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I wondered that myself. I went hiking there for the first time in Aug 2018 and learned myself since their website didn't make a whole lot of sense:
The parking pass allows you to enter the "main gate" (Togue Pond Gatehouse). The three parking areas at the west, south, and east of the mountain don't actually register or save you a parking space. Everyone starts lining up their cars at the gate at 6am. And if they are head to the west spot before you get their, no more parking for you... And the parking at west in more like a giant dirt patch that people try to park their cars in some uniform fashion. No one checks to see if you bought a pass for east, south, etc. Non of that matters. Just get through the gate and hurry to you spot. The roads are all one lane, so you can't pass anyone either. So if you head to west and learn it's full you double back to south or east. But by then it will be an hour and there's no more parking so you're fucked.
My wife and I were camping nearby, got to the gate around 6:15am, and there was 100+ cars already waiting. When we got to west by 7:40, the lot was half full. I heard from other hikers it filled up by 8am.
If you don't care to hike the mountain, you don't have to get the pass or hike the trails beyond the gate. There's parking at cranberry pond trail, and since it's before the gate, you don't have to pay anything. There's a visitor center at the skinny land bridge that explains this all leaps and bounds better than the website or anyone the phone.
Although the park rangers were a bunch of cunts. I brought along a UHF/VHF radio because cellphones don't work until you reach the very top of the mountain. I wanted to make sure I could call for help if another hiker or myself got hurt. They politely told me to fuck off and that they use their own frequencies and wouldn't tell me. I asked if there was some sort of emergency frequency I could use, and they said their wasn't.
Not sure how to call for help if needed...
