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Following is copy-pasted from email from Ontario Parks ........
New reservation system is rolling out soon!In order to transfer data from the old system to the new system, the reservation system must be taken offline for approximately one week.
There will be no reservations available online or via the call centre while the reservation service is temporarily shut down.
When will the outage be?
For online reservations, the shutdown starts at midnight on October 20. Reservations, changes or cancellations not completed before this time will not be processed.
For call centre reservations, the cut-off time to create, change or cancel a reservation is 9:00 p.m. on October 19.
Will my upcoming reservations be affected?
No. All reservations created before the temporary shut-down will be transferred to the new reservation system.
Will I need to create a new user account?
If you have an account on our current reservation system and have made a booking within the past two years, your account information — including profile information and reservation history — will be transferred to the new system.
Password information will not be transferred. When the system comes back online, use the email address associated with your old account to access your profile and booking history.
When will the new system be online?
Starting the morning of October 25, the new reservation site will be available for you to browse, review your account, and set up new accounts.
Note that reservations will NOT be open at this time.
Keen campers can browse the upgraded site to become familiar with the look and feel, set up new accounts, and review reservations made prior to the shut-down.
Reservations are scheduled to open at 7:00 a.m. on October 28.
Wondering about the new system's features?
For full information ..
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Advance check-in up to two weeks before the trip. Nice!
I was worried they would introduce a site-specific reservation system. That would be a disaster.
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Can't wait to print out my own permits. Means I can roll into the parking lot of the more remote access points at 5:30-6am. Will put my trips WAY ahead of the schedule I'm used to, which usually had me on the water just as the wind was picking up.
Pet-friendly yurts are nice too, even if it's only one or two per campground. Little doggo is already excited!
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I wonder how the advance check-in works if someone were to print their permit 2 weeks prior and then cancel prior to the trip. I can't help to wonder if there is a possibility of people canceling and then tripping without paying for it, arguing that they have a reservation if someone else shows up on a site.
Marko_Mrko wrote:
Advance check-in up to two weeks before the trip. Nice!
I was worried they would introduce a site-specific reservation system. That would be a disaster.
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I wonder how the advance check-in works if someone were to print their permit 2 weeks prior and then cancel prior to the trip. I can't help to wonder if there is a possibility of people canceling and then tripping without paying for it, arguing that they have a reservation if someone else shows up on a site.
Advance check-in up to two weeks before the trip. Nice!
I was worried they would introduce a site-specific reservation system. That would be a disaster.
My guess is that once you print the permit it becomes non-refundable. Otherwise, yeah, I could see people trying to abuse the system the way you outlined.
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I like being able to print permits prior to trip departure. I havent had a chance to look at it extensively but does this include printing the vehicle parking permit too? Im assuming you just print out a second copy for the dash? Looking forward to put in prior to office opening..its about time. The two weeks prior to departure seems excessive to me however.
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The system looks like it works pretty well for the most part, but I guess I won't know for sure until I actually start booking for the first spring trip.
I did notice that it's lacking the ability to check how many sites are available/occupied for each lake like the old system had. I, along with I'm sure many of you, often use this to determine how "crowded" certain lakes will be and plan our trip accordingly. I've emailed the developers and they said they will look into exposing that detail so hopefully it gets implemented before next season.
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... I did notice that it's lacking the ability to check how many sites are available/occupied for each lake like the old system had. I, along with I'm sure many of you, often use this to determine how "crowded" certain lakes will be and plan our trip accordingly...
Really? That was a super useful tool that for seeing how busy parts of the park are and how crowded a lake will be. Without that feature you would just be guessing. You wouldn't even be able to tell if 2 spots were open on the same lake in case a larger group was traveling together.
Last edited by solos (11/08/2019 11:13 am)
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The system looks like it works pretty well for the most part, but I guess I won't know for sure until I actually start booking for the first spring trip.
I did notice that it's lacking the ability to check how many sites are available/occupied for each lake like the old system had. I, along with I'm sure many of you, often use this to determine how "crowded" certain lakes will be and plan our trip accordingly. I've emailed the developers and they said they will look into exposing that detail so hopefully it gets implemented before next season.
Wow. That is a big miss. Did they survey anyone who uses this site on a regular basis? That is the number one feature for me in booking online. It is such a big miss that I may just call all my reservations in and ask for the current amount of bookings on each lake. Then call again just before I leave and bug them again to
see how busy my lakes are and adjust accordingly.
So the exact opposite experience they were likely hoping for in terms of driving fewer calls and incurring less costs. I mean the cost per call in my companies call centres in $12 a call.They will likely be similar.
Do you have the email of the developers. ? If enough of us write them maybe it will get put back sooner than later. Thx
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I've just sent off the following "email-form" to Ontario Parks asking about the "campsite-numbers-feature" ......
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Thanks Barry please let us know what you get back.
Being able to assess solitude is pretty much bare bones functionality for me and I would assume most if not all frequent backcountry travellers. I mean solitude is one of the core reasons I do this.
Lack of this plus the fact the advanced printing of permits doesn’t apply to AP has me wishing they had saved their development dollars.
Last edited by ShawnD (11/10/2019 7:41 am)
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Lack of this plus the fact the advanced printing of permits doesn’t apply to AP has me wishing they had saved their development dollars.
I didn’t realize the advance printing doesn’t apply to Algonquin. That’s brutal. Anyone know why?
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Wow taking away the ability to see campsite availability and not making print-early permits apply to Algonquin. They really messed this one up. Hopefully they look at Barry’s message and look at this thread and realize they need to make some changes.
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Lack of this plus the fact the advanced printing of permits doesn’t apply to AP has me wishing they had saved their development dollars.
I didn’t realize the advance printing doesn’t apply to Algonquin. That’s brutal. Anyone know why?
Function is only available for Parks that don’t have online booking.
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Lack of this plus the fact the advanced printing of permits doesn’t apply to AP has me wishing they had saved their development dollars.
I didn’t realize the advance printing doesn’t apply to Algonquin. That’s brutal. Anyone know why?
Function is only available for Parks that don’t have online booking.
That makes no sense. Man, I was so excited about this new system. Hopefully they release version 2.0 quickly
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Do you have the email of the developers. ? If enough of us write them maybe it will get put back sooner than later. Thx
Sorry, I don't have the developer's direct email, I just filled out a contact form like Barry did.
Here's the response I got:
Hello Kyle,
Thanks so much for your feedback and information!
Hearing from those who use the new reservation service will help us make improvements. We have flagged this backcountry details item that you note below to our reservation service team to look into.
Thanks again and happy camping!
Ontario Parks
I'm a developer myself and this should be an easy change as long as the database structure hasn't changed in their back-end.
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I've also sent my concern to info@Camis.com, who I believe are still the developers of the Ontario Parks reservation website.
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