We visited Garvan Woodland Gardens on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2016. What could have been a wonderful experience turned into a nightmare. This facility is grossly lacking in parking, points of ingress and egress, and parking attendants. There were literally MANY hundreds of cars waiting on all connecting roads and highways waiting to enter. But their facilities are so extremely inadequate that it just became a huge, frustrating parking lot. We waited 1 1/2 hours to park. But we did get to park and enter (after waiting 20-30 minutes in the ticket line). Another car in our party, just a little behind us, waited about 2 hours and finally turned around and left, because there were no parking places. They were only able to do this because they hadn't yet left the highway. We had driven all the way from Cabot. But once you enter their property its a one lane road and you can't turn around. You're stuck. We spoke to some people who had waited in their cars 3 hours to exit the park. They took in a LOT of money that night that could make a sizable dent in a fund towards lots more parking and more points of access and exits. This is just unacceptable.
We visited Garvan Woodland Gardens on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2016. What could have been a wonderful experience turned into a nightmare. This facility is grossly lacking in parking, points of ingress and egress, and parking attendants. There were literally MANY hundreds of cars waiting on all connecting roads and highways waiting to enter. But their facilities are so extremely inadequate that it just became a huge, frustrating parking lot. We waited 1 1/2 hours to park. But we did get to park and enter (after waiting 20-30 minutes in the ticket line). Another car in our party, just a little behind us, waited about 2 hours and finally turned around and left, because there were no parking places. They were only able to do this because they hadn't yet left the highway. We had driven all the way from Cabot. But once you enter their property its a one lane road and you can't turn around. You're stuck. We spoke to some people who had waited in their cars 3 hours to exit the park. They took in a LOT of money that night that could make a sizable dent in a fund towards lots more parking and more points of access and exits. This is just unacceptable.