Reservecalifornia Reviews 

I have a loathing hatred for the Reserve California website. It’s glitchy, it puts the user into futile loops of wasted time, and just when you think you have paid and it has reserved your camping site (after hours of trying)...there is no record that it actually happened. We work hard and we just want to go camping with family to rest and get a break from the “hamster wheel”. The state’s site is a completely disrespectful and negligent disservice to the people of California and those visiting from other states. My family just wants to go camping this Summer...California, can you please contract with a private sector company that knows what they are doing and fix the site? Have you seen the reviews? Government inefficiency as expected...total fail. Thank you for trying, I guess.

PS: Please get rid of the four Capchas that are entirely unnecessary. They are frustrating and waste more than half of the time on the countdown clock that we have to rush through to “secure” our reservation...that we never really secure.

Reserve California is still very flawed. 2019 was supposed to be an improved version. The major problem is campsite reservation holders have ability to change the name of the campsite recipient. This means they can book the site and sell it to someone else. This problem is rampant and seems like an obvious fix. Also, they book the sites for early in the week six months in advance. Then just modify it to extend thru the weekend. Total BS.....

I booked a cabin for two nights near Humboldt. I had a receipt and a confirmation number. My two sons and I drove 6 hours to the campsite only to find that somebody else had also booked our cabin. There was no available space in the entire park and the staff at the park had no documentation showing that we were arriving. We weren't given a refund so we ended up staying in a dirt budget motel in Eureka and driving home the next day.

The system is poorly thought out. Clearly the work of someone with a low IQ because the problems that plagie this system are common sense for most people. It should be dismantled today and the people that spearheading it's creation should be put in prison for treason.

Terrible wasted several hours of my life trying to reserve an available ada site. The website would collect our information but not reserve our site yet it is still listed as available. I’ve reserved campsites everywhere and this is by far the worst system. California taxpayers are getting ripped off.

Absolutely impossible to get a camping site. I bet that there are some third party vendors using scripts to get all the sites.

Terrible reservation site. For days I have been logging on no later than 7:45, refreshing getting ready for the 8:00 mind blowing experience if trying to get a camp site. On numerous occasions I have actually had sites in my cart, on the timer clock, good I have a site, now go find another one for my parents. Get another one, put it in my cart, go to check out and WHAM, first site is gone!!!

So finally I call and speak to an agent only to be told that having a site in your cart and on the clock does not guarantee the site!!!! Like WHAAAAAT? Clock says says 14 minutes to complete transaction, lie!!!! Even has a tab to continue shopping, well do so at your risk.

Reserve America was a lot better.

Now you have to book out a week in advance (if your lucky enough to even get a site) then cancel the first 4 nites later on down the road in order just to enjoy a 3 day weekend.

Ridiculous!!!!

1. The mission is to hit the reserve key before thousands of other camper bees trying to do the same thing. Follow these rules and your chances to hit the lottery may improve.
2. Have a list of the sites you are interested in that will become available at 8 am.
3. Open the reservation page that shows the sites you are interested in.
4. Logon to reservecalifornia and enter your user/pass. Do this no later than 0745 because the site gets busy and may not let you on.
5. Reduce your screen size to 50% using the zoom feature (windows 10) accessible thru the three dots in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Refresh the screen. This allows you to see more of the reservation screen.
6. At 0758, click on any pink spot with an x on. this will bring up the 1st reservation screen with a button that says “refresh availability”. Reserve California does not automatically refresh at 0800.
7. At 0800 exactly, click refresh button on this smaller screen.
8. Grab your spot when it goes green.
9. Who knows, you might get lucky.

I have tried many time to get reservation at Seacliff State Park. Once I was able to find a spot in the 26 full hookup area. I selected and while getting my charge out a msg came up that the site was no longer available. I was told that after selecting you hold the site for 5 mins. Some ones wrong.
Also under the new system you might notice that there are sites showing as green but when select it says that the site is unavailable. I asked the Reserve California reservation takers and was told that those were walk in sites. I ask the ranger at the site and they had no idea what a walk in site was.
Bye the way the site is much harder to use now.

It was very easy to book a tour at Hearst Castle. I like knowing that the tour will available.

I agree with all of the previous reviews. I have tried for 3 consecutive weeks to secure a camping spot in August and was kicked out each time. It also appears that when reserving, in order to get the weekend you desire that you need to pay for the prior 5 nights (total 7 including your weekend) in order to get that spot. At $45 per night that is $315!!!!!! The site lets you go out 7 days from the date you are reserving and that is why the weekends are booked several days in advance. A very frustrating and unfair web site

Worst system ever. At least 15 of my friends and I tried to book 6 months in advance and not 1 person was able to book a site. Some of us had the site but then were kicked off the system only having to restart. The fishy thing is, some of the camp sites we were trying for got booked for only a Sunday night??? Who reserves a site for only one night.... Ahhhh. So sick of this non-transparent system. I think it needs to be a chainblock so everyone vouches for another and no rigging is happening. Such BS! Thanks Trustpilot for allowing us to post on this website to voice our concerns about public services that should work better for its citizens.

If I could give this 0 stars I would. Such BS...we had 6 people going for 2 sites in Refugio and it kicked all 6 of us out and by the time it let us back in the sites were gone. We tried the next day and got a spot but it rerouted us to HB at check out. Last year the site said the campground was full and half the spots were empty....Reserve California sucks balls

Reserve California is a terrible website!! Myself as well as other family members heve been trying to make a reservation for the last week. Others have mentioned it kicks you off the website while completing reservations, at 8:00 the calendar date don't change plus all other issues, we all had this same issues. It's very frustrating!!
Last year their wasn't all these issues, why are we having them now? When a cancellation is made the site should become available immediately not wait until 8:00 the next day
Reserve American was a reliable and easy way to make a reservation
Please resolve all issues

It's really interesting that us locals for the CA state parks - in a way owned by tax paying Californians need to pay a $8 fee on often $25 - $35 reservations. That's a 30% fee. On top of that if you want to cancel, you pay the fee again, which means there is a 60% cancellation fee. This should really change, I don't know any company in the travel industry that operates like this. Shame on you California state parks!

Yesterday I posted how frustrating the Reserve California system can be. Today was more of the same. I tried logging in 10 minutes early to get ready only to have it keep telling me I need the Captcha. OK, done that before, no problem. Except it wouldn’t let me do it. Over and over, logging out and trying again and again. Having it kick me out and trying again and again. I was thinking as time was getting to 8:00 a.m., I have no choice but to try to grab a spot and then log in. It was my only choice now so I did that. I grabbed a spot and of course, it still said I need a Captcha. Thinking (hoping) I at least I had it held I called the phone number (that worked once for me). After being on hold for 10 minutes, I got an employee who said she was having trouble getting in the system too. She told me she could see the dates but could not log in (same as me). By now she confirmed someone had taken two of the three nights I was trying to hold because the Captcha had kicked me out. This is not something new. I explained to her my current and past frustrations and the conversations I have had in campgrounds with people who have had it with the Reserve California system. The rolling window was a disaster, being able to “extend” dates causes people to play games by reserving earlier than needed to extend to the dates they really want. All she could say was “I know” – I asked why it doesn’t get fixed if they know? No answer…

I sent the following email to the state park spokesperson.

Mr. Moreno,
Having read in news articles that the state park system wants to hear from consumers with complaints about the reservation system, here is my two-cents. I have been trying for weeks to reserve a particular site #133 at Sugar Pine Point State Park. I track the site via the website reservation system multiple times a day. I know this particular site was open on Sat July 6 and then reserved for the maximum 15-day window from July 7 ending on July 21. As of this morning Jan 15, the site had not booked from July 22 on.

This afternoon, I see that the site is now booked from July 22 thru July 27. How can this be I wonder? I spoke with one of your phone CSR’s who advised that the reservation was modified by the person who had the prior dates reservation. How can this be I again wonder since this is beyond the 15-day maximum reservation block. The CSR advised that the prior 15-day block was actually two different reservations. How can this be I triple wonder since I have been monitoring this particular site, multiple times per day, every day for weeks. The prior reservation was originally made for a single 15-day block.

Clearly, the reservation system is being manipulated to benefit someone. And some wonder why people refer to this state as “Corruptafornia”.

The website is terrible ever since it changed from Reserve America. I will go through the process of logging in at 8:00 to grab the site I want, putting in all my information and it will disappear before I can pay. Sometimes it won’t let you log on or it won’t let you put in the campground your looking for. It has so many problems.

Horrible website! Impossible to make reservations when site is busy. Both Firefox and Chrome browsers crash/hang when trying to make a reservation. California State Parks, you really screwed this one up! Go back to reserve America.

This Reservation System is horrible. The process of going in everyday to find an available site is a joke. The site doesn't work properly if it is overloaded. And, then if you can get into the system, the most popular lodging sites are ALWAYS unavailable. It is way too time consuming and frustrating just to try and get a reservation to enjoy our State's beautiful parks!!!!

It seems that people are able to extend reservations beyond the dates that come available for the general population just by paying a fee. So makes me wonder if there is some kind of "insider" gaming of the rules going on here.

Liked Reserve America's site and process so much better! It was way more "transparent"...

ReserveCalifornia is a not a fair reservation system. I don’t why the state switched from ReserveAmerica, which was perfect. However ReserveCalifornia will sure bring in lots of money for the state parks in a way that may violate state park rules.
I can’t seem to be able to reserve any popular camp sites along the coast for weekends even 6 months in advance. After studying its reserve system for an hour , I now know why. ReserveCalifornia allows reservation to be made upto 6 months in advance. Its 6 month window is pushed out continuously everyday at midnight. Unlike in ReserveAmerica it’s 6 month window is pushed out by a week window, not on a daily basis.
Now under ReserveCalifornia , all the popular camp sites are fully booked even for Monday through Thursday. That never happened in ReserveAmerica. Most people don’t camp during weekdays but why are the sites are booked ? Here’s why: when the reservervation opens on Monday , you can actually reserve 7 nights. That means the reserved nights can be upto 6 months plus 7 days in advance. So people in fact book 7 nights starting Monday to cover the weekend. They will eventually waste 4 or 5 nights of money assuming they won’t camp Monday through Thursday. They will then need to call the park everyday during the checkin week to notify the park staff that they will delay the check in by a day.

Horrible system.
If you agree then write a complain to the state park. The park system is still getting money for those booked but unoccupied camp sites. We are being ripped by ReserveCalifornia.