Ocean City Summer Rec Program Signups Begin... with a Hitch

This morning at 9 a.m. was the launch for signups for Ocean City’s summer rec programs at ocnj.recdesk.com.

It’s always a big deal, as moms (and dads, I suppose) scurry to secure a spot in events ranging from tennis to camps.

Well… things didn’t go exactly as planned.

It appears Ocean City was having trouble processing payments for the reservations, with multiple people reporting an error message when trying to make payment:

Shortly after, Ocean City updated their webpage with the following message and sent out an email informing residents and vacationers of the issue:

Calling that number led to an empty phone tree of options, with seemingly no way to actually reserve over the phone.

At 10:46 a.m., the city rectified the problem and sent out the following email:

We can confirm that reservations and payments now work as intended.

Our take: Ocean City needs to gets its act together when it comes to recreation. The range of options are great, but information and booking has been a problem for some time. To be fair, this lack of organization can be a Shore-wide problem. I can personally report having issues getting any information or clear answers across a range of activities. Websites direct you to phone numbers and, when you can get a human, they direct you to websites. It’s a terrible circle. Still, the relatively reliable Rec Desk website at least kept things organized… until it didn’t. If that’s the only reliable way of signing up, then it has to work, especially at the advertised launch time. Last year, the signups began on a Sunday, allowing everyone - particularly parents with children - a fair shot at signing up. But a Monday morning is tougher for many reasons and likely inconvenienced people. And now, those who planned around it may not have been available when the signup system was fixed. It’s unclear if people will miss out on activities they wanted to reserve for the summer, but if they do, and had tried to sign up at 9 a.m., the city should find a way to accommodate them.

UPDATE: From the Mayor:

“Dear Friends,

Registration for Ocean City's summer recreation programs opened this morning, and the volume of traffic created an issue with the third-party system that processes our payments. The system is now restored, and we're sorry for the inconvenience. Our Recreation team will be in contact with everybody who was unable to register for a program, and we will make every effort to make accommodations.

Warm regards,


Jay A. Gillian
“

Good, swift response here.