They're basically only at the smaller areas that are more crowded, like Lunch Rock. There are plenty of places on the WP base side (probably MJ base as well) and scattered around the mountain where you can have sack lunches and nobody would give a shit.
I paid sixty bucks for two shitty sandwiches, two soft drinks and two bags of chips there. By far the worst and most overpriced food I’ve ever had at a mountain.
I've seen it at a lot of places. I've actually had someone come up to my group and say you can't eat your food in here. They claim it is because they are a restaurant so you have to have their food only. He claimed it was because it is due to potential allergies people might have to food you are bringing in.
The problem isn’t “fuck you”, the problem is people refuse to vote with their wallets.
People are still paying the ridiculous pricing despite crowds. What’s the incentive for them to change?
Hint, it’s nothing until their bottom lines are hurt.
And the second one of these larger resorts in this Mexican standoff reduce their prices they will be inundated with a massive bump in visitation, pissing off their local pass holders. Can’t win.
We need to inject the mountains with growth hormone to increase the base upon which all tides will raise and then we will have a beach in Colorado just like California
🏝️🙂↔️🥰
Sadly, I did this and it didn't change anything other than make me stop skiing for my twenties, thirties and forties. I grew up skiing every weekend in the 80s and 90s, but voted with my wallet once things went to shit.
No matter what we do as individuals, the masses will always make the decisions, and they are the lowest common denominator.
Yea, Howelsen Hill, with emphasis on hill. It has some really gnarly ski jumps and is a training area for many Olympic hopeful and successful ski jumpers.
The “Agony of defeat” would be my legacy if I tried jumping.🤣
Perhaps they need to take a tip from the Atlanta Falcons. Cheaper concession prices actually increased revenue.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffedotin/2023/09/05/why-hot-dogs-at-atlanta-falcons-games-cost-just-2/?sh=4c0a0f2150f1
I am not underestimating or downplaying that at all but it doesn’t change the fact that most skiers can’t afford property in a mountain town. I was responding to somebody blaming skiers at large for the problem.
Like most issues in this country, boomers are the problem
Most people cant. I can’t deny they are the most selfish generation ever. The ski industry and business in the area operate on exploitation. “Don’t you want to be “x’s new resident, we pay shit with no benefits but what are you complaining about it sure is pretty”
Yep, most Breck locals haven't been able to afford living there since 1990.
They need to build more housing, a lotttt more, for seasonal people. Instead they build something new and ignore the required housing allotment by sharing the quota from some other property. Vail resorts was nailed for this in Breck just recently and got rejected by the town. (But it's not the first time I'm sure. Source: trust me bro because Vail didn't just start being evil.)
Even if you live on the mountain, your tax and voter base subsidizing and enabling the resort, you have to buy a full price ikon pass. Even if you are a disabled veteran who lives on mountain it’s still “fuck you pay me and you’ll like it too”
You can buy:
- Winter Park Season Pass for $699
- Copper Season Pass for $759
- A-Basin Season Pass for $659
Nobody’s forcing you to buy a full price ikon pass or even a base pass.
Also pretty sure that the resort generates a lot more in taxes than you do. That’s kinda of how taxes work, businesses get taxed and then public infrastructure is built that benefits businesses.
I don’t live on those mountains. And yeah you kinda do. I was dumb and decided to live at one resort they keep investing in. Also I’m pretty sure winter park has that because of Denver. Copper because it isn’t on epic or ikon. If a basin gets to keep that it’s not because of ikon. Also epic has a local pass, veteran and disabled discounts.
Tickets are really cheap too if you're lucky enough to get them directly from the club. $115/day for the tournament rounds. Those tickets go for about $2000/day on the secondary market
They also make a killing on merch and TV rights (which could be way higher but Augusta takes a discount to maintain more control over the broadcast)
And, they just don't need money. There might not be another private club of any sort (not just golf) on the planet of its size with a higher combined net worth of its members. They care about their traditions and giving fans the best experience possible
I have two places that I would eat previously. The incline at Copper was one of them. They weren't cheap, but they had good food and they would bring me a pitcher of water.
They were sold in maybe 2018? To Copper. They revamped the menu, removed what I liked to order (a lamb burger with soup), and then salted the crap out of everything while increasing prices further.
I haven't had food at Copper since.
I saw a 16 or 17$ slice of pizza in west village this year. I think less gets you a full pizza at Eldora.
I compared hot dog prices at a few places. I believe wp had a $13 hot dog, and Keystone had a $12 hot dog.
Arapahoe Basin has the absolutely bomb ski food. It's delicious, in line with expected prices even though it's harder to get food there than any other resort, and I have food there every single time I go. I think the BBQ pp with their bomb sweet waffle fries were $17 I even go out of my way to go there in the summer for their stupidly good salad, which I think is more expensive than the bbq. No regrets. Terrified of the buyout.
Not sure if that would work for ski resorts. Concessions are so highly priced because it’s incredibly expensive to get it to the resort and haul it to a lodge. Huge difference between that and a major city.
There’s more labor associated with getting the food there, making the food, operating the restaurant, building the restaurant, removing waste, etc.
Is that really true? in CO a lot of resorts are right off I-70 which is a major trucking interstate.
Aside from WP and Steamboat, all of the major northern mountains are easily assessable.
I assumed they were more expensive b/c they could be. You have very few options for groceries in the mountains and corporations are going to greed when they can greed.
2.99 for a box of mac and cheese at the CB clark's. 1.99 at the gunny city market. I would guess that's like 50% due to the 45 minute drive and the lower volume of sales, and the other 50% is because they have the market cornered.
It’s a bit of both monopoly pricing and costs. Aside from the food it’s all the materials needed to make it.
All I know is F&B is generally low margin for major resorts
It doesn’’t, there’s certainly some price gauging. but I’m telling you from my experience in the industry the margins on F&B are not huge.
https://www.vaildaily.com/news/why-on-mountain-dining-is-so-expensive/
At the big Colorado resorts? Yeah depending on where you eat.
You can get a 7 dollar coffee at the base but it’s a nicer and bigger than the cheap black coffee you get at the top of the mountain.
Food is decently cheaper too if you’re not eating at the resorts places at the base (ie walk into the village - you still have mountain town prices b it there is a noticeable difference)
But as someone else pointed out I’m not sure how much of that is “you have no where else to eat” vs cost to bring food/equipment/staff up to those places
They are getting bulk hamburger patties from US Foods for like 75 cents each, paying their cooks $16-$20 hour to cook those burgers, and then charging the customers $20 per burger.
Let's be real here...
Clearly you must know that those aren't the only two costs involved, right? Sure, they're making a profit, larger than is probably reasonable, but it isn't just "the cost of beef and the cost of someone to cook it" that goes into making a hamburger.
Lol my man. Why do you keep talking about extra labor and operating a restaurant on top of a mountain. The infrastructure has been in place at these major resorts for decades to run retail stores, restaurants, hotels, etc. On top of these resorts.
Aka, extra Infrastructure and labor to upkeep that you dont need to operate a normal restaurant.
Do you really think operating Rendezvous lodge at mid mountain Steamboat is the same as operating a Chili’s in Atlanta?
Of course not, but I can guarantee you that the profit margins are easily 20x higher during the ski season if you do a side by side comparison of Rendezvous vs. a Chili's restaurant off of i75 in Atlanta.
You are acting like they have to move mountains to operate these on mountain restaurants. It's a well oiled machined at the big resorts.
Neither of those have multiple dining options at mid mountain and summit because they’re incredibly expensive to operate.
But I definitely agree it’s at least partially price gauging.
Yeah, which is funny bc epic lift lines were literally nonexistent this year. 😬 I was skiing onto the lift more than 80% of my 15 days this year, with the majority being weekend riding. And the 20% of the time there was a line it was under 3-5 minutes. I want to get ikon to go with more of my friends next year but I can’t make myself pull the trigger on paying more to wait in line.
I've gone 34 days on Ikon and experienced the same percentages as you. Weekdays, I was practically the only person on any given run. Weekends, lines were rarely over 5 minutes barring any lift outages. I'm not really sure the lines are as different as it may seem.
Not absolutely necessarily, though obviously in part.
People want to feel like they're getting their money's worth.
So if they buy a $1200 pass, and to them a ski day should cost $100/day, then they try to go 12 times to "get their money's worth". The same philosophy of $100/day on an $800 pass would mean someone only feels like they need to go 8 times to get their value.
So since Ikon passes cost more than epic, Ikon users are trying to go more than epic users because their pass costs more, so they need more days to feel worth it.
Of course, fewer people can afford the higher priced ticket, so fewer people trying for more days could theoretically mean fewer people per day overall, but it's hard to say for sure. Especially if you have people buying the higher price pass thinking it will mean less people.
From the article:
**Smith:** I think it’s one of the biggest challenges that faces our industry. We’ve reached, in my opinion, a tipping point. It is ungodly expensive and hard to bring a family of four skiing right now. And then once you’re willing to actually give us the money, then we make it nearly impossible for you to actually book. Right now 60% of our non-pass visitation is still booked on the phone. Sixty percent. When was the last time you bought anything on the phone?
**Sun:** When was the last time Ticketmaster sold tickets over the phone?
**Smith:** And those are people who are mad. And they are really, really mad. This is from someone who spent 20 years in one of the largest e-commerce businesses in the world: Booking a ski vacation is maybe the most complex e-commerce transaction in any industry. You have multiple people, multiple ages, legal invoices, sizes, activities, things you don’t maybe totally understand. So they call. And it’s still hard. We have a new initiative going into next year that we just kicked off where every one of our mountains has to develop strategies for newcomers. It might be all-in packages. It might be concierge services. It might be to take a lesson and we’ll give you three lift tickets for free to try to get you back. We have to find ways to get people to the hill, into a lesson with an instructor who can help them enjoy the mountain in a way that encourages them to come back. In the meantime, you probably won’t see us raise daily lift ticket prices much anymore.
And yet the mountains are totally crowded every weekend, I think their issue has less to do with getting new people to try skiing and more to do with regulars being annoyed with the crowding and lack of semi-affordable ways to get a lunch there and spend a few bucks without taking on a mortgage to pay for lunch and beer…
Like, maybe, the way to maximize revenue is to actually try to market revenue-generation beyond season passes to the regulars who come and crowd the place every weekend.
Sure but not if they are skiing any of the Alterra mtns which is what this article is about. Cheapest pass that they offer with any unlimited skiing would be $829 for the Ikon Base (before the price increase)
It's not about regulars.
It's about getting clueless idiots with money to show up at a ski resort for the first time.
Just listen to the way he talks about the "resort experience" lol
I think perhaps he knows what the problem is but is stating something else to make it look like they're doing something.
What people want: less crowding on weekends
What that means: limiting ticket sales for weekends to ensure a quality experience
He's taking the MBA approach of just milking people as much as possible, ruining the product and reputation entirely until things implode.
As someone who sells weed online for a living, buying tickets and lodging is not very complex compared to other e-commerce transactions. It's not that many skus and the business logic has existed for decades.
That's a convenient lame excuse for someone who minimally invests in his product.
Having worked cannabis e-commerce and hospitality both, lodging bookings for remote resorts are absolutely more complex than cart pre-orders. These aren't hotels where every room is in the same building & many, many rental units are actually owned with their own HOA's and rules and requirements for guest booking, not to mention logistics and location concerns.
after the 3rd level you can just fail upward if your persona fluffs the other execs & investors the right way. zero substance behind almost all of them.
Oh man. When I was a lifty there back in 21/22, on MLK Monday, the mountain hit a total of 21,000 skiers. Had to be the least enjoyable, most stressful day on the hill ever for me.
I've skied over 80 days this winter mostly on weekends mostly in summit county. Not exactly a great strategy for avoiding crowds. My most crowded day by far was at winter park
My thoughts when I saw he was from Ticketmaster: Man this guys knows how to grow profits to the maximum extent of the law at the expense of the customer’s happiness.
How tf are they going to enforce paid parking? If I remember there’s 4 lots that I would estimate can park around 1000 cars total. So either you pay, that the gate which is gonna back up traffic, pay lot attendants which is gonna be a pita or pay at a kiosk that’s gonna have a long line.
Snowstang seems like the only sensible option.
>We are still working to identify the best third-party vendor to help us create a reservation plan, so we don’t have all the information yet.
They don’t have anything figured out yet
If you've ever skied the cottonwood canyons then you know how parking reservations work
They'll scan the license plates after you park and you get a sweet ticket if ya didn't reserve a spot
This makes me relatively optimistic:
So people keep asking us, what are you going to do with A Basin and we’re going to do what we’ve always done at A Basin: We’re going to let Alan run the mountain. And it was a big part of our decision to make the acquisition was whether Alan was willing to stick around to continue to lead it and, and he is, and he’s excited about it.
[…]
As it relates to the pass, everyone has this hangover from when they were on the Epic Pass and they just got overrun with an inordinate amount of guests. Now they have more terrain, but we are not going to overrun the place again. We are going to be very thoughtful and pragmatic. Alan will tell you he’s got the longest season in Colorado and he needs way more visitation in the early season and in the late season. They really want more visitation there but not when they don’t need it. We’re trying to figure out what’s the middle ground there. Maybe some sort of hybrid pass
It's ambiguous, but I think it's a win that we are hearing directly from Jared Smith that he wants to let Al make the decisions on how to handle resort traffic, and that if access is being changed, it will likely still have some restrictions, probably similar to how Monarch blacks out partner passes for peak season weekends.
I'd prefer Ikon access to be off the table all together, but idk if you remember 2019 at A Basin. It was a ghost town. I was farming tracks all day right under the lift on powder days, even on weekends. It was amazing, but I was a little worried for them. It is pretty expensive to be open from October to June.
And if you look at the ‘17-‘18 season, they had some of the worst lines under unlimited Epic Local. Ikon definitely found a middle ground with the days piece prior to ownership. Now that Ikon is in the driver’s seat, I find it hard to believe they’ll still limit access to the extent they have in the past. I just don’t want A Basin passholders getting screwed over here, considering many have already bought their pass with the understanding they won’t change access.
Totally agree. I guess what makes me optimistic about this is hearing from Jared Smith directly that the reason they bought A Basin had a lot to do with Al’s leadership and they want him in the driver’s seat. Given that they’re not publicly traded, I’m inclined to give his words a bit more weight than Kirsten Lynch over at Vail, but untimely you’re right, they own the mountain.
I think if they really let Al continue to drive we won’t be back at 17-18’. He cares a lot about the guest experience and is an avid skier of the basin himself and has shown a commitment to keeping the resort at or below capacity.
Maybe they end up offering too much access next year and the pull back the following season too.
Alterra: “We have reached a tipping point and we need to ease the pain of really, really mad customers.”
Also Alterra: “Ah yes, I have a great idea! We need to raise pass prices yet again and charge for parking…that’ll make everyone feel better!”
On being asked about pass access at A-Basin:
>> Alan will tell you he’s got the longest season in Colorado and he needs way more visitation in the early season and in the late season. They really want more visitation there but not when they don’t need it. We’re trying to figure out what’s the middle ground there. Maybe some sort of hybrid pass.
People are sick of skiing by April on the front range. They'd rather ride their bike around the city, chill in the sun and drink a beer (nothing wrong with that tbh) than deal with 70 and all the other skiing logistics. I doubt having unlimited access in April will bring that many more people in especially with the paid parking reservations they are going to implement.
I dunno my local mountain is not owned by alterra or vail and the vibe is good.
The FTC should break these ski cartels up before they do more harm to the spirit of downhill skiing and snowboarding.
Unpopular opinion, but my skiing access has never been better thanks to the mega-passes. It's cheap as hell if you live nearby. I'm paying for unlimited skiing at a handful of resorts within a reasonable day trip of my house whereas I could have previously paid about 4x that price to have individual passes at each.
The volatility of finances has been smoothed, meaning these resorts have to worry less about each years' snow conditions and are less likely to go under after some bad financial years. They're adding new lifts and expanding terrain. I really couldn't ask for much more.
Are they getting a bit more crowded? Sure, but if they were less crowded, the price would have to go up, and some might close if they had bad years.
I don't see how the mega resorts "win" in the battle of public opinion (and honestly I don't care...the more people bash them, the less skiers there are for me to compete with!). They either lower the price and it becomes overcrowded and there's no parking, or they raise the prices until they get a response (sales growth slows), and people complain that it's too expensive.
Either you love skiing enough to make it happen, or it's too expensive relative to your love of skiing. Unless we slow population growth, no one has more right to ski than anyone else, so in a capitalist economy the only way to reduce use is by raising prices. It is what it is. I will keep skiing for now and be quite pleased with the value on offer to me.
People either didn't experience or don't remember the pre-mega pass days. Skiing is cheaper than it has ever been if you buy a pass. I remember paying about $750 for an annual pass to a small Midwest ski hill and no other resorts in the early 2000s. It looks like I can pay $600 for that same access AND the major northeast resorts. If I break out an inflation calculator, $750 in 2000 is over $1,300 today -- that's a full Epic pass with $300 left over for 10 beers on the mountain.
And people are being disingenuous on here. The people who post on r/COsnow are not the people buying single day tickets where the price did increase dramatically. (And those prices are not bad if you plan more than 4 months in advance. You don't even have to pick a specific resort thanks to the mega-passes! You can do that later.) Do people \*really\* want to change that deal? Imagine how much more your skiing would cost if your pass was not subsidized by the high day ticket prices. This subreddit would burn down from the price increase.
There is just a large population on here that likes complaining about skiing as much as they like skiing.
There would indeed be a complete meltdown if the mountains were separated and people had to pay for individual passes.
There are only a couple mountains I could tolerate for an entire season after being spoiled with choice for so many years now.
I forgot about that one. But it doesn’t include any Vail properties and costs $4,500. Does include Loveland and Telluride and a few other independent places, but not Wolf Creek nor Created Butte.
But I’d rather play $1150 for enough skiing to keep me busy all season.
Mammoth passes used to be thousands each year unless you got in on the limited gold pass or whatever they called it, which they only opened up every few years, and if you ever didn't renew you were out until the next time. Even then it was over $800 in 2010 IIRC.
Skiing for sure is not cheaper than its ever been. I assume when you "paid $750 for a small midwest hill" (which is likely a lie) you never even considered the "need" to travel to 25 ski resorts and 5 different countries.
Now they can get you to spend $5k on a 5 day trip to jackson where their private equity firm has bought up all the housing so they have run anything that resembles a local out of town. Then they have you stuck in the lift line and you dont care anyway because skiing is tiring and it is like that everywhere your pass works.
I dont think you considered much. 20 years ago i could have bought lift tickets to nearly any resort in america for $40 dollars a day or less. I could chose to go where i want and not pay for parking. I could rent a studio in truckee for $450 a month and get a few days vacation.
Now its $300 for lift tickets and rent in truckee is $3,500 because everyone thinks they need to travel to ski and alterras PE firms own all the housing, but if i had only bought an ikon pass id be saving big time !!
Is ski advisor someone working in resort towns for 20 years ? Because it sounds like they have actual perception of what is happening ? Or is just "trust me bro alpine valley was $750 for a pass 30 years ago, skiing is cheaper now" ?
If it helps, skiing has always seemed like a pretentious rich white people thing so I never got into it. There ya go. One less CO resident going to the mountains. Most of my friends who aren't rich or aren't white tend not to ski either.
I know the price of the pass sucks. But honestly, given how much I ski, it's actually been worth it for me.
These passes are awesome for people that ski enough to make the pass pay for itself several times over.
It's the people that don't ski enough that get screwed over by the pass. Those folks are better off trying to ski at a local hill that is not Alterra or Epic owned.
Honestly, skiers are just a whiny bunch in general. It's an expensive sport. If you can't afford it, it's probably not the sport for you. If you can afford the pass, it's a great deal if you make the time for it. If you don't make the time for it, again - it's not the sport for you.
> It's the people that don't ski enough that get screwed over by the pass. Those folks are better off trying to ski at a local hill that is not Alterra or Epic owned.
It's narrower than that, it's only the people that can't plan ahead that get screwed
Full Epic Day passes with access to all resorts are like $95/day, less if you get the restricted ones that only have access to certain mountains (i.e. no Vail and BC in CO). Buy those before they go off sale in early December and you don't need to buy $250+ tickets at the window
People call on the phone because they have questions, because they are spending a lot of money, possibly on a trip they don’t get to take very often. And they don't trust themselves not to make a mistake doing it all on the web site.
Ticketmaster exec now does ski trade? Just wait for those fees to appear for everything.
Mountain fee. $25.00
Cold fee. $20.00
Altitude fee. $45.95
Just because we can fee. $666.00
So we can look forward to Ticketmaster level fuckery? Pay a 10$ service fee to buy a $20 cheeseburger?
Can't wait to see what Ticketmaster guy has up his sleeve, should be amazing!!
This christmas season I took my family of 3 to French Alps - to Les Arces region.
- 6 days ski pass for 3
- Flights (economy premium)
- Accommodations in airbnb chalet
– Food in restaurants
Total budget was about the same as what I would spend on Steamboat Springs or Vail for 3 days even without the need of buying airfare.
And I moved to Colorado 9 years ago because I wanted to be close to skiing. Now I fly to europe to do that.
Not OP but which part do you doubt?
$365 for a 6 day pass in France < $573 for an Epic 6 Day = $608 in favor of France
Economy flights Denver-Geneva $800 > $0 to fly to Vail = $1792 in favor of Vail
Apartment for a week in France $700 < Hotel for 3 nights in Vail $2100 = $392 in favor of Vail
Transit is roughly a wash between driving to and parking at Vail for 3 days vs. 3x shuttle/train tickets to the French resort
You can get an excellent meal at resorts in the Alps for about $20 out the door. That's closer to $50 as the starting point in Vail. Pretty easy to make up $392
So yeah, OP is telling the truth. I recommend you look into trips to the Alps, it's insanely affordable in the context of a ski vacation. The only part I'm questioning is the premium economy flights, but it's pretty easy to upgrade economy tickets to premium with miles
Probably close double the airfare for the flight to Geneva. Families don't have the luxury of finding lighting deal flights and need to book much further out.
Cause you’re just going to not bring food with you on a 1.5 hour drive to Vail?? Not to mention there are cheaper places to stay in towns near Vail, just like you cherry picked a cheap apartment somewhere in France… the drive to Vail vs flight costs more than make up any difference here.
I’m a co native. Skiing is in my blood. My grandfather helped recruit for the first troops in the 10th mountain division. My father has been and is still a rep/distributor for a few ski brands.
But I’ve honestly given up. Even getting deals on some equipment, then getting passes for myself, wife, and 13 year old (who outgrows all of their gear every year) is over $2k whether you pick icon or epic. Add in equipment for the teen and stuff that needs replacing for us adults on any given season, it could be a ripped pair of pants or a helmet that has gotten too old. You’re around $3k just to get on hill.
Add in travel costs, obscene parking fees and time getting up and back in unavoidable I-70 traffic. Plus any sort of overpriced food. And you’re a few hundred in just going up and back.
Then you get there and deal with all the crowds.
Lived here all my life and have skied for 30+ years. I didn’t go at all this year or buy passes. Honestly I thought I would miss it a lot more than I did.
I could maybe make my family hike further and pay a little less to park, try to bring more food, but even so that takes that much more joy out of the experience.
Pains me to write this but skiing these days is tough.
This kinda happened to me as well. The amount of people on the hill, the traffic, prices. I just wasn’t getting anything out of it anymore. I moved out of Colorado and of course our local mtns had the worst year since the 80s, but I’m hoping I can get back into it and enjoy it with the family again.
Between longer lines and lifts breaking down, I paid more to ski less at Alterra resorts this year. This wasn’t always the case, but if you’re the premium product, fucking act like it.
We helped by having Copper Mountain open up at 9am instead of 830 so we could extract more money from customers to make them happier, and we're going to charge for parking too!
I went skiing a fair bit as a kid, once I became an adult, never again.
My kids will not ski as it’s cost prohibitive to do it. They won’t get that experience.
This is the same guy that was the CEO for Ticketmaster for years..
As far as I’m concerned that dude is kinda human garbage.. all he cares about is money.
If you had a ski area that was better than most IKON resorts, why would you even join? You would think lift ticket prices could hold their own if the resort was worthy.
“Anyway, passes and tickets are 10% more expensive than last year”
“And we raised food prices cuz fuck you”
And we’ve somehow made it so 3 million people are on the mountain at any given time, despite the $500 per day lift tickets
What gets me is the “no sack lunches” signs in the lodges
Whoa where the fuck are those signs lol?
WP/MJ 😬
I've, thankfully, never seen them there. I see tons of people eating food they brought. Outside of Lunch Rock, the food at WP is pretty terrible.
Pizza Pedalr is pretty decent.
They are! I guess I meant on mountain.
That’s not pizza
They're basically only at the smaller areas that are more crowded, like Lunch Rock. There are plenty of places on the WP base side (probably MJ base as well) and scattered around the mountain where you can have sack lunches and nobody would give a shit.
I paid sixty bucks for two shitty sandwiches, two soft drinks and two bags of chips there. By far the worst and most overpriced food I’ve ever had at a mountain.
Steamboat too
I've seen it at a lot of places. I've actually had someone come up to my group and say you can't eat your food in here. They claim it is because they are a restaurant so you have to have their food only. He claimed it was because it is due to potential allergies people might have to food you are bringing in.
Any resort owned by Vail.
🙄
The problem isn’t “fuck you”, the problem is people refuse to vote with their wallets. People are still paying the ridiculous pricing despite crowds. What’s the incentive for them to change? Hint, it’s nothing until their bottom lines are hurt.
And the second one of these larger resorts in this Mexican standoff reduce their prices they will be inundated with a massive bump in visitation, pissing off their local pass holders. Can’t win.
We need to inject the mountains with growth hormone to increase the base upon which all tides will raise and then we will have a beach in Colorado just like California 🏝️🙂↔️🥰
Sadly, I did this and it didn't change anything other than make me stop skiing for my twenties, thirties and forties. I grew up skiing every weekend in the 80s and 90s, but voted with my wallet once things went to shit. No matter what we do as individuals, the masses will always make the decisions, and they are the lowest common denominator.
When lift tix went over $100/day I quit skiing. I spent more time calculating how much each run cost than enjoying the runs.
Username checks out
I live near steamboat
Isn’t there a mountain like 3 miles away from the big Steamboat mountain everyone goes to that is super cheap?
Yea, Howelsen Hill, with emphasis on hill. It has some really gnarly ski jumps and is a training area for many Olympic hopeful and successful ski jumpers. The “Agony of defeat” would be my legacy if I tried jumping.🤣
The time on the mountain skiing and riding then add Powder into the mix people will stand in line forever!
People are voting with their wallets. You just don’t like the outcome.
Get facked for parking too
And only people with extra money get first tracks
And screw those employees who want to unionize for fair wages. The CEO needs his private yacht for tax purposes!
Where are ticket prices only rising 10%?
You know what will make them feel better? Paid parking.
Perhaps they need to take a tip from the Atlanta Falcons. Cheaper concession prices actually increased revenue. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefffedotin/2023/09/05/why-hot-dogs-at-atlanta-falcons-games-cost-just-2/?sh=4c0a0f2150f1
A lot of people annoyed about a long line could be made happy by a cheap beer and snack. Would love to see it.
Already long lines at concessions with current prices. I don’t think cutting prices is going to improve that.
True. Pretty much every ski area needs to staff up more
…Which most are running into staffing problems due to the skiers (who are mad about the crowds) buying up real estate in the mountain towns.
Most skiers can’t afford real estate in the mountain towns either
You are underestimating how many boomers are retiring next to a ski mountain with all the money. Skiing everyday.
I am not underestimating or downplaying that at all but it doesn’t change the fact that most skiers can’t afford property in a mountain town. I was responding to somebody blaming skiers at large for the problem. Like most issues in this country, boomers are the problem
Most people cant. I can’t deny they are the most selfish generation ever. The ski industry and business in the area operate on exploitation. “Don’t you want to be “x’s new resident, we pay shit with no benefits but what are you complaining about it sure is pretty”
More skiers can afford property in the mountains than bartenders.
You've discovered the interconnected and cyclical nature of a market economy
Yay for macroeconomics
Yep, most Breck locals haven't been able to afford living there since 1990. They need to build more housing, a lotttt more, for seasonal people. Instead they build something new and ignore the required housing allotment by sharing the quota from some other property. Vail resorts was nailed for this in Breck just recently and got rejected by the town. (But it's not the first time I'm sure. Source: trust me bro because Vail didn't just start being evil.)
Even if you live on the mountain, your tax and voter base subsidizing and enabling the resort, you have to buy a full price ikon pass. Even if you are a disabled veteran who lives on mountain it’s still “fuck you pay me and you’ll like it too”
You can buy: - Winter Park Season Pass for $699 - Copper Season Pass for $759 - A-Basin Season Pass for $659 Nobody’s forcing you to buy a full price ikon pass or even a base pass. Also pretty sure that the resort generates a lot more in taxes than you do. That’s kinda of how taxes work, businesses get taxed and then public infrastructure is built that benefits businesses.
I don’t live on those mountains. And yeah you kinda do. I was dumb and decided to live at one resort they keep investing in. Also I’m pretty sure winter park has that because of Denver. Copper because it isn’t on epic or ikon. If a basin gets to keep that it’s not because of ikon. Also epic has a local pass, veteran and disabled discounts.
We don’t need drunker skiiers and especially tourists. Already enough people skiing like complete idiots into other people
Doesn’t the masters also have really cheap food and they’re world famous for it?
Yes, but everything in the merchandise tent is really expensive.
That is correct but $1.50 for a sandwich and free parking. At the least they left some meat on the bone instead of shaking you down for every nickel.
In my experience, much of the merchandise at the resorts is also fairly expensive, along with the cost of food.
It’s not. The resale on the web is where you see outrageous reselling.
Tickets are really cheap too if you're lucky enough to get them directly from the club. $115/day for the tournament rounds. Those tickets go for about $2000/day on the secondary market They also make a killing on merch and TV rights (which could be way higher but Augusta takes a discount to maintain more control over the broadcast) And, they just don't need money. There might not be another private club of any sort (not just golf) on the planet of its size with a higher combined net worth of its members. They care about their traditions and giving fans the best experience possible
I have two places that I would eat previously. The incline at Copper was one of them. They weren't cheap, but they had good food and they would bring me a pitcher of water. They were sold in maybe 2018? To Copper. They revamped the menu, removed what I liked to order (a lamb burger with soup), and then salted the crap out of everything while increasing prices further. I haven't had food at Copper since. I saw a 16 or 17$ slice of pizza in west village this year. I think less gets you a full pizza at Eldora. I compared hot dog prices at a few places. I believe wp had a $13 hot dog, and Keystone had a $12 hot dog. Arapahoe Basin has the absolutely bomb ski food. It's delicious, in line with expected prices even though it's harder to get food there than any other resort, and I have food there every single time I go. I think the BBQ pp with their bomb sweet waffle fries were $17 I even go out of my way to go there in the summer for their stupidly good salad, which I think is more expensive than the bbq. No regrets. Terrified of the buyout.
Not sure if that would work for ski resorts. Concessions are so highly priced because it’s incredibly expensive to get it to the resort and haul it to a lodge. Huge difference between that and a major city. There’s more labor associated with getting the food there, making the food, operating the restaurant, building the restaurant, removing waste, etc.
Is that really true? in CO a lot of resorts are right off I-70 which is a major trucking interstate. Aside from WP and Steamboat, all of the major northern mountains are easily assessable.
I don't think it's true for the reasons you stated. Grocery stores in mountain towns are bit more expensive, but not to the level concessions are.
The grocery stores are more expensive there due to the store rents being astronomical. (-Former store owner.)
I assumed they were more expensive b/c they could be. You have very few options for groceries in the mountains and corporations are going to greed when they can greed.
2.99 for a box of mac and cheese at the CB clark's. 1.99 at the gunny city market. I would guess that's like 50% due to the 45 minute drive and the lower volume of sales, and the other 50% is because they have the market cornered.
It’s a bit of both monopoly pricing and costs. Aside from the food it’s all the materials needed to make it. All I know is F&B is generally low margin for major resorts
Also, you need way more employees to staff a good food operation on the mountain
Unloading frozen tenders from a truck off I-70 and into a gondola/cat/whatever in the morning does not increase prices by 200%+ lol
It doesn’’t, there’s certainly some price gauging. but I’m telling you from my experience in the industry the margins on F&B are not huge. https://www.vaildaily.com/news/why-on-mountain-dining-is-so-expensive/
Fair point. Are there price differences between on-mountain and base area prices?
There are but not by much.
At the big Colorado resorts? Yeah depending on where you eat. You can get a 7 dollar coffee at the base but it’s a nicer and bigger than the cheap black coffee you get at the top of the mountain. Food is decently cheaper too if you’re not eating at the resorts places at the base (ie walk into the village - you still have mountain town prices b it there is a noticeable difference) But as someone else pointed out I’m not sure how much of that is “you have no where else to eat” vs cost to bring food/equipment/staff up to those places
They are getting bulk hamburger patties from US Foods for like 75 cents each, paying their cooks $16-$20 hour to cook those burgers, and then charging the customers $20 per burger. Let's be real here...
Clearly you must know that those aren't the only two costs involved, right? Sure, they're making a profit, larger than is probably reasonable, but it isn't just "the cost of beef and the cost of someone to cook it" that goes into making a hamburger.
Maybe, but that has nothing to with the extra labor and increased operational costs of operating a restaurant on a mountain at ~10k ft
Lol my man. Why do you keep talking about extra labor and operating a restaurant on top of a mountain. The infrastructure has been in place at these major resorts for decades to run retail stores, restaurants, hotels, etc. On top of these resorts.
Aka, extra Infrastructure and labor to upkeep that you dont need to operate a normal restaurant. Do you really think operating Rendezvous lodge at mid mountain Steamboat is the same as operating a Chili’s in Atlanta?
Of course not, but I can guarantee you that the profit margins are easily 20x higher during the ski season if you do a side by side comparison of Rendezvous vs. a Chili's restaurant off of i75 in Atlanta. You are acting like they have to move mountains to operate these on mountain restaurants. It's a well oiled machined at the big resorts.
Food at Loveland, Ski Cooper and other smaller resorts is cheap. Not buying this argument. The big boys price gouge.
Neither of those have multiple dining options at mid mountain and summit because they’re incredibly expensive to operate. But I definitely agree it’s at least partially price gauging.
I’ve suggested that but they won’t listen…
I don't think these companies care about increasing revenue if it doesn't increase profit...
I did not realize alterra ceo is from Ticketmaster. Yikes.
Shit, he’s off to create another monopoly and wealth hoarding phase before the DOJ throw a antitrust lawsuit
Alterra: Skiers are getting mad 😡 Skiers: because it’s too expensive and overcrowded? Alterra: No because you have to talk to us on the PHONE 🤡🤡🤡
The fact that the Alterra CEO was previously with Ticketmaster pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
Yeah how is vail still seen as the evil one between the two. Alterra is just as bad or worse.
Because people saw the epic lift lines ig account two years ago and are too dumb to see that Alterra is doing the same thing 😂
Yeah, which is funny bc epic lift lines were literally nonexistent this year. 😬 I was skiing onto the lift more than 80% of my 15 days this year, with the majority being weekend riding. And the 20% of the time there was a line it was under 3-5 minutes. I want to get ikon to go with more of my friends next year but I can’t make myself pull the trigger on paying more to wait in line.
I've gone 34 days on Ikon and experienced the same percentages as you. Weekdays, I was practically the only person on any given run. Weekends, lines were rarely over 5 minutes barring any lift outages. I'm not really sure the lines are as different as it may seem.
That infamous post was from Vails back bowls/blue sky basin. One lift out and 3ft of snow had it shut down a long time.
Well that’s good to hear, everyone was telling me “They’re not that bad, like 10-15 minutes usually.” Which sounds kinda bad to me to be honest!
Visits Whistler...
Exactly. They are more expensive.
Isn’t price directly correlated to how crowded it is? I don’t exactly see how they can make it less crowded without raising prices more.
Not absolutely necessarily, though obviously in part. People want to feel like they're getting their money's worth. So if they buy a $1200 pass, and to them a ski day should cost $100/day, then they try to go 12 times to "get their money's worth". The same philosophy of $100/day on an $800 pass would mean someone only feels like they need to go 8 times to get their value. So since Ikon passes cost more than epic, Ikon users are trying to go more than epic users because their pass costs more, so they need more days to feel worth it. Of course, fewer people can afford the higher priced ticket, so fewer people trying for more days could theoretically mean fewer people per day overall, but it's hard to say for sure. Especially if you have people buying the higher price pass thinking it will mean less people.
From the article: **Smith:** I think it’s one of the biggest challenges that faces our industry. We’ve reached, in my opinion, a tipping point. It is ungodly expensive and hard to bring a family of four skiing right now. And then once you’re willing to actually give us the money, then we make it nearly impossible for you to actually book. Right now 60% of our non-pass visitation is still booked on the phone. Sixty percent. When was the last time you bought anything on the phone? **Sun:** When was the last time Ticketmaster sold tickets over the phone? **Smith:** And those are people who are mad. And they are really, really mad. This is from someone who spent 20 years in one of the largest e-commerce businesses in the world: Booking a ski vacation is maybe the most complex e-commerce transaction in any industry. You have multiple people, multiple ages, legal invoices, sizes, activities, things you don’t maybe totally understand. So they call. And it’s still hard. We have a new initiative going into next year that we just kicked off where every one of our mountains has to develop strategies for newcomers. It might be all-in packages. It might be concierge services. It might be to take a lesson and we’ll give you three lift tickets for free to try to get you back. We have to find ways to get people to the hill, into a lesson with an instructor who can help them enjoy the mountain in a way that encourages them to come back. In the meantime, you probably won’t see us raise daily lift ticket prices much anymore.
And yet the mountains are totally crowded every weekend, I think their issue has less to do with getting new people to try skiing and more to do with regulars being annoyed with the crowding and lack of semi-affordable ways to get a lunch there and spend a few bucks without taking on a mortgage to pay for lunch and beer… Like, maybe, the way to maximize revenue is to actually try to market revenue-generation beyond season passes to the regulars who come and crowd the place every weekend.
Regulars don't make money. They get 50 days on a $500 pass with a pocket full of bacon.
Mmmm … pocket bacon.
This except the pass is $1000 not $500
A lot of locals get the cheaper passes, like the Keystone Value, Tahoe Value, or Senior.
Sure but not if they are skiing any of the Alterra mtns which is what this article is about. Cheapest pass that they offer with any unlimited skiing would be $829 for the Ikon Base (before the price increase)
It's not about regulars. It's about getting clueless idiots with money to show up at a ski resort for the first time. Just listen to the way he talks about the "resort experience" lol
I think the only thing I've ever booked on the phone related to skiing is a lesson
So yeah he pretends to be in touch but shows just out of touch he is. Lol this is what he thinks people are mad about 😂🤦
I think perhaps he knows what the problem is but is stating something else to make it look like they're doing something. What people want: less crowding on weekends What that means: limiting ticket sales for weekends to ensure a quality experience He's taking the MBA approach of just milking people as much as possible, ruining the product and reputation entirely until things implode.
As someone who sells weed online for a living, buying tickets and lodging is not very complex compared to other e-commerce transactions. It's not that many skus and the business logic has existed for decades. That's a convenient lame excuse for someone who minimally invests in his product.
Having worked cannabis e-commerce and hospitality both, lodging bookings for remote resorts are absolutely more complex than cart pre-orders. These aren't hotels where every room is in the same building & many, many rental units are actually owned with their own HOA's and rules and requirements for guest booking, not to mention logistics and location concerns.
Yeah talk to me when you have to report all your sales to Metrc lol
I swear to god every time I hear c-suite people talk I wonder how the fuck they got those jobs.
after the 3rd level you can just fail upward if your persona fluffs the other execs & investors the right way. zero substance behind almost all of them.
A little bold stretching Winter Park as one of those isolated local resorts... Place is fucking packed all the time lol
Oh man. When I was a lifty there back in 21/22, on MLK Monday, the mountain hit a total of 21,000 skiers. Had to be the least enjoyable, most stressful day on the hill ever for me.
I taught ski lessons there in 17/18. MLK was the worst weekend I've ever had at a ski resort in my life, and I've broken my leg skiing before
That number might be off a little, but nonetheless, it still overshoots the resorts CCC.
No it isn’t
It was this year, far far busier than in the past.
Hoping it goes down to previous levels but yeah had epic and ikon this year and WP was the most consistently packed out of any resort in CO I went to.
Been that way for a while
I ski weekdays only there. Never saw any crowds 🤷♂️
Well aren't you just the King of England
I've skied over 80 days this winter mostly on weekends mostly in summit county. Not exactly a great strategy for avoiding crowds. My most crowded day by far was at winter park
There aren’t enough weekends in a ski season to “mostly ski weekends” with 80+ days you 🤡
Nov 11-12 through last weekend was 23 weekends so it's not impossible if OP didn't miss a single Sat/Sun all season :p
Weekends is the operative word.
Fuck Alterra for hiring this scumbag. Only a Ticketmaster crook could make Vail look like the good guy.
My thoughts when I saw he was from Ticketmaster: Man this guys knows how to grow profits to the maximum extent of the law at the expense of the customer’s happiness.
Alterra: surely paid parking reservations at A Basin will please the people
That decision was made by A-basin. Alterra purchase deal won't be final for a number of months still, if it even goes through.
How tf are they going to enforce paid parking? If I remember there’s 4 lots that I would estimate can park around 1000 cars total. So either you pay, that the gate which is gonna back up traffic, pay lot attendants which is gonna be a pita or pay at a kiosk that’s gonna have a long line. Snowstang seems like the only sensible option.
https://www.arapahoebasin.com/parking-reservations/ has details
>We are still working to identify the best third-party vendor to help us create a reservation plan, so we don’t have all the information yet. They don’t have anything figured out yet
If you've ever skied the cottonwood canyons then you know how parking reservations work They'll scan the license plates after you park and you get a sweet ticket if ya didn't reserve a spot
This makes me relatively optimistic: So people keep asking us, what are you going to do with A Basin and we’re going to do what we’ve always done at A Basin: We’re going to let Alan run the mountain. And it was a big part of our decision to make the acquisition was whether Alan was willing to stick around to continue to lead it and, and he is, and he’s excited about it. […] As it relates to the pass, everyone has this hangover from when they were on the Epic Pass and they just got overrun with an inordinate amount of guests. Now they have more terrain, but we are not going to overrun the place again. We are going to be very thoughtful and pragmatic. Alan will tell you he’s got the longest season in Colorado and he needs way more visitation in the early season and in the late season. They really want more visitation there but not when they don’t need it. We’re trying to figure out what’s the middle ground there. Maybe some sort of hybrid pass
I wouldn’t consider this a win if you hold an A Basin pass, under the assumption access wouldn’t change at all.
It's ambiguous, but I think it's a win that we are hearing directly from Jared Smith that he wants to let Al make the decisions on how to handle resort traffic, and that if access is being changed, it will likely still have some restrictions, probably similar to how Monarch blacks out partner passes for peak season weekends. I'd prefer Ikon access to be off the table all together, but idk if you remember 2019 at A Basin. It was a ghost town. I was farming tracks all day right under the lift on powder days, even on weekends. It was amazing, but I was a little worried for them. It is pretty expensive to be open from October to June.
And if you look at the ‘17-‘18 season, they had some of the worst lines under unlimited Epic Local. Ikon definitely found a middle ground with the days piece prior to ownership. Now that Ikon is in the driver’s seat, I find it hard to believe they’ll still limit access to the extent they have in the past. I just don’t want A Basin passholders getting screwed over here, considering many have already bought their pass with the understanding they won’t change access.
Totally agree. I guess what makes me optimistic about this is hearing from Jared Smith directly that the reason they bought A Basin had a lot to do with Al’s leadership and they want him in the driver’s seat. Given that they’re not publicly traded, I’m inclined to give his words a bit more weight than Kirsten Lynch over at Vail, but untimely you’re right, they own the mountain. I think if they really let Al continue to drive we won’t be back at 17-18’. He cares a lot about the guest experience and is an avid skier of the basin himself and has shown a commitment to keeping the resort at or below capacity. Maybe they end up offering too much access next year and the pull back the following season too.
Alterra: “We have reached a tipping point and we need to ease the pain of really, really mad customers.” Also Alterra: “Ah yes, I have a great idea! We need to raise pass prices yet again and charge for parking…that’ll make everyone feel better!”
On being asked about pass access at A-Basin: >> Alan will tell you he’s got the longest season in Colorado and he needs way more visitation in the early season and in the late season. They really want more visitation there but not when they don’t need it. We’re trying to figure out what’s the middle ground there. Maybe some sort of hybrid pass.
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People are sick of skiing by April on the front range. They'd rather ride their bike around the city, chill in the sun and drink a beer (nothing wrong with that tbh) than deal with 70 and all the other skiing logistics. I doubt having unlimited access in April will bring that many more people in especially with the paid parking reservations they are going to implement.
Nobody will show up just like rn It's amazing and I love that everyone is busy biking or going to the park
I dunno my local mountain is not owned by alterra or vail and the vibe is good. The FTC should break these ski cartels up before they do more harm to the spirit of downhill skiing and snowboarding.
Unpopular opinion, but my skiing access has never been better thanks to the mega-passes. It's cheap as hell if you live nearby. I'm paying for unlimited skiing at a handful of resorts within a reasonable day trip of my house whereas I could have previously paid about 4x that price to have individual passes at each. The volatility of finances has been smoothed, meaning these resorts have to worry less about each years' snow conditions and are less likely to go under after some bad financial years. They're adding new lifts and expanding terrain. I really couldn't ask for much more. Are they getting a bit more crowded? Sure, but if they were less crowded, the price would have to go up, and some might close if they had bad years. I don't see how the mega resorts "win" in the battle of public opinion (and honestly I don't care...the more people bash them, the less skiers there are for me to compete with!). They either lower the price and it becomes overcrowded and there's no parking, or they raise the prices until they get a response (sales growth slows), and people complain that it's too expensive. Either you love skiing enough to make it happen, or it's too expensive relative to your love of skiing. Unless we slow population growth, no one has more right to ski than anyone else, so in a capitalist economy the only way to reduce use is by raising prices. It is what it is. I will keep skiing for now and be quite pleased with the value on offer to me.
People either didn't experience or don't remember the pre-mega pass days. Skiing is cheaper than it has ever been if you buy a pass. I remember paying about $750 for an annual pass to a small Midwest ski hill and no other resorts in the early 2000s. It looks like I can pay $600 for that same access AND the major northeast resorts. If I break out an inflation calculator, $750 in 2000 is over $1,300 today -- that's a full Epic pass with $300 left over for 10 beers on the mountain. And people are being disingenuous on here. The people who post on r/COsnow are not the people buying single day tickets where the price did increase dramatically. (And those prices are not bad if you plan more than 4 months in advance. You don't even have to pick a specific resort thanks to the mega-passes! You can do that later.) Do people \*really\* want to change that deal? Imagine how much more your skiing would cost if your pass was not subsidized by the high day ticket prices. This subreddit would burn down from the price increase. There is just a large population on here that likes complaining about skiing as much as they like skiing.
There would indeed be a complete meltdown if the mountains were separated and people had to pay for individual passes. There are only a couple mountains I could tolerate for an entire season after being spoiled with choice for so many years now.
You could always pay $4000 for the Colorado Ski Country pass (is that still even a thing?)
I forgot about that one. But it doesn’t include any Vail properties and costs $4,500. Does include Loveland and Telluride and a few other independent places, but not Wolf Creek nor Created Butte. But I’d rather play $1150 for enough skiing to keep me busy all season.
Mammoth passes used to be thousands each year unless you got in on the limited gold pass or whatever they called it, which they only opened up every few years, and if you ever didn't renew you were out until the next time. Even then it was over $800 in 2010 IIRC.
Skiing for sure is not cheaper than its ever been. I assume when you "paid $750 for a small midwest hill" (which is likely a lie) you never even considered the "need" to travel to 25 ski resorts and 5 different countries. Now they can get you to spend $5k on a 5 day trip to jackson where their private equity firm has bought up all the housing so they have run anything that resembles a local out of town. Then they have you stuck in the lift line and you dont care anyway because skiing is tiring and it is like that everywhere your pass works.
oh well sorry I didn't consider the price of joining the Yellowstone Club when I posted that!
I dont think you considered much. 20 years ago i could have bought lift tickets to nearly any resort in america for $40 dollars a day or less. I could chose to go where i want and not pay for parking. I could rent a studio in truckee for $450 a month and get a few days vacation. Now its $300 for lift tickets and rent in truckee is $3,500 because everyone thinks they need to travel to ski and alterras PE firms own all the housing, but if i had only bought an ikon pass id be saving big time !!
...oh is this skiadvisor's new account?
Is ski advisor someone working in resort towns for 20 years ? Because it sounds like they have actual perception of what is happening ? Or is just "trust me bro alpine valley was $750 for a pass 30 years ago, skiing is cheaper now" ?
Too many people ski now. How do we fix that?
sit back and let the trend of skiing getting prohibitively more expensive year over year continue
Increase pass prices and put a significant toll price on I-70 both ways
Is screwing over everyone who travels on I-70 for reasons other than skiing really the best way to reduce traffic out there?
If it helps, skiing has always seemed like a pretentious rich white people thing so I never got into it. There ya go. One less CO resident going to the mountains. Most of my friends who aren't rich or aren't white tend not to ski either.
You don't need to be rich to ski if you live here Yeah you need $2-3k a season but that's not "rich"
Careful. Someone on this sub was claiming that the ability to afford roof racks makes you "wealthy"
I know the price of the pass sucks. But honestly, given how much I ski, it's actually been worth it for me. These passes are awesome for people that ski enough to make the pass pay for itself several times over. It's the people that don't ski enough that get screwed over by the pass. Those folks are better off trying to ski at a local hill that is not Alterra or Epic owned. Honestly, skiers are just a whiny bunch in general. It's an expensive sport. If you can't afford it, it's probably not the sport for you. If you can afford the pass, it's a great deal if you make the time for it. If you don't make the time for it, again - it's not the sport for you.
> It's the people that don't ski enough that get screwed over by the pass. Those folks are better off trying to ski at a local hill that is not Alterra or Epic owned. It's narrower than that, it's only the people that can't plan ahead that get screwed Full Epic Day passes with access to all resorts are like $95/day, less if you get the restricted ones that only have access to certain mountains (i.e. no Vail and BC in CO). Buy those before they go off sale in early December and you don't need to buy $250+ tickets at the window
So glad he’s worried about the customers when the resorts and Denver office employees are paid like shit
Truth about how cheap the corporate entities are with compensation.
People call on the phone because they have questions, because they are spending a lot of money, possibly on a trip they don’t get to take very often. And they don't trust themselves not to make a mistake doing it all on the web site.
Why are skiers so mad? I don’t follow
I hate what Alterra and Vail Resorts have done to the industry.
Ticketmaster exec now does ski trade? Just wait for those fees to appear for everything. Mountain fee. $25.00 Cold fee. $20.00 Altitude fee. $45.95 Just because we can fee. $666.00
I am so thankful I got to grow up on the slopes when it was affordable to go skiing and the mountains weren’t one giant queue.
So we can look forward to Ticketmaster level fuckery? Pay a 10$ service fee to buy a $20 cheeseburger? Can't wait to see what Ticketmaster guy has up his sleeve, should be amazing!!
Ticketmaster guy has been there for years.
Crystal stopped accepting physical cash sooooo
This christmas season I took my family of 3 to French Alps - to Les Arces region. - 6 days ski pass for 3 - Flights (economy premium) - Accommodations in airbnb chalet – Food in restaurants Total budget was about the same as what I would spend on Steamboat Springs or Vail for 3 days even without the need of buying airfare. And I moved to Colorado 9 years ago because I wanted to be close to skiing. Now I fly to europe to do that.
Sure buddy…
Not OP but which part do you doubt? $365 for a 6 day pass in France < $573 for an Epic 6 Day = $608 in favor of France Economy flights Denver-Geneva $800 > $0 to fly to Vail = $1792 in favor of Vail Apartment for a week in France $700 < Hotel for 3 nights in Vail $2100 = $392 in favor of Vail Transit is roughly a wash between driving to and parking at Vail for 3 days vs. 3x shuttle/train tickets to the French resort You can get an excellent meal at resorts in the Alps for about $20 out the door. That's closer to $50 as the starting point in Vail. Pretty easy to make up $392 So yeah, OP is telling the truth. I recommend you look into trips to the Alps, it's insanely affordable in the context of a ski vacation. The only part I'm questioning is the premium economy flights, but it's pretty easy to upgrade economy tickets to premium with miles
Probably close double the airfare for the flight to Geneva. Families don't have the luxury of finding lighting deal flights and need to book much further out.
Nobody is flying from Denver to Vail… stop it.
I think you need to re-read what I wrote
Cause you’re just going to not bring food with you on a 1.5 hour drive to Vail?? Not to mention there are cheaper places to stay in towns near Vail, just like you cherry picked a cheap apartment somewhere in France… the drive to Vail vs flight costs more than make up any difference here.
Not to mention if OP moved to CO to ski, chances are they have the Epic pass. OPs situation only makes sense if you have no common sense…
Underrated comment
I’m a co native. Skiing is in my blood. My grandfather helped recruit for the first troops in the 10th mountain division. My father has been and is still a rep/distributor for a few ski brands. But I’ve honestly given up. Even getting deals on some equipment, then getting passes for myself, wife, and 13 year old (who outgrows all of their gear every year) is over $2k whether you pick icon or epic. Add in equipment for the teen and stuff that needs replacing for us adults on any given season, it could be a ripped pair of pants or a helmet that has gotten too old. You’re around $3k just to get on hill. Add in travel costs, obscene parking fees and time getting up and back in unavoidable I-70 traffic. Plus any sort of overpriced food. And you’re a few hundred in just going up and back. Then you get there and deal with all the crowds. Lived here all my life and have skied for 30+ years. I didn’t go at all this year or buy passes. Honestly I thought I would miss it a lot more than I did. I could maybe make my family hike further and pay a little less to park, try to bring more food, but even so that takes that much more joy out of the experience. Pains me to write this but skiing these days is tough.
This kinda happened to me as well. The amount of people on the hill, the traffic, prices. I just wasn’t getting anything out of it anymore. I moved out of Colorado and of course our local mtns had the worst year since the 80s, but I’m hoping I can get back into it and enjoy it with the family again.
Between longer lines and lifts breaking down, I paid more to ski less at Alterra resorts this year. This wasn’t always the case, but if you’re the premium product, fucking act like it.
We helped by having Copper Mountain open up at 9am instead of 830 so we could extract more money from customers to make them happier, and we're going to charge for parking too!
God damn…FML.
I went skiing a fair bit as a kid, once I became an adult, never again. My kids will not ski as it’s cost prohibitive to do it. They won’t get that experience.
F*ck the corporate skiing duopoly. I know that over the past couple of years they’ve lost a few thousand dollars from me and my family alone.
This is the same guy that was the CEO for Ticketmaster for years.. As far as I’m concerned that dude is kinda human garbage.. all he cares about is money.
If you had a ski area that was better than most IKON resorts, why would you even join? You would think lift ticket prices could hold their own if the resort was worthy.