Visits to Acadia National Park were 10 percent higher this October than the year before after the park went six straight months of significantly fewer visits due to the pandemic. The estimated number of visits to the park increased from 436,194 in October 2019 to 480,859 in October 2020, according to National Park Service statistics. The increase may be a silver lining for some area tourism businesses, many of which have struggled as the pandemic has reduced foot traffic through their doors and resulted in the cancellation of Bar Harbor’s 2020 cruise ship season, which typically brings hundreds of thousands of tourists to Mount Desert Island every fall. Overall, visitation to the park in 2020 remains 24 percent lower than it was at the end of October 2019.