Looks like the campers of VA did not really have an opinion one way or another so the reservation system stands as is. you reserve a site on the loop but it is not a specific site. Once you get to the park you go pick out your site.
Here is the link to the full article. http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
GA state parks are the same way, but so are other states we have visited. One can make a reservation but there is no specific lock on any particular site. I'm hoping this weekend out, we can find a "good spot" before anyone else gets it! ::) OTOH, the federal sites are site specific, and GA has a lot of COEs where we can lock in after looking at a photo of the site online (in most cases).
(I'm also hoping the lakeside sites aren't flooded as many in GA have been and are this month. Loads of rain and flooding have contributed to lakeside campsites being closed off.)
Funny how the only ones here complaining about it don't live in VA. I lived in VA for many years. It never bothered me.
You check in, they tell you to go find a site. You come back and let 'em know where you are. No biggie. You get to scope out all available sites and make your choice out of what's open.
We drove around a campground in Virginia (Pocohontas) a few times before finding a site we could fit in. If we were able to reserve a specific site before arriving, we would have been set up in less time than it took to pick out our site.
Traveling with kids (and a dog) I would much rather get to the campground, check in at the gate and just go to the site I have already picked out.
Any state parks I have been to in Florida, Georgia (I think), Pennsylvania, and S. Carolina have been where we can pick a site prior to arrival and we prefer it that way.
We've had the opposite problem a few times. We reserved a specific site just to find it was a tight squeeze or undesirable for some other reason, but we were stuck with it since it was what we reserved. With VA's system, we may have been able to find another site that might have been better without having to go back to the office and change the reservation.
Some above have said, "how do you get the great site (in VA) if you don't get there early in the day?" Well, the same can be said for first-come-first-serve, and there's a similar but different issue with the "specific-site" reservations, since the great sites would be reserved online early and you may not be available when the reservation window opens.
I think all of the methods discussed: first-come, reserve-a-specific-site, and reserve-a-general-site have issues, albeit different ones that affect each person differently.
Being able to reserve a site is a new thing for me as I was away from camping for about 10 years. Having the convenience of knowing that you will have a site at a campground that is hours away is for me a good thing. Not knowing if the site I reserved is a good site or not is troubling. I use sites like http://www.campsitephotos.com/ and others but they are limited in what they convey.
Having stayed at VA campground for the first time over 4th of July, I looked at pictures of all the sites on-line and made a list of what I thought were good sites. After getting to the CG I was able to choose one of these sites but quickly realized some of my "good" sites weren't good. The VA system is a compromise between no reservation and you could drive hours only to not have a site at all and reserving an unknown site.
I search out reviews of campgrounds and good sites and try to make reviews of all CGs we camp at or visit and include good site numbers and sites to avoid. While traveling I will visit CGs and do a windshield review of the CG for future reference. We did this over the 4th while staying at Chippokes Plantation we visited Newport News Park and Chicahominy and found that we would stay and recommend NN but you could not pay me to stay at Chicahominny
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