Recreation.gov

I’m honestly not sure what’s worse, how poorly this app works or the runaround you’re forced to do trying to find someone, ANYONE, who is actually helpful. My husband and I tried to use this app for three days, on multiple devices, both Apple and Google, in the geofence, to enter a lottery. The app flat didn’t work. Also tried on a tablet, which apparently is no longer a mobile device? Physically went to several official offices in the area, called every number we could find and were given, scoured the website for technical help, nothing. The volunteers working in the offices, while kind and I’m thankful for, had no clue how to help. Nor was there an actual supervisor there who knew what to do. No paper applications or other ways to enter, other than the app that does not work. When we finally got a call back from the “help” center, they let the phone ring literally once then hung up on us, so we had to call back and start the waiting process all over again, several times. This is absolutely ridiculous and totally unacceptable.

It’s so nice to have a site like this! 3 suggestions. When it comes to searching for dates there should be an option to select date flexibility. Along this same lines; when I put in certain dates it lists the available sites first (great!) then as I scroll down it’ll show sites that have different availabilities that aren’t a perfect match. When I click the button to “check availability” I want my dates to disappear and to only see their available dates. Or even if my dates stay, have them be a different color on the legend. Because I’d click away from my selected dates and sometimes only one or 2 dates would pop up and if I’d click on one of those dates, more dates would pop up. It must be a glitch. There should also be the option of saving sites that I’m interested in coming back to look at later. Not to reserve or hold the site, but if I’m doing a late night search I want an easy way to open up the app the next morning and find my favorite options. Hopefully these are helpful suggestions on improving the app.

DO NOT use this app if you are trying to book highly sought campsites. I put it in my calendar to book a campsite when it became available 6 months out and kept looking and being confused by the fact that they either weren’t available for reservation, were first come first served, or were available but when I tried to book was told it would come available at 10am. At 10am they were suddenly all fist come first serve again. All of that was wrong. I finally went to the website and all sites had already been reserved. The availability information shown was completely false and ruined a vacation I had been planning for a year. I was so excited when this app came out and now will go back to website only.