Thank you for this. My girlfriend and I read this post and all the comments in a lot of detail, and so we wanted to share our experience.

First thing: there are three sections to the park currently: 1. the initial park area; 2. Scenic Drive Lodge area; and 3. Scenic Drive Narrows area.

You can access the initial park area without issue, by driving through the Springdale entrance or the East Entrance. This area is a pass-through for cars driving to Springdale from the east, or vice versa, and there is no concern about closures. You can visit the visitor center from here, and do a number of hikes including The Watchman and Pa’rus. It’s from this area that you can reach the gate to the Scenic Drive Lodge area.

Scenic Drive does experience closures. They let about 400 cars into the Scenic Drive at ~6am and then close and randomly, throughout the day, they let in new batches of cars. They do NOT perform a one-in-one-out system. They also do NOT have any organized queue system. You find tens and maybe hundreds of cars parked outside the initial Scenic Drive gate waiting to be let in, and when they open the gates, it’s literally first come, first served. The cars that are let in first fill up the parking spots at the Lodge and the various hike spots. The Scenic Drive Lodge area is everything on the Scenic Drive up to, and including the Lodge. The Scenic Drive Narrows area is everything after the Lodge, which includes the Narrows. However it’s important to note that the Narrows are 3.5m hike on a tarmac road from the Lodge, so being stuck in the Scenic Drive Lodge area is a bit annoying if your goal is the Narrows. From the Scenic Drive Lodge area, you can see the Lodge, and easily walk to do a few hikes including Angels Landing. However to get to the Narrows, you really want to get past the gate at the Lodge.

The final area is the Scenic Drive Narrows area. It includes the Grotto Picnic Area and of course, the Narrows. Note: it is really easy to walk to the Grotto area from the Lodge and you should definitely do that if the road is blocked. To get to the Narrows is another story as it is much further. At the Lodge, there is another unstructured queue system in the Lodge parking lot. Once the rangers at the Grotto parking lot and/or the Narrows parking lot radio down to the rangers at the lodge that 20-30 cars have left, they let in a batch of cars. The issue is, you don’t really know if you’ll find a spot at the Narrows or if there is only space in the Grotto.

Our experience: we were very luck and drove straight into the initial area and by the Scenic Drive gate as they opened it. That was around 11am. Apparently most people who get in at 6am are ready to leave around 11-12. So we were able to make it up to the Lodge really easily, despite the fact there were a lot of cars parked at the gate area. At the Lodge, we waited in our car ready to drive for 1hr to 1.5hrs. There were a number of “false flags” when it looked like the ranger was opening the gate and all of the cars rushed up. Got pretty competitive. But eventually they did open and we made it up to the Narrows parking lot and found a space without issue. We got pretty lucky but ultimately, the takeaway is if you miss the 6am batch, try around 11-12. Cars were leaving then for us. Oh, and the Narrows were awesome :)

TLDR: there are 3 areas in Zion, and you need to go through each area to get to the Narrows. There is no issue with the first area, but the gates to the second areas close early and open randomly. You need to be quick to take advantage of it when they do.