Securing Your Timed Entry Ticket to Arches National Park at the Last Minute

So you weren’t able to secure a timed entry reservation to Arches National Park before your trip to Moab?  You’re in the right place!  Advanced tickets are selling out 1-2 weeks in advance right now, meaning if you wait until a couple of weeks before your trip, you may have to try securing your timed entry the night before (aside from the exceptions, which you can read about in my first blog post on the new system here).

Every evening at 6pm (MDT), additional tickets are released for the next day. I did some experimenting on the reservation website so that I could tell you the steps to take to give you the best chance at success in securing your entry reservation in this scenario. Trust me, you don’t want to miss out on experiencing Arches National Park while you are in the area. If you follow these 4 tips below, you’ll likely be able to get your reservation the night before you want to go to Arches:

#1) If you want to enter the park any time between 6:00am and noon the next day, you need to be one of the first people to add your ticket to your cart. This means you need to know which hour slot you want before the time arrives, so you don’t waste any time trying to decide in the moment. In my experiment, I noticed that by 6:01pm, just a minute after the tickets were released for purchase, all morning time slots for the next day were gone. If you’re too slow, you’d have to enter the park in the afternoon, limiting the time you have to explore the park.

#2) Be logged into your recreation.gov account before 6:00pm. You have to be logged in to reserve your ticket, so to save yourself some precious time, make sure you have an account setup in advance. You can do this by going to recreation.gov and clicking “Login” in the upper right. From there, if you don’t have an account, click on “Create an Account”.

#3) Be on the reservation page before 6:00pm on the evening before you want to enter the park. Again, make sure you are logged in. As soon as the clock strikes 6, hit refresh on the page, select tomorrow’s date from the dropdown, click your desired time slot, then the “Request Tickets” button and complete your checkout from there.

#4) If you’re too late and there are no tickets left, not all hope is lost. Once someone adds a ticket to their cart, they have 15 minutes to complete their order. If they fail to complete the process, or if they manually remove the ticket from their cart, it will be made available again to others. In other words, if you refresh the page and select tomorrow’s date again, some time slots that previously showed as sold out may now be available again. There’s no guarantee of course, but it’s definitely worth the try.

Expect all time slots for the next day to be sold out between 7:00 - 8:00PM. After that, it is less likely any will become available again, but you could always keep checking back in if you’re desperate. Also remember, if you are part of a commercial tour, such as my very own photo tours, you don’t need to worry about having a reservation.

I hope this helps anybody that is wondering how likely it is they will be able to get timed entry for Arches the next day. Again, if you follow my tips you shouldn’t have any issues. If you have any questions, or if this helped you to secure your entry reservation I’d love it if you let me know in the comments!