HACKER Q&A
📣 soared

Are recreation.gov camping reservations botted?


I recently found out about renting fire watchtowers through recereation.gov. They use a 6 month rolling reservation window, so on 1/20 reservations are released for 7/20. After diligently trying to get a reservation every morning at 8am MST when they're released, I've realized they are 100% booked before I can even load the page.

Is there anything I can do to identify or beat automated scripts? My only thought is that some web pages are broken, so perhaps I can call those locations since they won't be reserved.

Here is a list of links to all the reservations available: https://www.firelookout.org/lookout-rentals.html