The Old Faithful Webcam has been down since May 17 and Yellowstone has been making lame excuses since. The cam had to be moved due to the building of a new visitor center and the park apparently had no plan in place to move the cam to another location before the disconnection. Tough luck viewers. Go without.
Read an article about this situation in the Billings Gazette here.
Photo of the webcam that was unplugged Clearly there is no "high-tech" installation involved.
Photo of the building that used to house the webcam
This is just one more great example of Yellowstone being tone deaf to customer service.
The webcam they were using was relatively new and delivered high quality pictures. Presumably the same webcam could have been relocated with in-house maintenance personnel. So cost wasn't the issue.
There are locations in the other buildings around Old Faithful that would provide an unobstructed view of the geyser so one could have been chosen before the disconnection, reducing the downtime to hours, rather than weeks. View of Old Faithful Geyser From Old Faithful Lodge
But no. The park service just decided to take the easy, expedient course and just unplug the service. Blame it on construction. Disappointing thousands doesn't matter. Why does the park make decisions without factoring in the impact to its customers?
Apparently this standard of "service" is OK with the leader of Yellowstone because she hasn't ordered her employees to do otherwise.
Worse yet, after receiving complaints from all over the world, they still don't get it. They promise to reinstall the webcam sometime in the "next few weeks." If they truly understood customer service, they'd show a sense of urgency and understanding by putting themselves under a deadline, announcing that deadline and then beating that deadline to apologize and recover from their poor service.
Apparently it's easier to disappoint thousands than it is to order a maintenance man to move a camera. Shame on you Yellowstone leadership.
Editor's Note: It took over 90 days to reinstall the Old Faithful webcam. The park service never replied to my emailed complaint. A visitor to the area told me he asked a ranger where the camera was and he was told it was sitting in a box waiting to be reinstalled. Yellowstone has never explained why they didn't make a plan to move the camera before it was unplugged, or why it took over three months to reinstall the camera despite it getting 209,000+ views per month before the disconnection.
Here is a link to the Old Faithful webcam that is operating now: Webcam