Reservecalifornia Reviews 108

1 star is generous. It is 2026! WTF, we have had internet for 30 years. For the love of God, please rebuild this entire platform.... I cannot express through text how terrible the UX is. I NEVER review anything, however i felt compelled to leave a review for this travesty of a website. I hope Tyler Technologies (Site Dev) can pack up shop and let a real dev make something people can actually use without going insane. Hope that class action lawsuit finds you well! :)

The is one of the worst website/phone assistance government set up sites I've ever experienced. The phone tree itself is maddening and must have been designed by some masochist as it is infuriating, repetitive, and pedantic.
If one clicks on "Contact Us" for more help, you get sent to a 404 Error site. It's really so sad and frustrating, it's almost comical.
Please, for the love all everything outdoors, design your website and phone assistance to actually help people wanting to take advantage of all the beauty California has to offer.

AWFUL, AWFUL, AWFUL. This website is so cumbersome to navigate, is impossible to login to and, even when the site prompts you to call their 800 number for assistance, you cannot get through to a human. Instead, you are subjected to repeated recordings of the same message insisting you go back to the website. I wish this horrible system did not have so much control over our access to camp sites. There is most certainly a better way and hopefully a more qualified entity will take over some time soon.

I had reservations for Montana de Oro Campground for four nights Oct. 6-10 that I had to cancel. I knew that if I cancelled I would forfeit the $8.25 reservation fee if I cancelled well before 6PM the day before my arrival. When I cancelled I noticed that there was an $8.25 cancellation fee as well! I was under the understanding that as long as I did not cancel at the last minute that I would only have to forfeit the $8.25 reservation fee. Nowhere was it clear on their website while booking that there was an additional cancellation fee. I am not sure why there even is a cancellation fee if cancelled well ahead of time. There is plenty of time for someone else to book the site that I cancelled. It's not like I cancelled the day before leaving them on the lurch for someone to book the site.

They need to make their cancellation policies more easily accessible. Nowhere did I find a link to their cancellation policy. The only reason that I knew that I would forfeit the $8.25 reservation fee if cancelled is that I've used their site many times to book at various campgrounds. I have never had to cancel and was totally unaware of his additional fee. Whenever I book or buy something I ALWAYS check the cancellation policy. On their site there was no easy link to see what the policy is BEFORE you finalize the reservation. At check out I saw the $8.25 reservation fee and that's how I knew there was a reservation fee.

Website on laptop or desktop doesn’t work. Login page won’t open. But works well on cell phones. However, my concern is more with their increasing charges. They used to charge $8 or so per reservation earlier, irrespective of how many sites I had in my cart. Now it’s per site. If I reserve 2 sites then I pay about $17. Then if you cancel for any reason, they charge another $17. I understand not reimbursing the original $17 but charging $17 more to cancel is insane, feels like extortion.

The website is terrible! I tried to reserve on this in advance at a campground that is not very popular, and the website showed no sites available. When I called Reserve California, there were loads available. This has happened multiple times. Calling is never a problem. They are nice and efficient. But the website is awful!

One star is too many. It implies the reservation system works , just poorly. It doesn’t work at all. But what department in California does. Tried to make reservation today, or just check availability. No way to see campgrounds or availability. Called reserve California. They are a third party. She was able to check dates which did me know good. I would have to get the information from her and make my own California. Typical California. Dum asses write a program and are to lazy or ignorant to check that it works.

Navigated the glitchy website until I thought it better to call in.
Called in to make a reservation for a disabled person. Said wait time was 7 mins.. Waited 20m before I got anyone. The person on the other end told my mother she couldnt make a create an account over the phone she had to do it online.
When I called he told me I could make the reservation over the phone if I had an account. Acted like I couldnt set up the account then created the account after I called him out for that being false.
Seemed like he didnt want to help at all which I am like thinking to myself "then why do you work in customer service???" . Also had a definite "tone" to how he responded. Very rude, then just stopped talking and hung up after almost completing the reservation. We were looking at like 40min time frame at this point to only get unplugged. The man on the other line identified himself as Mohammed.
Called back to try again. Placed on hold for another 10 mins. At least the lady sounded pleasant until I told her I wanted to speak to a supervisor.
Placed on hold for another 15 mins
Only to be told there wasn't a supervisor or a manager available or anyone that can be contacted. Gave me a general email to respond to lodge a discrepancy. No oversite or accountability.
Here is one place an AI computer telephone answerer will hopefully replace, biased, stubborn, obnoxious people who really lord the little power they have over folks just trying to go camping. Pretty rediculous. What a waste of time. I dont recommend. Booking through them if you can avoid it. But there arnt very many options..

The site is terrible lately. It's buggy and the site doesn't refresh any time of the day. I've tried different browsers, including Safari and Chrome. They need to fix this.

What a horrible site- I can understand not being able to secure a camp site due to everybody wants to camp at the same sweet locations- but Jesus Christ- This site is horrid. Losers. loading problems, wont refresh, just getting to a full grid view is impossible for the un-initiated. I had to explain to a friend how to even access the campground maps. Please hire an 11 year old kid to revamp this mess.

Reserve California is not the government, it is a contractor. I wish it could be the Calif. State Park that dealt with it. It is now about $ 8.00 to reserve a site. I don't have problems using it in terms of checking availability for sites.

This website is impossible to use. It is so incredibly poorly designed and extremely frustrating. CA needs to do better. This problem has been going on for years now. Even the old website was better than this.

The calendar function is impossible to use. The site takes minutes to load results. Most sites list “No availability in the future” where “the future” is forever … so obviously wrong! Designers: don’t make us start with desired dates, esp. since your system incorrectly tracks the dates we enter … Let us see an availability calendar to START with, as a planning tool.
Nothing I wanted to do worked here.

I booked an RV site for 2 days later. I immediately noticed that the ocean was closed due to contamination from Tijuana, MX river waters. I tried to cancel online because it was after hours. It said it couldn't be cancelled because the transaction was still pending. I tried calling but couldn't get anyone on the phone. I called the next day after waiting 45 minutes. I finally pushed a buttton stating I would allow a call back when they were free. They called and attempted the full refund since it was well within the timeframe allowed. The lady was not able to do the refund because it was still pending. She assured me that someone would be issuing the refund. I received an email stating I was being charged even though I was a "no-show." I called again and waited on hold for a long time AGAIN. Same thing, they were not able to do the refund. She assured me someone would call me back. I am still not getting anything resolved. This is the ABSOLUTE WORST run company!! Terrible follow up. Archaic website. Zero customer service. I hope I never have to deal with them again since I never got a refund! :(

Wish I could give zero stars. Please CA, let someone design and run this site who knows how. Every morning at 8:00 I try to get an open site, and regardless of browser I'm using the site will hang or kick me out to the home page when I click on an available site. So frustrating !

Typical government run garbage can't get reservations when massive amount of open sites need a class action or privately run .

Basically unusable site, regardless of browser. It’s truly horrible that this is the only way to book state parks online. Bonus, if you are able to set a notification on site openings, you get emailed sites/dates that are booked, it never updates the notification as new sites are available.

Absolute trash. You book and fill out information to reserve a spot, then get asked to sign in and it either clears your cart or locks the site once you log-in. It's 2024, how is the state park's reservation system so horrendous?!

Oh, wait. It's a government operation. They're designed to SUCK!

First of all the website is horribly glitchy. As I was just looking on it it was telling me places had sites available then when I clicked, zero availability.
Secondly, why, why do they not have the option to just put in your dates and see whatever is available!? This would be so much better/easier. Worst website ever, extremely slow, glitches a ton, have to book in December for June.

The software is impossible to use. I have tried with Mac on Safari, Chrome, and PC using Bing, Chrome. I have wiped my cache. It is not consistent in results. I have no idea how anyone ever uses it successfully. I have found workarounds that work approximately one in six times, SORT OF...and multiple 404 error codes. It even wipes out the parks with the less busy reservations. I really can't believe they have kept this up as long as they did. Reserveamerica used to work and I have been waiting YEARS for them to make reservecalifornia work. I really can't think of any user interface that is worse, and that says a LOT.