We are making significant improvements to our campground maps (i.e. more interactive with colour blind assistance tools, legend on the page, standard symbols etc) and are currently in transition as we upload these maps to our new website service.
Please click here to check the map availability for your favourite park. If your park does not have the campground map available, you can still make an on line reservation by:
– Going to the reservation service at OntarioParks.com;
- Click “Make a Reservation” from the top menu;
- Fill in all your search criteria and click “Search by Grid”.
The Search by Grid option is available for all parks open for reservations
Okay, that’s nice but what about having all the parks on the new reservation system? I’ve noticed you have added more but the ones I’m looking for are still not there (Chutes, Finlayson Point).
Hi Liz,
There were twenty-three parks added to the reservation service on Sunday December 13th. We are frequently updating the list of parks, so please check back regularly to see if your favourite park has been added.
Thanks for your comment.
I like the new look – one question though: I was looking to make a reservation for a yurt up in Algonquin, Mew Lake – and the yurts on the map there indicate that they are not reservable, or not open to the public (which I am almost sure is not the case.) Do I need to reserve over the phone for these, or to find out about availability? Thanks..
-cc
Hi there,
Thanks for your comment.
The yurts at Mew Lake, Algonquin Park are reservable both through the call centre and the internet. However, they don’t appear to be available at the moment. We are currently looking into this situation, please check back with us shortly.
This is not good-Booking for first long weekend for summer and your website is not working-can’t open maps-grid won’t open and work-so cannot find site number-These sites have to be booked in next 36 hours-why would you screw peoples vacations like this.This changing of website was unnecesary-it worked fine-unless you are creating jobs for yourselves.More work we taxpayers have to finance.My vacation is now messed up.
Thank you for your email.
As of December 17th there are over 70 parks available for reservations either by phone or online.
If you are looking to book for the Friday of the May long weekend (May 21) reservations for those parks will not be available until Monday December 21 starting at 7:00 a.m. Reservations can only be made five months in advance of your arrival date.
We are currently in the process of uploading campground maps to our website service. If the park you are looking for does not have a map uploaded the grid option will be available.
In response to your inquiry as to why the reservation service has changed, the contract Ontario Parks had with the previous reservation service provider expired on October 31, 2009. The new supplier was chosen through a competitive tendering process and will be in place for the next 10 years.
I see you have added more parks but you are still missing parks such as Neys, Rainbow Falls and Lake Superior. What gives? Do they not open the long weekend of May?
Hi Liz,
Thanks for your question. Lake Superior- Agawa Bay was added last night and reservations can now be made either online or over the phone.
Neys and Rainbow Falls are open in May, however, due to low camper demand in the spring, reservations are not required. Reservations for these parks start January 18th and can be made five months in advance of your arrival date.
Where is the grids of the parks? How do you now go to look at the entire years bookings? Is that feature still available?
Hi
On the old system I could enter the dates & length of stay and the maps would show availible sites and booked sites would show as red.
Is this feature availible with the new system and how do I find it.
ed
Hi Ed & Tracii,
Thank you for your question.
The new reservation works in a similar way to the old system. To search for availability dates for a specific park, click on ‘Make a Reservation’ and enter the camping information. After entering this information click on the “search by maps” feature, which will take you to the campground map and will show you what sites are available for the specific dates you have chosen.
To check availability for a specific site, click on the site number you are looking to book, which will show you what days that specific site is available for booking.
The new system also has a new feature, where you must also enter your camping equipment and service type. If you choose the “search by grid” feature it will provide a listing of only those campsites which match your exact criteria.
Why can’t I view the availability for all sites within a campground at the same time?
I do not want to have to click through every site in order to find an arrival and length of stay that I am happy with.
The site isn’t very usable.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for your comment. If you would like to view the availability of all sites within a campground for the dates you have entered click on the “search by map” feature.
If you are referring to an overall availability grid for a range of dates, this feature is not available at this time.
I made our first reservation today and was not happy with the experience. Luckily, I am familiar enough with Finlayson to guess which campsite and campground I wanted but with no maps, a new person would have difficulty knowing where these campsites are located. Also, you wouldn’t know if you are going to be camping beside a privy (which I don’t want to do), you don’t know where the water taps are and even knowing where the comfort station is.
If you were going to change systems, all your ducks should have been in a row — make sure everything was running completely — maps, everything. This searching by grid does not work for me. I see in your reply to Ed & Tracil about the feature regarding camping equipment. If using the search by grid I realize it only provides those campsites that match the equipment but at Finlayson there are certainly more campsites in the South campground that can take our trailer. We were only given three but there are certainly a lot more campsites we could use.
I hope these maps are going to be available sooner rather than later as searching by grid is actually very frustrating and I am beginning to rethink my vacation plans and would think of camping elsewhere ie not using Ontario parks.
Hi Liz,
Thanks for your comments and observations. It is quite a challenge to have all of the park maps completed as this represents more than 15,000 campsites.
The Finlayson Point map is being reviewed today and will be available soon.
The ‘search by grid’ feature is a new addition that many people have been requesting for many years. It quickly provides those sites which match your search criteria.
I agree Liz this new system reservation system sucks. Ontario Parks should have got some feedback from the people who actually use the reservation system before they changed it.
We book campsites online all the time and just a suggestion that makes it a lot easier for campers looking to find a good/average campsite is to add it to the pop up when you roll your mouse over the campsite number. This saves us a lot of time since we know what we are looking for and don’t have to enter each number to find out the quality.
Hi Rachel
Thanks for the suggestion. There is a significant amount of programming required to add labels to each campsite symbol. We have chosen to offer whether the site is reserved or not, or whether it is an electrical site or not. It is not possible to start to add the campsite attributes, ie. quality, shade, etc. to the label.
I noticed you added Neys and Rainbow Falls — is Rabbit Blanket about to be added as well? (Lake Superior!)
Liz
Yes, the campground map for Lake Superior – Rabbit Blanket will be added in January. Rabbit Blanket campground is not available for reservation until January 25th.
In the past we were able to look at campsite maps available outside of the 5 month range to see what sites would be open in order to help in selection for when the proper morning came to try and reserve the site. We just had to select the button that said “looking at dates outside of 5 month period”. How do I do that now? If I put dates outside the 5 month period it comes back saying “campsite can only be reserved not more then 5 mths in advance”. Am I missing a button somewhere?
Hi Mike
The reservation calendar for each campsite shows availability for the six month period. The feature you are referring to is not available at this present time.
This is very unfortunate. When you only have a couple weeks a year for vacation it was nice because I could put in my dates and cruise through many parks showing me what’s available in-order to find sites that meet the size of trailer we own. Are your plans to reinstall such a feature? If not, how can I use your present system to my benefit without wasting a huge amount of time?
Hi Mike,
Thank you for your comment. The feature you are describing is available by choosing “make a reservation” and entering your park and camping dates. Those parks with maps available will show which electrical sites are available, and those without maps will be able to show you these sites using the “search by grid” function.
Yes, choosing “make a reservation” will show what is left available in red if the day has already arrived. Most of the popular parks if you do not have your reservation in for the park and site you want to try and book by 7:01 in the morning of the day you want (done 5 months in advance), you will not get it. By being able to look outside the 5 month window (even by a day) a person could in the past be ready to try and get the site of their choice for when 7am the next morning arrived. They could see all the sites that where open for that date.
Please do not sugar coat that this system is an improvement over the prior. I’m trying to give it a fair chance but so far not getting the warm and fuzzy that makes me want to continue to book Ontario parks.
Hi Mike,
It is possible to look beyond the five month window.
Choose, ‘find a park’, click on ‘campground maps’, then choose your campground and campsite. The six month reservation calendar will be displayed for the campsite.
As we indicated before, you can also use the ‘search by grid’ function to select a campsite and see the same reservation calendar.
Hope this helps.
Boy you people really screwed up a simple system-all other years it took (longest) 5 minutes to get thru and book-now 2hours on hold with attendant actually taking 23minutes to put thru a booking-she then said her phone line didn’t show anybody was waiting all those 2 hours on hold.She asked stupid time wasting questions.Can you not hire somebody fast and actually competant-like the people who used to work the lines.In that 2 hour period we had to worry about who might book our chosen site on line-we could not get the site to open maps on line.You should not have won this new contract.What parks official (governent agency)can we complain to?(not you the mrketing co.)
Hi there,
Thank you for your comments and our apologies for your difficulties.
We have forward your comments to the appropriate persons.
How about a page where you can go to see which campgrounds still have available electrical sites. i.e. an overview of all the parks availability instead of having to go to each park.
Hi Daryl,
Thanks for your comment. The park availability page is currently being worked on. This feature should be available in the spring.
I’m sorry and you can say what you want but the old reservation system was by far superior to this one. I probably will also look at private camps in the future because the new system just seems like to much of a hastle.
Thanks
What if I have never been to a camp ground before and do not know exactly what site I want, are you saying I must click on every camp site indiviually in a area to see when it comes available outside the 5 month booking window (this does show me 6 months out for the sites)?
In the past I could drop in my dates outside the 5 month window by clicking a box and see every site within a campground area. Then I could pick from these and drill down into more detail on each. Very quick and easy.
If I’m still missing something, please talk to me like I’m a 2 year old with every step of the process in order for me to understand. You will not hurt my feelings!!
Thanks for the clarification. The feature you are referring to is not available at this time but will be in the future.
Let’s cut to the chase here, when Ontario Works says “…The new supplier was chosen through a competitive tendering process…” what they really mean is that the company, MMI, came in with the cheapest bid and they snatched up! Hence the lack of site map information, delays, glitches and over all cumbersomeness of this new site. Ontario Parks would like us to be dazzled by cost saving with this so called lowering of the booking fees. Mark my words, that savings will go up in smoke by next year when Ontario Works will tell us they need to increase camping fees due to some unforeseen expense or because of the cost of doing business and they won’t remember any cost savings they gained by going with this cheap and inferior service provider, MMI. Oh and one more thing…why such a long contract time? 10 years!!!! Give me a break! Now we are stuck with this crap site for 10 freakin’ years!!!!!! This whole thing doesn’t sit right with me. Why not go with a shorter contract period and make sure that you are getting good product for OUR, (taxpayers) money and not get stuck with a crappy product for 10 years!!!!!!
I hope more campers complain and I hope MNR and Ontario Parks actually do something about the complaints it instead of leaving lame responses here on the blog!
Sincerely, not a happy camper
Tara
Thanks for your comments. We’d like to point out a few things to help clarify your points.
First, Ontario Parks did receive several proposals by companies to run our Ontario Parks reservation service for the next five years with a potential award for an additional five years. After extensive evaluations of all proposals, MMI was selected as the successful supplier. The decision to go with MMI was not based on the “cheapest bid” but rather on a host of many technological and financial factors.
You are correct that fees will be increasing this year. We have already posted our new fee structure for 2010 on our website. This fee increase will help to offset the increasing costs of operating our provincial parks system. Our fees are not tied to the reservation service – however, you are correct that the fee to make a reservation has been lowered this year.
Finally, our previous supplier of our reservation system operated it for a 10 year period. Developing and operating a reservation system of this magnitude is no small task and there are significant investments made in computers and software to keep it running smoothly. The cost of running this reservation service is spread over a 10 year period, making it cost effective in the long run for our customers.
Thank you for raising these points and allowing us to clarify the situation.
I am wondering if there is a issue with your web site. When i look at the reservable dates for Finlayson, it shows that all sites are non reservable with the exception of June 18th – July 6th. This isn’t just one site it’s the whole park. I called the park itself and the gentleman I spoke to said it should be showing reservable from June 18th right through to Labor Day, with the exception of course the 5 month policy. For what it’s worth I do not like the new system as it’s much more of a hassle to navigate than the old one.
I hope this is a glitch and will be fixed soon.
Thanks for your inquiry. The reservable dates for Finlayson Point are May 21st to May 23rd, and June 18th to September 6.
The reservation calendar changes on a daily basis and only shows availability for a six month period. For example, availability for today would show for January 7th to July 7th. As of todays date (Jan.7), reservations can only be made for arrival dates of June 7th or earlier.
Alright I was looking to book a site at killbear for May 21-24.I entered my info for Killcoursie then “search by map” With the old system I could just click on any campground map and the maps would appear showing availible,booked sites.Now it seems I have to re-enter my info dates equip.etc. everytime I change maps
Am I missing something,this is a real pain.
Ed
We’re posting a new article that gives a small tutorial covering this question. Hope you find it helpful. We’ll be shutting down comments in this article as the new article will have comments open. Thanks for your comment.
Let us hope this new system gets all the “glitches” out of the way in the very near future and the additional website features in place quickly. This not only includes the website but also the length of time it takes when phoning in a reservation (waited over 20 minutes when told I was 5th in line, just had a small question!).
Spent over 40 nights last year in Ontario Parks costing me over $2000 when you add nightly fees and reservation fees into total. Had planned on looking to do about the same this year but have already started to book privates because of hastles with this new system.
Love our parks and what they provide for me, my family and what they stand for in conservation of this provinces beaches, forests and wildlife. I would love to continue to support but this new system is really putting a black eye on the whole thing.
I do though appreciate you taking the time to answer my concerns in a timely manner.