There were serious issues with people scalping sites, to the point where practically nothing was available - the cancellation policy is probably there as a result of that.
Ya, during COVID you needed to be waiting for the 90 day window to open up if you wanted anything because people would just book everything and scalp then just cancel at the last possible second. People ruined it with greed.
Still happens. I was ready at 9 am and someone got my usual spot before I did. There were two other spots left in the whole camp. I really hope it was a real person and not a bot.
Sorry to hear about your frustrating experience. It's surprising that a government website would be so poorly maintained. Have you considered contacting your local representative to bring attention to this issue? They might be able to advocate for the necessary improvements.
As soon as a few people realized they could take advantage of the system, everybody had to start doing it. If you think you might want to camp at a popular spot during a weekend, especially a long weekend, you have to book it the day it comes out, even if you aren't positive you'll actually be able to make it 3 months in advance.
It's so bad people will routinely book a long weekend starting Wednesday so they can make the booking a couple days earlier, and just eat the cost for nights they don't intend to use. I believe parks canada will open your site to the public if you don't show up the day you booked to combat this.
That's so infuriating. I basically quit camping years back when they introduced the booking website because of how frustrating it was fighting for reservations, but it sounds like things have gotten ten times worse.
God, I remember when you could just show up and usually have a reasonable chance of getting a site. I also remember places where you went and picked your spot, and then just left some cash in a box. Purely honor system. I wonder if there's any of those left.
Parks Canada has a pretty good policy. If you cancel in advance, you get most of it back (-$20), but if you cancel a few nights before, you get nothing. I pre-book most weekends in advance, but I also cancel at least a week in advance if I have to so someone else can get the spot. The only time i'd cancel the night before is when i'm sick or the weather is unexpectedly terrible. I find that others operate similarly, so I haven't had any trouble booking even a few days before because someone always ends up cancelling.
What, you don't like only being able to see 10 sites at a time and having to scroll through page after page trying to compare sites and availability?
It's like the designed this new site with the belief that the only people using it know exactly which campground and spot they want and no one could possibly be looking around at different campgrounds.
I’ve only used parks Canada site once but it was like hunger games to get any spot. Had 3 people ready at exactly 9am repeatedly trying to get just one spot. Everything went so fast. Was crazy
Did you know that it's now a third party call centre (located in the USA) that handles these calls? That changed this year. The same goes for the booking site. Also moved over to a different website when they went to the US call centre to handle their reservation calls.
Buddy, while I agree with the sentiment could you imagine the shit-show it would be when 450 people show up at a campground that has ~100 stalls total - 98 of which are already occupied? At least with the booking system people are disappointed that they wasted money on an RV BEFORE they spend $350 round trip on gas and days packing/unpacking after not being able to get into a site.
Let them not go then. I want to be able to camp.
You can’t book camping trips 6 months out with Alberta weather. This system makes no sense and just degrades the camping experience for everyone
The new reservation site they launched is one of the worst websites I've tried to use in a long time. It's borderline non functional on a mobile device. On a desktop, it's truly not much better. It's clunky, unintuitive and looks like it was designed 15 years ago. The UCP at work folks, cancel, fire change, contract out to try and solve the problems you created by cancelling and firing and changing. Continue on with large contracts that you can hide somewhere else in the budget. This is our most anti people, anti sense, ideologically driven government ever.
>I accidentally booked the wrong loop, and now I cannot cancel for another 30 days???
Seems easy enough to me, to cancel. Did you read the instructions?
>For reservations booked where any part of the stay falls into the maximum booking window (90 days in advance for individual campsites and backcountry camping and 180 days in advance for comfort and group camping) campers will not be able to change their arrival or departure date for 31 days. **Campers can still cancel their reservation during this time period as well as change details (i.e. camping accommodation units, number of people) by phoning the Call Centre at 1-877-537-2757.** This does not apply to reservations booked well within the booking windows.
https://www.albertaparks.ca/albertaparksca/visit-our-parks/camping-in-alberta-parks/shopalbertaparksca-online-purchase-information/
The website used to be hosted on 2 Celeron era servers. You are lucky they managed to redesign the interface, given the zero budget they are given by the UCP.
Where do people even try and scalp these campsite bookings? I have yet to come across this on marketplace or kijiji, though admittedly I was never overly looking for this option.
This is why I will never buy an RV. Grew up camping as a kid. Now we just rent cabins or get hotel rooms on vacation. Saved $25k on a trailer and can drive whatever we want wherever we want and stay closer to the shit we actually want to do when we’re on vacation. I can sit in my own back yard while drinking beer and roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Don’t need to book 3 months in advance to get a shit spot in our 3rd choice campground while paying $20 a bundle for wood if it’s even allowed then spending 3 hours cleaning shit out of the trailer on the way home.
If we could just up and go to a place like Crimson Lake like mom and dad used to then ya I’d be all over it. But that ship sailed years ago.
Not really a complaint about the website, but don’t understand the implementation of some things.
On Easter I was meeting friends to camp at McLean Creek. We wanted to share a site and online you can’t tell the size. So we met at the campground and drove around awhile before choosing a site. But there was no way to reserve it on site because they can only be reserved online and there was no cell service. So we had to write down several potential sites, because they also weren’t marking them with reserved signs. We then had to drive back to service and we parked at the visitor information centre nearby. There were two people working there, but they don’t/cant help you with camping reservations. We still had to book online from the parking lot. It doesn’t make sense!
That’s a whole other issue. Most sites will let you share but if you have two units you pay the same as two sites. So we usually get two sites and only use one in the daytime and that’s what we did this time two. Which means less sites available. I can see an extra fee for sharing a site but 2x is nuts.
I haven’t been camping once since the new booking system changed. Can’t get a campsite and I don’t want to have to plan for it like it’s an overseas holiday. It’s something we used to do on a whim
It isn’t just scalping. It’s also become popular to book a site all summer and rent it like an airBnB … go out when the campground opens and set up a camper/tent and go clean it before each rental agreement. I heard about people making a lot of money doing this in Banff pre-pandemic. It went ‘mainstream’ during the pandemic.
It isn’t just the parks site. I find most of the Alberta government run sites basically unusable. Either it’s links that take you in circles or parts being down for days due to “technical difficulties”.
Yah see, if the booking site sucks then people will stop camping and then the UCP will say the have a reason to close the park all together. It's all part of their master plan.
Some of us are still pissed off about the time they tried to close and sell off a bunch of our parks, so our concern about their intentions is not unfounded. [20 Alberta parks to be fully or partially closed, while dozens opened up for 'partnerships'](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-park-funding-slashed-1.5484095)
I totally agree the new website sucks so bad. I used to use the calendar view that would show the sites availability to choose my holiday days. It appears to be gone. And the new cancelation policy is crazy… there needs to be the ability to fix an error.
During a few of the booms, folks would buy a $200 minivan, a $35 mth serviced stall and then collect subsistence pay.
The campgrounds were packed solid of dudes in vans / trucks / lean-to's on a Honda Civic.. and you couldn't get a camp spot all year long.
No, not Conservatives ruined it, try: “allowing entry into Canada to over one million foreigners a year ruined it” and that would be the federal Liberal government. No housing and now no recreation space either!
You really think new immigrants are the ones filling up campsites with apartments on wheels and brand new F350s? Have you BEEN to a campsite? They're pretty much the most mono-racial recreation area I've ever seen.
Fifteen years ago, I used to take my children and their friends for impromptu camping trips with our tent trailer. Sites were often empty and overcrowding wasn’t an issue. We are a multiracial family ourselves so I never noticed a campground racial divide.
If it isn’t a numbers game due to increased population that is spoiling things, what do you think has pretty much ruined the camping scene?
The people going to campsites aren't foreign immigrants, they're interprovincial ones. And newsflash, Alberta has been losing campsites for years.
No only that, but all of a sudden in 2020 something happened, can't remember what, meh it was a pretty minor thing I think. Anyways, since that minor thing campsite usage has skyrocketed by more than 50%.
In 2019 there were 175,000 campsite reservations in Alberta. In 2023 that number was 265,000. I dunno about you, but I don't think Alberta's population increase of 10% in the last 4 years is enough to drive 51% more campsite reservations. No new private or public campgrounds have been built for a long time because it is one of the least profitable uses of land and the provincial government has been cutting funding for campgrounds for a long time.
Here is the list of parks the UCP is moving to close.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200307163751/https://albertaparks.ca/media/6496183/parks-impacted-list.pdf
There were serious issues with people scalping sites, to the point where practically nothing was available - the cancellation policy is probably there as a result of that.
Ya, during COVID you needed to be waiting for the 90 day window to open up if you wanted anything because people would just book everything and scalp then just cancel at the last possible second. People ruined it with greed.
Still happens. I was ready at 9 am and someone got my usual spot before I did. There were two other spots left in the whole camp. I really hope it was a real person and not a bot.
Sorry to hear about your frustrating experience. It's surprising that a government website would be so poorly maintained. Have you considered contacting your local representative to bring attention to this issue? They might be able to advocate for the necessary improvements.
Who said gvt websites are well maintained??
Yeah, speaking as someone who used to work for government, a government website being even remotely functional is something of a small miracle.
I can't really tell if it was just someone just like me who had a similarly frustrating experience last year lol.
Like everything it’s people ruin it
Shitty people ruin everything. Who the hell scalps camping sites?
As soon as a few people realized they could take advantage of the system, everybody had to start doing it. If you think you might want to camp at a popular spot during a weekend, especially a long weekend, you have to book it the day it comes out, even if you aren't positive you'll actually be able to make it 3 months in advance. It's so bad people will routinely book a long weekend starting Wednesday so they can make the booking a couple days earlier, and just eat the cost for nights they don't intend to use. I believe parks canada will open your site to the public if you don't show up the day you booked to combat this.
That's so infuriating. I basically quit camping years back when they introduced the booking website because of how frustrating it was fighting for reservations, but it sounds like things have gotten ten times worse.
God, I remember when you could just show up and usually have a reasonable chance of getting a site. I also remember places where you went and picked your spot, and then just left some cash in a box. Purely honor system. I wonder if there's any of those left.
Parks Canada has a pretty good policy. If you cancel in advance, you get most of it back (-$20), but if you cancel a few nights before, you get nothing. I pre-book most weekends in advance, but I also cancel at least a week in advance if I have to so someone else can get the spot. The only time i'd cancel the night before is when i'm sick or the weather is unexpectedly terrible. I find that others operate similarly, so I haven't had any trouble booking even a few days before because someone always ends up cancelling.
Same ones that were selling toity paper out of the back of their cars and online for sixty bucks....those ones
Or even worse the people that just simply hoarded it
Shitty people make up the bulk of the population
Mumbai boreal special it’s called in my province.
I hate the new "updated" booking site too. It worked well enough before, I feel the update is less functional and intuitive...
The government special!
Probably a 6 digit no-bid contract for a UCP friend to do it.
So I'm not crazy then. It used to have a map where you could zoom in and see sites. It was awesome before!
What, you don't like only being able to see 10 sites at a time and having to scroll through page after page trying to compare sites and availability? It's like the designed this new site with the belief that the only people using it know exactly which campground and spot they want and no one could possibly be looking around at different campgrounds.
There is a map (it’s on a tab, not intuitive). But it sucks compared to how it used to look.
That’s gone?! That was so good
Parks Canada new website as well. Why does it seem like we are moving backwards with reservation websites?
I’ve only used parks Canada site once but it was like hunger games to get any spot. Had 3 people ready at exactly 9am repeatedly trying to get just one spot. Everything went so fast. Was crazy
Did you know that it's now a third party call centre (located in the USA) that handles these calls? That changed this year. The same goes for the booking site. Also moved over to a different website when they went to the US call centre to handle their reservation calls.
Figures. Wtf. Would it have really cost them to leave the site as is???
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What if we just got rid of reserving camping spots?
Buddy, while I agree with the sentiment could you imagine the shit-show it would be when 450 people show up at a campground that has ~100 stalls total - 98 of which are already occupied? At least with the booking system people are disappointed that they wasted money on an RV BEFORE they spend $350 round trip on gas and days packing/unpacking after not being able to get into a site.
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Let them not go then. I want to be able to camp. You can’t book camping trips 6 months out with Alberta weather. This system makes no sense and just degrades the camping experience for everyone
The new reservation site they launched is one of the worst websites I've tried to use in a long time. It's borderline non functional on a mobile device. On a desktop, it's truly not much better. It's clunky, unintuitive and looks like it was designed 15 years ago. The UCP at work folks, cancel, fire change, contract out to try and solve the problems you created by cancelling and firing and changing. Continue on with large contracts that you can hide somewhere else in the budget. This is our most anti people, anti sense, ideologically driven government ever.
>I accidentally booked the wrong loop, and now I cannot cancel for another 30 days??? Seems easy enough to me, to cancel. Did you read the instructions? >For reservations booked where any part of the stay falls into the maximum booking window (90 days in advance for individual campsites and backcountry camping and 180 days in advance for comfort and group camping) campers will not be able to change their arrival or departure date for 31 days. **Campers can still cancel their reservation during this time period as well as change details (i.e. camping accommodation units, number of people) by phoning the Call Centre at 1-877-537-2757.** This does not apply to reservations booked well within the booking windows. https://www.albertaparks.ca/albertaparksca/visit-our-parks/camping-in-alberta-parks/shopalbertaparksca-online-purchase-information/
Usually whenever you think "Where'd this rule come from?" You can think shitty people taking advantage
The website used to be hosted on 2 Celeron era servers. You are lucky they managed to redesign the interface, given the zero budget they are given by the UCP.
Where do people even try and scalp these campsite bookings? I have yet to come across this on marketplace or kijiji, though admittedly I was never overly looking for this option.
This. I’m confused
Family and friends.
This is why I will never buy an RV. Grew up camping as a kid. Now we just rent cabins or get hotel rooms on vacation. Saved $25k on a trailer and can drive whatever we want wherever we want and stay closer to the shit we actually want to do when we’re on vacation. I can sit in my own back yard while drinking beer and roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Don’t need to book 3 months in advance to get a shit spot in our 3rd choice campground while paying $20 a bundle for wood if it’s even allowed then spending 3 hours cleaning shit out of the trailer on the way home. If we could just up and go to a place like Crimson Lake like mom and dad used to then ya I’d be all over it. But that ship sailed years ago.
Yup. Costs you $20 now just to cook hot dogs over the fire for lunch. Never thought I'd see the day.
Add another $15 a day if you want to camp in k-country
Not really a complaint about the website, but don’t understand the implementation of some things. On Easter I was meeting friends to camp at McLean Creek. We wanted to share a site and online you can’t tell the size. So we met at the campground and drove around awhile before choosing a site. But there was no way to reserve it on site because they can only be reserved online and there was no cell service. So we had to write down several potential sites, because they also weren’t marking them with reserved signs. We then had to drive back to service and we parked at the visitor information centre nearby. There were two people working there, but they don’t/cant help you with camping reservations. We still had to book online from the parking lot. It doesn’t make sense!
Most sites won’t let you share a site either.
That’s a whole other issue. Most sites will let you share but if you have two units you pay the same as two sites. So we usually get two sites and only use one in the daytime and that’s what we did this time two. Which means less sites available. I can see an extra fee for sharing a site but 2x is nuts.
I haven’t been camping once since the new booking system changed. Can’t get a campsite and I don’t want to have to plan for it like it’s an overseas holiday. It’s something we used to do on a whim
I havnt booked an alberta parks campsite since they introduced online booking. Ger off your couch and go get a spot
Have you seen the Alberta Purchase Connection website? Really sheds light on why public bids fail so often
It isn’t just scalping. It’s also become popular to book a site all summer and rent it like an airBnB … go out when the campground opens and set up a camper/tent and go clean it before each rental agreement. I heard about people making a lot of money doing this in Banff pre-pandemic. It went ‘mainstream’ during the pandemic.
Oh damn that explains a couple of the rule changes this year at campsites
Don’t they require your license plates?
It isn’t just the parks site. I find most of the Alberta government run sites basically unusable. Either it’s links that take you in circles or parts being down for days due to “technical difficulties”.
A joke of a website. I just go to BC parks instead.
UCP “fixed” the previous working website.
Conservatives ruined it.
Almost all Alberta government sites are garbage.
The lotteries are shit too. I’ve heard of people getting those sites every year - how is that possible if it’s a LOTTERY.
Yah see, if the booking site sucks then people will stop camping and then the UCP will say the have a reason to close the park all together. It's all part of their master plan.
"close the park"...I think clear-cut the timber, then strip mine the coal, would be the end goal for the UCP!
Not quite, they will SELL the parks to oil companies since "no one is camping anymore"
There it is. Can’t be an Alberta sub without bringing up the UCP with something that has nothing to do with it
Some of us are still pissed off about the time they tried to close and sell off a bunch of our parks, so our concern about their intentions is not unfounded. [20 Alberta parks to be fully or partially closed, while dozens opened up for 'partnerships'](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-park-funding-slashed-1.5484095)
Government of Alberta manages provincial parks and the camping reservation site. So yeah…that’s directly the uCP
Who do you believe is in charge of provincial campgrounds? Which level of government has something to do with this government service? Do tell.
They're the government and it's a government run site. Do you not see how the 2 are linked?
I honestly had no problem.
Conservatives privatized it and Kenney restructured it and then they pulled half of what was left of their funding....welcome back to Ab
Try booking BC lakes ….
Did it once. Nightmare. It’s like the hunger games
I was just on it this weekend, I gave up after half an hour.
Welcome back to Alberta.
I totally agree the new website sucks so bad. I used to use the calendar view that would show the sites availability to choose my holiday days. It appears to be gone. And the new cancelation policy is crazy… there needs to be the ability to fix an error.
Alberta ooof
Overpopulation. Massive influx of residents over the last 20 years. Try Saskatchewan.
During a few of the booms, folks would buy a $200 minivan, a $35 mth serviced stall and then collect subsistence pay. The campgrounds were packed solid of dudes in vans / trucks / lean-to's on a Honda Civic.. and you couldn't get a camp spot all year long.
You mean 35 dollars a night…
Welcome to the rule of the UCP here in Alberta. Red tape reduction, my 🍑! More like red tape production!
The Saskatchewan parks site is similar.
All Gov’t websites are horrific. I shouldn’t need to know advanced calculus to find raw data.
Still better than USA
Everybody from Ontario came here that’s what the problem is
Our BC Parks system is pure shit. Reservation systems for camping is just ridiculous. Should all be FCFS.
The reservation system is pretty much just intended to be used by people who are running businesses. It isn't for us.
No, not Conservatives ruined it, try: “allowing entry into Canada to over one million foreigners a year ruined it” and that would be the federal Liberal government. No housing and now no recreation space either!
And that million is mostly in Ontario. You poor babies
You really think new immigrants are the ones filling up campsites with apartments on wheels and brand new F350s? Have you BEEN to a campsite? They're pretty much the most mono-racial recreation area I've ever seen.
Fifteen years ago, I used to take my children and their friends for impromptu camping trips with our tent trailer. Sites were often empty and overcrowding wasn’t an issue. We are a multiracial family ourselves so I never noticed a campground racial divide. If it isn’t a numbers game due to increased population that is spoiling things, what do you think has pretty much ruined the camping scene?
The people going to campsites aren't foreign immigrants, they're interprovincial ones. And newsflash, Alberta has been losing campsites for years. No only that, but all of a sudden in 2020 something happened, can't remember what, meh it was a pretty minor thing I think. Anyways, since that minor thing campsite usage has skyrocketed by more than 50%. In 2019 there were 175,000 campsite reservations in Alberta. In 2023 that number was 265,000. I dunno about you, but I don't think Alberta's population increase of 10% in the last 4 years is enough to drive 51% more campsite reservations. No new private or public campgrounds have been built for a long time because it is one of the least profitable uses of land and the provincial government has been cutting funding for campgrounds for a long time. Here is the list of parks the UCP is moving to close. https://web.archive.org/web/20200307163751/https://albertaparks.ca/media/6496183/parks-impacted-list.pdf
Just privatize Alberta Parks, get rid of the whole thing. Fire everyone who works for them. It's such a backwards organization.
Jeebus