Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center — Attraction in Mammoth Lakes

As someone with 30 years in the tourism industry, I was very disappointed in the service, or lack thereof, at this "welcome" center. We woke up in the Mammoth Lakes area to horrible smoke. In our attempt to fill our day we stopped at the beautiful visitor center to browse. An elderly woman entered and inquired about the fire, its potential danger, location, and whether it might be out soon. The employee behind the counter couldn't have been more rude and exhibited an attitude while barely answering the woman's questions with one word responses. As a manager of a visitor center I would never accept that kind of behavior from an employee. As I entered the building I witnessed a handwritten sign instructing people to download an app for fire information. I instantly got a feeling that someone inside either didn't have information or didn't want to share information. Any welcome or information center employee should go above and beyond to help people. The woman inquiring was noticeably concerned about the fires. Even if that staff person didnt have information on the fires, she should have looked it up for the elderly woman. Very disappointing for such a well stocked and beautiful center. Mananagement needs to do better with hiring...

Great place to buy souvenirs and nerd out on maps. As far as getting a wilderness camping permit, the people there are well versed in the area and can recommend great places to check out. Unfortunately, when I went they couldn't issue permits because their payment system was down. It's been down for weeks. If the government had competition, you know that they would have fixed the problem immediately. Instead the seven employees working for our government at the welcome center asked me to call a phone number of a third party that the government has vetted and employed to deal with permits. I spent 30 minutes calling to get a permit with no one answering the phone. Totally ridiculous!! So I highly recommend this place if you want to buy gifts and maps, but if you came for a wilderness permit you would be baffled by the government waste and...

We come up to Mammoth and visit once a year. This year there was a controlled burn with low quality air at our condo. We called the visitor center several times in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday. The only thing we got was this long message about all these other things, places, and areas unrelated to our question. At the end of the long recorded message, it said stay on the line to talk to an agent. We waited until the end. The recording said that there is no agent available and then hung up on us. There is no way to leave a message from what I could see. I was not very happy about that cuz the only question I had was related to finding a place out of the smokey zone on the north side of town...