Yesterday, as most of you know, Ontario Parks came out
with a big update for the 2023 camping season.
That's right.
That was October 17th, 2022 yesterday.
This might be a little controversial for some, but
it's something that we've been advocating for for the last couple of years.
So here it is.
Starting in 2023 for the peak summer operating season, the maximum length of
stay will be reduced from 23 nights to seven or 14 nights at select parks.
The changes to the campground camping maximum length of stay applies to all
stays between July 1st and the Saturday of the Labor Day long weekend.
There are no changes in the maximum length of stay
for backcountry or roofed accommodations.
So for the five most popular parks which are Algonquin,
Bon Echo, Kilbear, Sandbanks and Pinery,
that means that from July 1st and the Saturday of the labor Day weekend,
you can only book a maximum of seven nights.
No more 23 night reservations.
For these
63 parks you can only reserve a maximum of 14 nights
between July 1st and Saturday of the Labor Day long weekend.
And for these 16 parks, there's no change in the reservation system.
You can still book up to 23 nights.
We'll post the full list in the description below.
Ontario Parks made this change to allow more people
to experience the more popular parks.
Before this, a prime site at a popular park
could be booked in just three reservations for the entire summer.
With this change that turns into nine reservations, so more
people have the opportunity to experience the wonderful parks.
To break this down a little more.
For parks with a seven night maximum length of stay.
Arrivals between June 15th and June 30 can book
a maximum stay to the departure date of July eighth.
So that means if you're making a reservation on June 15th,
you can book the full 23 nights up to July eighth.
If you're making the reservation on June 16th, you can only reserve
22 nights up to July eighth, and on June 17th it's 21 nights.
And that continues June 29th.
Nine nights, June 30th, eight nights and July 1st, seven nights.
And from then on, you can just reserve up to seven nights in a row
for the rest of the summer until you get to the end of the summer.
So on August 24th, you can reserve seven nights.
August 25th, seven nights.
But on August 26th, you can go back to reserving up to 23 nights.
And it works the same way for parks of the 14 night maximum length of stay.
Arrivals between June 22nd and June 30th can reserve
a maximum stay to the departure date of July 15th.
And then you can only make reservations for a maximum of 14 nights.
Then in August, on August 17th, you can reserve up to 14 nights.
August 18th, 14 nights, August 19th,
you can then go back to the maximum 23 nights.
Over the past few years, people have been taking advantage
of the 23 night reservation.
What they were doing is they were booking an entire 23 nights when really
all they wanted was the last three nights, the last weekend of that reservation.
And a month or so later, they would cancel the first 20 nights.
This made
it very difficult for people as everything was getting booked up.
So people would go to the website
exactly five months before they wanted to book a site
and really all the sites should be open then, but there is no available
sites at all, so they were completely shut out.
Eventually the sites would open up through cancelations.
But it was very difficult to plan, and you had to keep on
checking the site for when there is an opening.
I know there's a lot of controversy over this.
A lot of people have their favorite parks.
They've grown up going to the park with their family all their lives.
We used to be the same way, but then we decided
it's time to experience more parks and we're glad we did.
We've covered.
How many parks have we gone to now?
Over 40 over 40.
And there's so many great parks out there.
So maybe get out of your comfort zone and try something new.
Or you can spend a week
at your favorite park and maybe another weekend, another park.
Please let us know in the comments below what you think about this.
Is this a good change or a bad change?
Also, what else do you think can be done to help make this reservation system fair?
And if you'd like to see some more tips and how to reserve a campsite
with Ontario Parks, check out this video right here.