Where's My National Park Senior Pass?

Above, seniors who have the Senior Pass will save $30 to enter Grand Canyon National Park. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

When it was announced that the lifetime Senior National Park Pass fee was being raised from $10 to $80, many seniors ordered the pass before the August deadline to get the pass for the lower price.

Now, three months later, many seniors still haven't received the pass they ordered.

There's a reason for that and the Austin American-Statesman tells why.

They wrote:

Some senior citizens who applied for — but have yet to receive — their lifetime passes to the nation’s parks may find a gift in their stockings this Christmas that will benefit them for the rest of their days. That’s because the government expects all of the passes to be mailed out sometime in the next 30 days, according to the AARP. 

The news comes after the National Park Service said that seniors rushing to beat a steep price increase on lifetime passes created a logjam so severe that it delayed the processing of the requests. 

The park service announced in July that it was raising the price on lifetime passes for seniors at the nation’s national parks and federal lands from $10 to $80 to “enhance the visitor experience in parks.” People age 62 and older qualify for the passes, which have cost $10 for the past 23 years. 

Many seniors use the holidays to tour national sites and parks as many of their working-age family members have time off to accompany them. Even without the passes in hand, seniors who can produce a receipt or email confirmation can still enjoy the benefits, AARP reports, citing a parks spokesperson. 

The price hike was set to take place on August 28, 2017, causing a flood of requests. To get a picture of the frenzy created by the price hike, the park service says that for all of 2016, they received 33,000 orders for lifetime passes. This year, it ballooned to 957,000, with nearly two-thirds of that coming in August, the AARP reports.

To read more, go here.