Necessary or not, you knew the newly required $2 Going-to-the-Sun Road reservation ticket in Glacier National Park wasn't going to fly well with park-goers.

There has been a massive increase in frustrated patrons leaving one-star reviews for Glacier National Park. Not surprising. It's not really about the cost of "the reservation" ticket, but about the frustrations of making the reservations.

We know that the summer months of May through September are the busiest months in Glacier National Park. It is not a rare thing to have access restricted in recent years to the most popular areas of the park. How much? A LOT.

According to NPS.gov: "In the summer of 2018 access to Many Glacier was restricted 26 times and access to Kintla Lake was restricted 52 times and access to Bowman Lake was restricted 68 times."

The NPS advises people to 1) adjust their expectations, 2) have a back-up plan, 3) consider another nearby park.

People are able to post reviews at Recreation.gov. Frustration about site access and the number of tickets available seems to be the biggest issue.

Here are some of the most recent one star reviews of Glacier National Park:

  • 06/29/2021 - "Park itself is beautiful, ticket system is horrible. Had to sit at a computer 4 days in a row for several hours refreshing the page for a 2$ ticket to pop up. The bulk of the few hundred daily tickets are gone in a few minutes."
  • 06/16/2021 - "Had to fight to get one of the access passes to going to the sun road and they had it closed 13 miles up. Wasted a big part of our trip and couldn’t even see the whole park. Super disappointed."
  • 06/20/2021 - "The "Ticketed Entry" is a total pain in the butt. The recreation.gov site continuously crashed. There was barely anyone in the park at about 2pm, while a line of cars was stuck wanting to enter the park but couldn't because they didn't have the pass." 
  • 07/01/2021 - "Horrible system - tried for week to reserve GTSR ticket and no luck after logging in - inequitable system - very disappointed NPS."
  • 06/28/2021 - "There has to be a better way to handle getting entry tickets. Having people go through a lottery every day is ridiculous."
  • 06/27/2021 - "Terrible system. Had to try multiple days in a row to secure a $2 ticket. The site cannot handle the amount of people trying to get tickets."

By the way: Stage 1 Fire Restrictions are in effect for Glacier National Park beginning Saturday, July 17th, 2021.

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