Let me try and break this down based on my experience with other parks, some sneak peaks and Glacier specific thoughts.
First, Orin is 100% spot on - have your account created and logged in in advance, but not too soon such that you are logged off due to inactivity. Preferably on your computer with a good internet connection.
Second, there are two stages of reservation where you actually 'hold' the sites. Each of these come with a 15 minute timer (that you are prompted with 5 minutes left to add more time to, so don't panic too much):
- Book Now: this is where you take the sites (unconfirmed) that you selected and add them to your cart. Once in your cart, they are yours, for 15 minutes
- Proceed to Payment: this is where you take all the permits in your cart and attempt to pay. Each permit likely requires more details beyond what was added to the cart from the Book Now button, such as emergency contact, trip leader details, entry / exit trailheads, etc. From here it is just the usual credit card information
Here is a sneak peak:
Comments:
- This is where you will land on D-Day, where it currently shows 'reservations closed' on rec.gov, that will be replaced with 'check availability' button with a calendar date selection box
- You will need to select an area (more on this later)
- You will need to select your group size (more on this later)
- Once those two are complete, the grid will populate for the area, showing blue quantities of available sites, clicking in the site/date box will add it to your 'itinerary' in the right had side.
- Add as many sites as you'd like. When you add a date, other sites on that date are made unavailable
- Click 'Book Now' at bottom to add to cart (secure / check against availability). It is possible that someone selected and booked what you see available prior to you clicking book now. The availability you see is what is available at the moment of the webpage load or date / area change (requests are made to the server).
Select an area is singular, so if you have an itinerary that crosses multiple areas, you will have to bounce around areas with extra clicks. This is dumb. Tetons has an 'All' option, this is smart.
Select an area is called 'select a
starting area', which isn't accurate, as one could start in a different area and have the first night be in another. Semantics but an example of a theme of not understanding.
Select a group size is redundant. The system is limiting to 1 site per reservation, such that the number of people is irrelevant until later, it's going to be 1 to 4, and it's winner take all on the site.
Questions / Curiosities
How will the rules be enforced? Max distance, consecutive days at a site, can't begin/end at a site, September closure of NF, etc.
At this point, none of the data has been loaded, so I can't decipher much, but will keep looking as I suspect this will be loaded prior to the 15th.
The only observation I do have is that some of the 'first night' restrictions appear to be in there as MAN, REY, and TWO are not listed - but this is an error because the rule is 'It may not be the first night of a trip that starts on the Going-to-the-Sun Road' or 'not available on the first night of an itinerary if the trip begins at Many Glacier or Two Medicine' - which makes for valid itineraries with those as a first night, such as East Glacier-TMO (common CDT), Many Glacier-REY (via Piegan), or Siyeh Bend - MAN (via Piegan). If this error is realized, I'd recommend just adding a dummy site the day prior.
MOK and FIF are showing, which I think are the furthest away from a trailhead, so the mileage limitation isn't working I think, but it could be checked later, or perhaps they are greyed out when availability is populated. (edit: they look to assume Goat Haunt starting point, so it technically works, with exception of Beaver Woman, which the math was fudged - I think it's all just a punt to avoid having to do distance calculations by saying they all are valid - which is fine, but just a foreshadow to other issues where 'close enough' isn't going to cut it).
The main curiosity I have is how multi-itineraries work. For instance, if you are doing the Northern Circle, you want GRN, FIF, and STO and what you get in the Belly River isn't important / can be fixed at walk-in. So if you quickly add GRN-FIF-STO and 'Book Now' to secure and continue shopping for Belly River sites, add those and 'Book Now' - how does that work? Presumably two permits. Will it choke on distance if you terminate at STO (or does it assume Goat Haunt is valid exit)? How will Glacier handle two itineraries? Common sense would say one thing .... but letter of the law is you can't pickup your permit until the day before .. Same question, but two browsers if you're wanting to piecemeal an itinerary.
I anticipate a complete CF, which was completely avoidable if they went with Cascades or Yellowstone's lottery system on rec.gov, which is highly ironic as they point to Cascades tutorial but don't follow their system.
Last word of advice from the road reservations, is that if you did miss out, just be patience and check back around t+15 and t+30, as people who were able to hold sites with 'Book Now', either didn't process it in time or didn't pay in time.