Some people trying to reserve camping sites for the Canada Day long weekend in B.C. were faced with a slow booking process Wednesday.
The BC Parks website allows people to reserve four months ahead of arrival, meaning people wanting to book for July 1 could try and book on March 2.
“Took me close to 30 minutes to make my reservation,” said one person on Reddit.
Another person described the process as a "disaster."
Glacier Media reached out to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy to find out how many people tried to book on Wednesday morning and what caused the slowdown.
In a statement, the ministry said there were over 4,000 users online at 7 a.m. By 10 a.m., 3,459 reservations had been made.
"By end of day, BC Parks had received 5,050 reservations," the statement said. "For some prospective campers, this resulted in slower payment processing or intermittent access to their reservation cart."
The ministry noted the service provider intends to add more resources to process "the increased volume of transactions" in advance of high-volume days.
"We recognize the inconvenience this may have caused for some website users," says a spokesperson.
For context, this January's "opening day" for camping saw a total of 3,664 reservations for the entire day.
As of March 2, nearly all of the campsites in the Coastal Mainland were booked for the July 1 weekend. There are lots of sites still available in the Southern Interior and Islands.
In 2022, B.C. launched a new camping reservation website; the original booking system oftentimes experienced delays and system crashes. In the first two hours of the new site being live, 16,000 bookings were made, BC Parks staff said at the time.
@carliflowerrr BC Parks new and improved website 🙃 #bcparks #camping #fail #vancouver #vancouverbc #bcpark #britishcolumbia #camping #campinginbc #bccamping #parksbc ♬ why are you the way that you are - The Office
Parks Canada site moving
Meanwhile, Parks Canada is launching a new site this year.
Staff announced they are moving to a new platform for their reservation system and that people will need to make a new account even if they have an old one.
Reservations will not be available from Feb. 27 to March 2 as they migrate to the new platform. The new site will be ready on Friday, March 3.
“The launch dates were delayed this year due to an update to the reservation system, but we hope that announcing the March opening dates now will help with your planning,” states a Parks Canada spokesperson on Twitter.
Reservations for national parks in B.C. open up throughout March:
- Reservations open at Fort Langley National Historic Site on March 13th at 8 a.m.
- Reservations open at Fort Rodd Hill National Historic Site on March 13th at 8 a.m.
- Reservations open at Glacier National Park on March 13th at 8 a.m.
- Reservations open at Gulf Islands National Park Reserve on March 13th at 8 a.m.
- Reservations open at Kootenay National Park on March 29th at 7 a.m.
- Reservations open at Mount Revelstoke National Park on March 13th at 8 a.m.
- Reservations open at Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on March 13th at 8 a.m. (except for the West Coast Trail, which opens on March 25 at 8 a.m.)
- Reservations open at Yoho National Park on March 29th at 7 a.m. (except Lake O'Hara camping, which opens March 28 at 7 a.m.)
For backcountry camping in Kootenay and Yoho national parks, reservations open up on March 22 at 7 a.m.
With files from Brendan Kergin
