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You think your mt has lift lines?

thetrailboss

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No joke...it took us over three hours to drive from my house to Alta on Saturday. It normally takes 40 minutes. The road was closed and then traffic got backed up. Add in a lot of folks in rental cars with two-wheel drive and summer tires trying to climb the canyon in wet snow. It was a complete shit show.
 

skiNEwhere

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Vail sucks, and this is why. Way way WAY too crowded. I'm sure if I skied there enough I could a find a few spots on the mountains that didn't get tracked out in 2 hours, but there is plenty of better places closer.

Not to mention its a relatively low elevation of ~8,000 ft and the back bowls are south facing which can make for some crusty conditions.

When I do ski Vail, it's only viable to go one day Tuesday-Thursday.

Did I mention it's flat as a pancake too? </rant>
 

BenedictGomez

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Somewhere in that line there are at least a handful of people who paid the $165 walk-up rate for that ski-hell.
 

skiNEwhere

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There used to be the giant steps double, adjacent to the vista bahn HSQ (lift that was the predecessor to gondola one). It was simply removed though without being replaced by anything. If gondola one ever breaks during a peak period, there are no other lifts to take out of that base area, unless you count Riva bahn which is like a 150 yard, slightly uphill walk, and ya can't even see it from gondola one either.

Funny thing is, the old vista bahn seated 4. The new gondola one seats 10. I'm wondering if lines were even worse before the gondi was installed.
 

drjeff

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Gondola One on the Vail Village side - that Gondola is a 10 seater. That line probably moved a bunch quicker than most think. As said before, Vail has a massive amount of acreage and uphill capacity once you get out of either of the main base areas to spread out LOTS of people, and do so quickly
 

VTKilarney

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Anyone who has skied in Europe knows what a nightmare that line would be if it happened over there.
 

jaybird

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No doubt ... Germans, Swiss, Italians and Frenchmen in a major lift queue can get very testy.
That Vail line is representative. Certain days and times, that lift is a dice roll.

The best Vail skiing now occurs in Utah ;-)
 

wa-loaf

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Touche!

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BenedictGomez

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I've heard rumors of that before, that Europeans can be incredibly rude in lift lines, and do things unheard of in America, but always assumed it was anti-Euro rhetoric.
 

deadheadskier

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Nope it's legit. When I skied at Interlaken as a kid, there were no line queues. People would push right past you if you let them. You basically had to put a pole in front of people's ski tip as hint that you didn't approve of them trying to cut you in line.
 

VTKilarney

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Nope it's legit. When I skied at Interlaken as a kid, there were no line queues. People would push right past you if you let them. You basically had to put a pole in front of people's ski tip as hint that you didn't approve of them trying to cut you in line.

It's definitely not anti-Euro rhetoric - and this is coming from an Italian citizen. The British are quite orderly, but they are most definitely in the minority.

Part of the problem is that they don't rope off lines like we do here in North America. That alone makes it a free for all. And even when there are ropes, they tend to be set much wider than they should be.
 

hammer

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Wonder if it is was like my experience was trying to get through at CDG airport in Paris a number of years ago. Passport control was crazy, no lines and people just pushed their way through. As an American not used to it I got quite irritated...didn't help that I was at the end of a long flight and I was concerned about missing my connecting flight (which I did anyway).
 

VTKilarney

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Wonder if it is was like my experience was trying to get through at CDG airport in Paris a number of years ago. Passport control was crazy, no lines and people just pushed their way through. As an American not used to it I got quite irritated...didn't help that I was at the end of a long flight and I was concerned about missing my connecting flight (which I did anyway).

Except that your were in the non-EU line. There are Europeans who aren't EU, but the line was probably quite diverse.
 
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