I recently read that national parks in the area are full by 9 a.m. so people are having to come back several hrs. later or wait in 2 hr. lines in their cars. We're coming in July. Is this true?

Parking lot at sunset point, Bryce Point, and Rainbow Point sometimes fill quickly. Bryce is never a super crowded park outside of holiday weekend times as far as I know. I have always gone on weekdays and not had a problem. Recently my last trip, a week ago, I was there on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and yes on Friday I experienced full parking areas, in the afternoon. But I was still able to find one space at Sunset right away, in the late morning. Going to Rainbow Point at the end of the park road, in the early afternoon, I had to wait for a few mins for someone to pull out, then got parked. Compared to other NPs, Bryce is very chill. I did see on their FB page that it got crazy over Memorial Day wknd and they stopped letting cars in for awhile. Only time I had ever known that to happen. If you can come on a non holiday, Tues through Thurs especially, you'll be great and have some moments of quiet and away from people 😊

Yes the parking fills up quickly!

We were there the first week of June, and in the park, on a Wednesday. We did the drive through and hiked the point area for the amphitheater views. It was not terribly crowded that day but they had closed the road the Saturday/Sunday before that for crowd control.

We arrived on June 21st at 2:00 p.m. with a 38-ft RV there was no wait we drove right to the bottom of Bryce and worked our way back.

This is true at Arches but it's like 7 am

The parking lots specific to some points fill up but they have a very effective shuttle system and one of the stops is just outside the gate with plenty of parking. So you can easily expect to get to park your car and catch a shuttle to the visitor center and pretty much every trailhead. Unlike Zion which is overly congested. However Zion is one of the top five visited parks and has the least amount of roads and parking of a national park that I have been to. This appears to be a limit due to the terrain of the actual park, not poor planning.

Arches was shut down by 9am on Thursday 6/16 b/c of high traffic. Opened by the afternoon but it was hot. We toured by car. Zion at the beginning of the week was packed by the morning - we got in - but it was hot and the busses were packed. But we still got in, no reservation.

True

Yes! We got there at sunrise and there were only a few people. I suggest the earlier the better.

It can at times get very busy. We did have like a 45 min line when we can back to Canyonlands in Utah later around lunch. But we have been hitting all the parks early in the morning.