Cottages sell out within 4 hours

Thursday was supposed to be the first day to make reservations for summer stays in 13 refurbished cottages at Crystal Cove State Park. Instead, it was the only day.

In fact, one man who tried to reserve a cottage said he got a “sold out” message from a cottage reservation website about 15 minutes after reservations opened.

The oceanfront accommodations were expected to be popular, and officials said they went even faster than coastal park spots generally do. But some prospective park visitors said after trying unsuccessfully by phone and Internet to get a cottage, they think the reservation system is faulty.

People have waited for years to see the cottages open to the public. When the state bought the Crystal Cove property from the Irvine Co. in 1979, people still lived in the cottages, which were built beginning in the 1920s. The last of the residents left in 2001, and cottage renovations finally began in March 2004.

The cottages that opened for overnight reservations Thursday were part of the $14-million first phase of renovations. The project included a total of 22 cottages ? the overnight rentals as well as a cafe, a cultural center, a marine research facility and several other facilities.

Reservations opened at 8 a.m., and by 10 a.m. all the individual cottages were taken from late June through the end of October, with rooms in three dorm-style cottages snapped up by about noon, said Richard Rozzelle, superintendent of the state parks department’s Orange Coast district.

Rozzelle said 70 phone operators ? about 20 more than usual ? were staffing the call center of ReserveAmerica, the company that handles reservations for the state parks system. About 45 minutes after reservations opened, 16,000 people were trying to get a cottage through the company’s website.

To Rozzelle, that high demand explains why many people got shut out of park reservations.

“I don’t know that it’s a problem,” he said. “I heard some calls, talked to some frustrated people, but it was mostly because they didn’t get the reservation, not because the system failed.”

But at least two disappointed people said they started trying at or before 8 a.m. to get reservations, and the website blocked them out.

Newport Beach resident Russ Kidder was hoping to get a cottage for his mother’s 90th birthday. He said he and his sister both got busy signals when they dialed the call center, and he couldn’t get through online for the first 15 minutes or so.

When he did get to the online reservation system, “It showed us everything was gone,” he said.

Cynthia Hollern, a Corona del Mar resident who wanted to reserve a cottage for a family wedding, said four people in her family were looking online for the date they wanted, and no one got it.

“We were told these particular procedures to follow and we followed them, and then to have the website be down for local residents was disappointing,” she said.

“They had how many years to prepare for this and publicize it all over the place and then we can’t get on” the website?

Laura Davick, founder of the nonprofit group Crystal Cove Alliance, said the group took a firm position that no one get any special treatment by getting an early reservation ? not media, not elected officials, not state parks employees. The alliance worked for a number of years to help preserve the historic areas of the park and was recently given a 20-year contract to manage park concessions.

For those who failed to get a cottage, more dates will be available soon. Rozzelle said the month of November will be available for reservations beginning Monday, and later reservations will open, a month at a time, on the first of each month.

Eventually 24 more cottages will be available for overnight stays, but no one knows when. They’re part of the second phase, which hasn’t started yet. It’s estimated to cost as much as $15 million, but the money hasn’t been raised.

That will be a job for the Crystal Cove Alliance. Davick said she expects to begin the fundraising campaign for the second phase in 2007.dpt.28-cottages-CPhotoInfoUP1QDFS420060428ivzkvcknKENT TREPTOW / DAILY PILOT(LA)A new stairway climbs to a renovated Crystal Cove cottage.