No Shows

This guy is looking for ways to make your national park experience more expensive and less free - Eventually, Rocky will be closed to everyone not employed by the National Park Service 

One interesting thing that came out of the recent ROMO presentation slash "here's what we are shoving down your throat regarding timed entry without public input because it is our park not your park" was a 30% no-show rate when people make reservations on line to pick a particular day or time slot.  This no-show rate, according to some guy named John (is Darla incapable of presenting information related to her evil machinations?), was consistent throughout the entirety of the 2021 summer.  

Although none of the trustees commented on this, forfeiting your deposit when you don't snow was likely a significant amount of free revenue for the NPS.  Suppose 1000 people/cars (a low estimate during the height of the summer) make reservations each day, and 30% of them never show up.  If they can't get their $2 back from recreation,gov, this is 300 x $2 = $600 bucks.  

So what, you say?  $600 x 150 days is still less than $10,000 bucks of free revenue for the park.  (To compare, this is what the town loses on the Rooftop Rodeo loses every night.)  But it gets better.  Next year, you are going to be able to buy an entry pass through recreation.gov.  And daily entry passes are going up to $30 per vehicle.  Undoubtedly, the "no-show" rate will go down when people fork over $32 to drive through permanent road construction to see nothing and be shooed away from anything remotely natural, but it won't go to zero.  Will these folks get their money back if circumstances make it impossible for them to enter Rocky Mountain National Park on the day or at the time they reserved?

The lesson to locals and savvy tourists is - Don't fork over any money, ever, until you get to the entrance gate.  Go early or late, and utilize the Fall River Entrance, which is woefully understaffed and lets thousands of cars through free during the height of the season.  The superintendent claimed she didn't even know how often these booths went unmanned last year?  Really?  Does no one fill out time sheets for the federal government?  Do all NPS employees just work when they want, where they want, gallivanting through the park on a whim?

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