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Comment by a5seo | Hacker News Reader

It’s a nightmare for booking timed entry reservations. Rocky Mountain National Park opens reservations on the 1st of each summer month for the upcoming month and the site is just slammed. You click a reservation time, spin spin spin, then error.

It’s honestly infuriating when you really need to get 2 or 3 days of reservations before 8am for long hikes so you know, you don’t get killed by lightning, and the website just screws you over.

I’d love to FOIA their analytics data and find out how many times users get errored out after selecting a time slot.

The head of Colorado’s energy agency literally almost died this summer because he couldn’t get an early enough reservation. This stuff actually is life and death.

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I booked the 5-7am slot at RMNP every week this summer and had no problems, including July 4.

If you're doing anything that's life and death, you arrive before 5am anyway. The accident you reference mentioned that he knew it was a lazy choice:

> This summer the park continued a timed-entry system it launched in 2021. The program requires visitors to schedule and reserve windows of time to enter the park. Toor said he wanted to start earlier but was only able to secure an 8 a.m. entry reservation. Feduschak and Gaines, who ascended a much more technical route, entered the park before the timed entry system starts at 5 a.m.

> “Eight was a late start, but we didn’t quite have the oomph to get in before the 5 a.m. cutoff,” Toor said. “Maybe we just need to suck it up and get there before 5 a.m.”

I’m glad you didn’t have any problems getting reservations. That wasn’t my experience. Fwiw, I mainly fly fish. I need to be in by 8am so I can hike to a high lake and get 3-4 hrs of fishing before the storm clouds roll in. It’s a different use case because it’s not helpful to me to be there crazy early, unlike climbers and through hikers who, sure, can start as early as they want. I kind of do need timed entry to work. And it just doesn’t. But good for you and your good fortune. I guess I should just be luckier or drop fly fishing. Sucks to be me, amiright?

The issue is that the site falls over under load. Or seems to, hence my point about getting their analytics data via a FOIA request. They probably need to use Cloudflare’s queue. But what incentive do they have? They’re selling out every reservation and getting every $2 fee they can. It doesn’t matter if the user experience is unpredictable and capricious.

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