Reservations will be needed to visit the summit of Cadillac Mountain at Acadia National Park/Will Newton, Friends of Acadia
Reservation System Aims to Improve Visitor Experience
By Lori Schaefer
Imagine a Cadillac Mountain summit with fewer vehicles, smaller buses and greater respect for nature and fellow visitors. One where visitors can rest assured they will have a place to park and can enjoy a safer and more enjoyable experience on Cadillac’s breathtaking summit.
A huge step toward that vision begins this spring as Acadia National Park implements a vehicle reservation system for Cadillac Summit Road—one of the major management actions selected in the Acadia National Park Transportation Plan to reduce traffic and parking congestion in the park.
New Vehicle Reservation System
Beginning May 26, vehicle reservations will be required for Cadillac Summit Road from sunrise to sunset through October 19, 2021, to help visitors plan and enjoy a better summit experience.
A vehicle reservation for Cadillac Summit Road costs $6 and can be purchased online at Recreation.gov. The fee covers the park’s cost of administering and staffing the reservation system and completing necessary infrastructure improvements.
Conveniently, visitors can buy both a park entrance pass and a Cadillac Summit Road vehicle reservation through the easy-to-navigate Recreation.gov website in advance of their trip. Vehicle reservations do not have time limits. The timed-entry reservation system allows visitors to stay on the mountain as long as they want after entry.
For 2021, improvements will be made at the intersection of Lower Mountain Road and Cadillac Summit Road, including siting two entrance booths, paving gravel areas, adding road markings and curbing, and putting in new signage and landscaping. To expedite the necessary work and have the system ready to go by spring, Friends of Acadia contributed funding and in-kind planning, design and site engineering at the base of Cadillac.
Why a Reservation System?
Acadia National Park is among the most popular and smallest parks in the United States, with more than 3.5 million visits a year. Visitation grew nearly 60 percent in a decade and, in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, Acadia was the eighth most visited national park.
Park studies show that about 75 percent of park visitors go to the summit of Cadillac at some point during their stay. The summit has parking for only about 150 vehicles, yet as many 350 vehicles have been known to converge there -- all but 150 parked illegally.
The summit’s popularity has resulted in trampling of fragile alpine soils and plants, illegal parking and traffic gridlock, crowding at interpretive platforms, unsafe conditions, and degradation of the overall visitor experience. During peak visitation, the summit road can become so crowded that emergency vehicles cannot access the top of the mountain.
Friends of Acadia supports the use of timed-entry vehicle reservations to improve the visitor experience on Cadillac Mountain, ensure visitor safety, and protect park resources. With a vehicle reservation, visitors are assured that a parking space will be available when they arrive and they won’t have to spend time hunting for a space–or worse, not find one at all!
Having the ability to pre-plan with a Cadillac reservation, just as you would with a whale watch or a carriage ride, should provide more certainty and a better experience once in the park.
Enjoying the Park Without Reservations
The vast majority of Acadia National Park does not require additional reservations, so visitors have many options for enjoying mountain summits, trails and historic roads while paying only the park entrance fee.
Also, reservations are not required for visitors to Cadillac who enter by foot or bike, or who wish to drive to the Cadillac summit outside of the dates of the reservation system.
Things to Know When Planning Your Cadillac Visit
- Reservations are per vehicle, not per person.
- A park entrance pass is required in addition to a vehicle reservation. You can buy both at Recreation.gov.
- Reservations are not required for visitors who enter by foot, bike or taxi.
- One sunrise reservation is allowed per vehicle every 7 days.
- Vehicles must enter the reservation within 2.5 hours of the designated start time.
- Reservations do not require a departure time.
- If you leave with your vehicle, you do need another reservation to re-enter.
- Make sure you have a printed or digital copy of your reservation to be scanned before entering Cadillac Summit Road.
- For visitors who prefer to plan, 30 percent of available reservations are released 90 days in advance. The remaining 70 percent are released at 10 a.m. ET two days ahead of each date.
Prior to the reservation system, traffic got jammed quite a bit atop Cadillac/NPS file
View from the Top
By Steph Ley
Most people come to Cadillac Mountain for the expansive views.
In addition to enjoying this beautiful setting for their job, Friends of Acadia’s seven seasonal employees working as Summit Stewards on Cadillac Mountain have seen plenty of worrisome views as well. Cars snaking down the roadway waiting to park. Tempers flaring when someone swoops to take a parking spot from another or blocks someone in by parking illegally. Drivers circling around after letting their passengers disembark across traffic. Vehicles parked on top of “no parking” signs. Visitors inadvertently trampling the fragile sub-alpine landscape.
Part of the Summit Stewards’ role is to aid Acadia National Park in enhancing the visitor experience on Cadillac Mountain. This includes helping monitor and manage traffic congestion–a role that has been added to address the increasing demands and challenges the park faces to ensure visitor safety on the mountain.
During the October 2020 pilot of the vehicle reservation system, we saw a snapshot of what Cadillac Mountain would look like under the new Transportation Plan. That 1,530-foot view from the top was encouraging and refreshing!
Even when every parking space was filled, the situation was not overflowing and unsafe. The atmosphere was relaxed, and visitors fully immersed themselves in their summit saunter without worrying about parking or getting blocked in. Visitors shared their positive experiences compared to other crowded days, and it gave us hope.
Of course, there are bound to be growing pains as new systems are implemented. But the Summit Stewards are excited about conditions improving on Cadillac Mountain and are eager to interact with visitors about their experiences and help inspire them become good stewards of our beloved Acadia.
Comments
Only one sunrise reservation per vehicle per week? For most visitors to Acadia National Park, this will limit them to one sunrise per trip - or none, for the good proportion who happen to pick a day when the mountain is socked-in with clouds. I suspect NPS either didn't consider, or didn't care about, the impact of this particular stipulation on the visitor experience for photographers and other sunrise "aficionados". I wonder why they felt it was necessary; last time I checked, for example, Haleakala National Park - which used to have a very similar sunrise overuse problem - brought it under control without such a draconian limit.
Making all reservations fully bookable online sounds great, until one realizes the likelihood that this means all available spots for popular times of day (talking about sunrise again) will likely be snapped up within minutes of release (if not seconds), as is often the case for other high-demand tickets listed on recreation.gov, especially ones with such low costs of entry. With no other way to obtain reservations, I foresee a lot of frustrated people tapping away at their phones, tablets and computer keyboards fruitlessly.
Sad it had to come to this. No wonder Ed Abbey ended up scorning national parks as "National Parking Lots", regulated into oblivion and destroyed by their own popularity.
Strange to see Ed Abbey quoted in this. As I read him and not my head in agreement, he would probably want the Cadillac summit road broken up. Give NPS credit for trying to manage or mitigate modern society's mania for visiting a site like Cadillac's summit at sunrise just to capture a selfie. What NPS really should do is not open the road until at least an hour after sunrise if then.
If reservations have no departure time, how to you limit the number of people up there? Visitors can stay as long as they want. Does this mean you're only issuing 150 passes per day?
Spent a fantastic week at Acadia in 2018 and didn't go to Cadillac Mountain because I'd read about the crowds. So many great hikes and other activities. Didn't see the need to drive to the top of a mountain with hundreds of others, so I think this limit is a great idea.
Recreation.gov is NOT easy-to-navigate.
Solid job by NPS on this one.
I think Ed Abbey probably would not have built a road in the first place..
Quite so.