and all our old reservations are still in the data base.
We just don't use it very often.

[vector]

Tried Chrome this evening after the post and all works find. Thanks for the responses!

[3oaks]

Works fine for me.

I just now logged on to Recreation.gov and went through the complete reservation process as a test. Did all but "book now". No stuttering or glitches whatsoever. No banners either. :@

[coolmom42]

Maybe you need to update your browser. I'm using the current version of Chrome. There is no bottom banner.

It's possibly you've picked up some sort of adware that's messing with the site. Try installing and running Malwarebytes and possibly the free version of Avast.

[Travlingman]

Works no problems for me. Just got off of it, I don't even see a bottom banner.

[agesilaus]

That site sure took a nose dive a few years ago. I'm not sure if this is true but but I've heard that the original company lost their contract with the US Gov. They had uninspired but very functional websites. When they left they took a large chunk of the data with them. The new company taking over had to rebuild everything and it seems that like just about all US Government computer projects the result is a bust. I've emailed complaints to them but basically get the "mechanics shrug" in response.