Visiting a national park soon? You might need a reservation.

Plan your park trip.

Our fun outing to Mount Rainier National Park was derailed by a long line of cars waiting to gain entrance. Immediately, my husband and I were cranky. How do you escape into nature when surrounded by a gazillion fellow humans?

This has been a common frustration in recent years, and it intensified as the pandemic further popularized the great outdoors. Between 2001 and 2021, annual visitation to Arches National Park in Utah grew over 73%, from a little over a million to more than 1.8 million. Because of this overcrowding trend, some of the most popular national parks have adopted a timed entry system. While this puts the kibosh on spontaneity, the National Park Service hopes this reservation requirement will both protect natural resources and make for a less crowded visitor experience.

A forested mountain landscape at Mt. Rainier National Park.
Photo by Teresa Bergen

Which parks have timed entry in 2024?

So far, about 10 parks have announced timed entry plans for 2024. Mount Rainier is implementing a reservation system for the first time ever. Arches, which started its pilot reservation program last year, will continue theirs.

Other parks requiring reservations for peak times of year include Glacier National Park in Montana; Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado; Yosemite in California; Zion in Utah; Shenandoah in Virginia; Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee; Acadia in Maine, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico; and Hawaiʻi’s Haleakala, which will require sunrise vehicle permits year-round for visitors entering the park from 3 to 7 a.m. Muir Woods National Monument now requires visitors to get a parking permit in advance. Turn up without one, and you won’t be invited in to see the trees.

A log in a meadow of grass and flowers overlooking a mountain range in the sun.
Photo by NPS/Neal Lewis

What does timed entry mean for your park visit?

Planning. And more planning. If you’re visiting a national park this summer, go to the park website and check the current rules. They can be quite complex — and each park is different, depending on which parts are the most touristed. For example, Mount Rainier requires timed entry reservations for the Paradise Corridor between May 24 and September 2. But if you want to enter through the Sunrise Corridor, you only need a reservation between July 4 and September 2. Each park seems to have similar complicated rules involving dates, times, and locales. Suddenly, extra research is required when visiting a park.

Fortunately, Rainier is open 24/7, and if you enter before 7 a.m. or after 3 p.m., you don’t need a reservation. That’s ultimately what we did on our last Rainier trip. We waited for the line to decrease, then entered the park for the last few hours of daylight.

Sunset over Mount Rainier National Park.
Catching the last couple of hours before dark — without a reservation. / Photo by Teresa Bergen

And if you can go during a less-visited season, even better. During a February trip to the Grand Canyon, I whizzed right through the entrance from the gateway town of Tusayan, Arizona. But during spring break and summer, you might have to wait two hours! The moral of the story: go early, go late, go off-season, or plan ahead and score that reservation if you want to visit one of America’s most popular national parks.