[Cyclopath]

[Luc]

How bout this: If you use Ticketmaster and you've already seen Taylor Swift 14 times, and they know it, maybe let some other people get in for the show? Especially if your opportunity to get a ticket has literally been .25 seconds. That window goes by pretty quickly. Maybe we should switch to the good old days where we put the land line phone on speaker, and used auto-redial for 3hrs to finally get to a salesperson and score tickets to the 1993 Soundgarden concert. Of course these analogies are for performances, but you get the point. Enchantments hosers (people who get hosed every time) know what I mean.

[Cyclopath]

[Luc]

I'm not taking about bots anymore. I'm saying two main things: If persons A and B apply, or are doing the same thing to acquire a certain permit or campsite 15 times over a period of time, and person A is awarded 15 permits, and person B is awarded zero permits, then to me there's something broken there. Then, specifically with recreation.gov on non-lottery reservations, funneling say 50 people to a time period between 7:00am and 7:00.15s to see which person's browser refreshes or is more accurate to GMT/EST is also a poor system and leads to one person being awarded a reservation and persons 2 through 50 losing out on not only that reservation, but also all the others they were interested in that were also released for availability between 7:00am and 7:00.15s. I'm not at all complaining that one person/party is awarded a permit or reservation for a certain time, I'm fussing about how much of a time and planning drain this is for who I consider "all the others that like hiking," as you put it, who aren't offered anything other than, "go back to the drawing board." If Denny's can figure out how to do a wait list, then maybe recreation.gov can figure out how to manage supply and demand to at least prioritize applicants who are repeatedly declined, or design a system that doesn't funnel everyone down through a 15s reservation opening for all opportunities on a given day.

[KidCormorant]

Luc, Which reservation system are you specifically talking about? The six-month rolling window system causes lots of unnecessary disappointment. For ONP, popular sites open daily but have already been filled in previously booked trips. The system allows you to book multi-day trips, eating into future quota availability. Example: You want a spot at Lunch Lake. Every morning at 7am, availability will be zero, regardless of the day. A few days prior someone has already selected a less popular site, lets say Canyon Creek. Because they're doing a multi-day trip, they then have access to future quotas. Their three night trip of Canyon Creek/Deer Lake/Lunch Lake has already eliminated the more sought after spot of Lunch Lake two days before its "release date". I don't think bots are booking sites either, peoples willingness to stay at less popular sites are. ONP is moving away from the six-month rolling window reservation system this year, instead moving to the single release date similar to MRNP and NCNP. Then you'll only have one day of disappointment instead of 60 It's unfortunately just supply and demand. I guess the other option is a lottery system for those more popular sites. Same odds, but maybe less stress?

[reststep]

Found the answer to my own question. I was wondering if they were going to have walk up permits this year for the enchantments. Quote from forest service webpage: “The walk-up lottery at the Leavenworth Ranger Station is suspended for the 2023 season until further notice. Walk-up quota will be released back into the recreation.gov reservation system on Sundays, one week at a time. Thank you for your patience and flexibility during this crisis. We will continue to reevaluate and will resume the walk-up lottery when it is safe to do so.“

[JonnyQuest]

[Luc]

I'm talking about recreation.gov and actually not really referring to the enchantments. I mentioned the enchantments because I know a lot of people can relate to having ideas on how it could be better. What I'm currently doing is designing a 2mo road trip around the west like I've done for the past 7 years or so. That's hard to do in and of itself, but I usually succeed and endure a lot of frustration and headaches during the planning process, mostly because of this. I like to hit popular spots, first come areas, dispersed, remote, with some backpacking sprinkled in. So a variety. In my plans, the reservations are checkered throughout the summer so that I have some places that are guaranteed. I use these spots for recreating of course, but also to get organized before the next leg or a backpacking segment. I wish recreation.gov would provide some trip planning tools - kind of like how the enchantments lottery works. You have a hierarchy of places and dates, and the system selects for you. Then you can either take it or leave it. At this point, I'd rather be able to get something close to what I'm hoping for from a list, rather than nothing because it forces you to focus on one spot for one date(s) meanwhile all of your plan B's, C's and so on, get scooped up. If plan A gets scooped up within 15s, then all the other folks that were vying for it may go to your same Plan B, which is what I think Cyclo is saying. I get that, but it leads to scrambling, headaches, and disappointment for everyone except the golden ticket winner. There's gotta be a better way. If ChatGPT can fry you an egg, can't it mediate for this problem?

[BigBrunyon]

If you're not hirin' out these days YOU'RE IRRELEVANT!! Gotta hire out to a big name firm to get one of these code-based internet programs working for you alone if you want to COMPETE in the permit game on rec.gov!!!!!!!!!!! I'm responsible for many of these aforementioned "bots". I SINGLE HANDUDLY CONTROL THE RESERVATION SYSTEM!!!!! Too high of resell value not too!!! COMPETE!!

[water]

I think we'd see some interesting stuff from IP addresses if it was publicly available. We would see it isn't just a conglomerate of 1,300 unique addresses trying to book a lookout at 6:59:59AM PST. Unfortunately that information is considered private and can't be shared with the public from my understanding of the law. If anyone knows otherwise, I'd love to see it. I suspect there's some serious hammering from automation happening in addition to a swath of consumer IP hits. I discussed with someone who worked on designing the present booz allen hamilton rec.gov and it sounds like the base coding and contract was to one day allow bookings via API:

[Cyclopath]