View topic - Ont. P.P. new Reg System: Grumble, Grumble

Not sure if I am doing something wrong.... Good thing right now all the fees are refundable, cause it would be it would be a killer if they were not and we have to cancel if the parks don't open!
So you go in and book, and it asks you if you want to make another reservation. Every reservation gets charges a new res. fee, even though it is all charge to your card at once. Last night I booked 1 night at put in, 5 nights interior, 2 nights at the take out, and then 3 nights at another park, booked a week at another park, and then booked 3 nights. Total res fees...66.38, yet only 1 charge on my credit card. Yikes! Now if I had logged out and then gone back in later and made another reservation, I could see having another charge, but man, this is getting expensive

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"I've never met a river I didn't like. The experience is what we remember and the challenges make for great memories". Me

Be glad you can do it. We cannot enter Canada. Looks like for months as we wanted to go to Labrador via Nova Scotia. And they won't permit travel until there is a vaccine. NS and NB and NL have had very few to no CV deaths. We don't have much 70 deaths and 1800 cases and most in nursing homes among residents and staff
At this point I would be glad to stay in any PP. At any price.

Outside of the super popular parks is there really a need for reservations? Especially this year when few if any foreign visitors will be around.

I don't go to many (overpriced) PP's, but even in Killarney (Sept/Oct) I've never bothered and always got a spot.

I tell you this multiple reservation fee is just another brick in the wall on the road to complete privatization.

I'd bet that the company that handles the reservations for the Province make their money mostly on the fixed reservation fees.

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"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915

I wouldn't think so, especially in N. Ont., but amazingly enough, the places we MUST stay on those dates are don't have a lot of sites, and we were down to either a site by the swamp, boat ramp, or take the last site available in the better area.

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"I've never met a river I didn't like. The experience is what we remember and the challenges make for great memories". Me

That's pretty pathetic, but it's probably the result of using the system in a way they didn't think people would use it. Not enough user experience testing, more than likely. It's possible they simply didn't see this and the online system is charging multiple reservation fees where it shouldn't be - as in, if you had called the Parks, there'd only be a single fee perhaps?

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If you ate today, thank a farmer.

It doesn't help that at a lot of this P.P. there are over 3rd seasonal trailers permanently stored their (at one park they were all waterfront), and all the rest of the sites are trailer ready. I called up to one park where I could only get one site for 1 of the 3 days and was told that was because they have a lot of 23-day campers, which pretty much fills up all the Class A and B sites, leaving C's for the few tenters and drive-ins. And now that they have any non-reservable sites, it could be harder to find a site you would want to stay on for a few days. Not the demand for tenters any more I guess. He suggested staying on one of the backcountry sites for 16 days! If I have 16 days I am heading out to see paddle the area!

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"I've never met a river I didn't like. The experience is what we remember and the challenges make for great memories". Me

I haven't tried this with a both a front country and backcountry site yet, but with the new reservation system there's a 'build your stay' tool. It took me a bit to figure out, but it's a game changer for booking different sites in the same park.

For example, my partner and I want to stay at Killbear for 5 days. There were no sites available for the full 5 days. Bummer right? Looks like we're SOL. Until I found the build your stay option..

Basically, when the build your stay tool is selected, you can click on the 'site availability' calendar when looking at the 'partially available sites' which are identified in purple, for sites that are available during some of your selected dates but not all. When you click on that calendar, you can see when the site is available, and click on each night you want to stay on that site which show as having green checkmarks instead of red 'Xs'. Then, find another site for the subsequent days, and do the same thing. It takes a bit of playing around, but essentially you are now able to book a 5 day stay on multiple sites all under one reservation - meaning one reservation fee!

So for my partner and I, we're staying on one site for two nights, a second site for the third night, and a third site for the last two nights. The kicker? With this tool I was able to find three electrical sites in popular areas, close to the waterfront at Killbear in the week of Canada day - this is basically unheard of prior to this! I was pretty worried looking at the map until I figured out the build your stay option - we're both students working remotely so electricity for this trip was a must, and anyone who knows Killbear knows that electrical sites in premium areas are, well, at a premium there.

Like I said, might not be possible to mix front country and backcountry sites, but I was able to build my stay at killbear within any of the parks campgrounds - so maybe as long as your backcountry reservation is in the same park as your front country sites it may be possible? Worth checking into to save on res fees anyways.

Hope this turns out to be helpful

Recped,



The amounts of money government is throwing at the COVID response right now must be building up to some really spectacular deficits, esp since before the mess started there was a lot of deficit spending to begin with. So, when after all is done, how are the finances going to return to some sanity... taxes will need to be increased, maybe a COVID surtax to help overcome the debt that will no doubt be depressing the economy and any attempts to restore it.

Taxes will be hugely unpopular during the next election so other measures will be considered... increasing user fees paid by individuals will be coming, already planned for PP fees.

Privatization, another one, since it'll most likely be cheaper to provide services through the private sector than with highly-paid civil servants.

Toronto is facing some very large shortfalls in budgets so making noises about cuts... wildlife, parks....those are likely unless the province provides more money to help keep things going. The money to pay for all the expenses has to come from somewhere... leaner, meaner times.

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Take the money you are putting into reservations and put it in your gas tank and come north when Crown Land camping opens back up. There are some very nice routes up here.

And RHaslam can recommend some for you too, with very good notes and annotations I might add. He has all the specs and diagrams

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If you ate today, thank a farmer.

Take the money you are putting into reservations and put it in a piggy bank till you have enough for a
down payment or purchase of a piece of vacant land on a river/lake connected to a chain of lakes
in an area of your choice where you can paddle for weeks without anybody's interference .... in the near uncertain future

You'll be investing in yourself