I've been making Yosemite camping reservations yearly now for about 30+ years , starting with Ticketron, then phone reservations, then some other computer booking app, and now this one. Recreation .gov is by far the best one so far. The secret is you have to plan ahead and know your booking windows dates, which are easily found on the website and the National Park websites. Booking a year ahead to satisfy other countries is opening up reservations to gobbled up by Tour companies who will figure out via computer programming how to secure numerous camping reservations and then sell a tour package including the camp reservation. I know you supposedly can't sell or transfer a camp reservation but there are ways around that. I do believe that they should raise the cancellation penalty so people who decide not to use the reservation don't just blow it off because the cancellation penalty is minor. That's why you see unused campsites. Some people say there should be a lottery, well the current system is like a lottery. At 7 a.m. on the opening window date tens of thousands of people from all over the world hit the enter button on their computers and some are lucky and some are not. Similar to a lottery. And its nice to be able to reserve a specific site under this current system. You can see what the campsites look like by going to a campsite pictures website ahead of time. Even with all the planning I still occasionally get blocked out of getting a reservation. The demand is far bigger than the supply.
