“Eighty dollars for a lifetime senior pass is still pretty reasonable,” said National Park Service spokesman Jeff Olson. “Everybody else pays $80 a year” for an annual pass.

Honoring passes

The $10 senior passes will be honored as long as the person it is issued to is alive. That’s why anyone 62 or older who doesn’t have one — and anyone who will turn 62 before the new price goes into effect — can still get in on the $10 deal.

Making it even better is the fact that, so long as the senior pass holder is in a vehicle, everyone else in the vehicle, no matter what their age, can enter on the same pass.

While published reports have predicted the $80 senior pass will begin later this year, or sometime in 2018, Olson said the National Park Service has not set a date for raising the price.

“We have administrative work to do before it can go into effect,” Olson said. “In any case, it’s not going to be $10 one day and $80 the next.”

NPS officials have said they recognize that $80 can still be a significant amount to people on fixed incomes, and are planning on offering an alternative that will allow seniors to, effectively, make payments of $20 a year for four years.