Superpasses: more crowds?

njdiver85 said:

Is it really that hard to increase staffing levels by 10% early season and put all that into lift ops?

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Yes, I believe it is. Vermont ski areas are desperate for help - lift attendants and snowmakers in particular.

Los said:

Yes, I believe it is. Vermont ski areas are desperate for help - lift attendants and snowmakers in particular.

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Plan ahead, re-train some of the people you plan to lay off, get a few of the higher ups to help out. It can be done. It was not too long ago you'd see Kelly working the lift lines in early season to keep things running.

I suppose what it will actually take, unfortunately, is for a line of singles like they had at Carinthia on Sunday that snaked dangerously up the hill in the path of skiers and riders coming off the last roller, and for someone to get seriously hurt while simply standing in that line.

Foreign help doesn’t show up until after Christmas sometimes and work visas are harder to come by.


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I am involved with hiring in the state of Vermont. For an employer, the employment market is brutal right now. It's a combination of a couple of things. First, unemployment is functionally at zero. Anyone who genuinely wants to work is working. Second, more people are leaving Vermont than are moving to Vermont. Outward migration is particularly high among those who earn $25,000 to $75,000 a year. The few people that are moving in tend to be high wage earners.

njdiver85 said:

Plan ahead, re-train some of the people you plan to lay off, get a few of the higher ups to help out. It can be done. It was not too long ago you'd see Kelly working the lift lines in early season to keep things running.

I suppose what it will actually take, unfortunately, is for a line of singles like they had at Carinthia on Sunday that snaked dangerously up the hill in the path of skiers and riders coming off the last roller, and for someone to get seriously hurt while simply standing in that line.

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Hate to literally rain on your parade, but the weather today/tomorrow couples with what looks wet and not white next weekend should bring the offering back in line with current staffing levels. We had the same issue at SR last season end of Nov/early Dec. Entire mountain could have been open from Nov 27th on but they didn't have the staff that early. They did a great job opening Locke to Aurora and in between mixing staff where they could. Just not practical to ramp staff too early given you can't predict these big early storms. Not going to happen most years and then what, you bleed money with staff just hanging around doing nothing?

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I think the early season lines have more to do with people are more apt to get out when there's snow on the ground in their area. Wachusett was very busy for a night session on Saturday night despite having an REI snow bash party that diverted people into the lodge. Had to park all the way down on row 14 of the main lot, and waits were 3-5 minutes for much of the night on both HSQs. Cars were in the overflow lot from the day session. They should have stayed open til 10 pm given the amount of business they were doing, but were only open til 8 pm.
Definitely busier than a normal weekend day but perhaps not quite as bad as a holiday weekend night crowd.

BenedictGomez said:

Yet another example.

Again, 10 and 12 minute waits in early December are not normal.

Those long lines may be EPIC & they may be IKONic, but they are not normal.

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Normal? Perhaps not, but they absolutely did happen pre-epic. I remember being at hunter for a demo day in early December about 10-15 years ago. Had a family Christmas party that night and had to be home by 1 or 2 to get ready for it. Me and my dad figured we could ski 2-3 hours and demo at least a few of the skis we were interested it. Well we ended up literally skiing 2 or 3 runs it was so crowded. Ticket window line was 30+ minutes long. Lift lines were 20+ minutes. It was insane. But we had just had some recent big snow and everyone wanted to ski.

As for hunter being crowded and Belleayre not, I can’t say that would have surprised me pre epic either. Back when I used to ski there regularly, that was a pretty typical scenario. Maybe things changed and bell is more crowded now than 10 years ago, but the lack of crowds back then on the same days that hunter and windham were packed was a huge reason I was such a big fan of Belleayre.


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njdiver85 said:

Plan ahead, re-train some of the people you plan to lay off, get a few of the higher ups to help out. It can be done. It was not too long ago you'd see Kelly working the lift lines in early season to keep things running.

I suppose what it will actually take, unfortunately, is for a line of singles like they had at Carinthia on Sunday that snaked dangerously up the hill in the path of skiers and riders coming off the last roller, and for someone to get seriously hurt while simply standing in that line.

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Just like that eh?

Haha!

Looking at the last couple of weeks while trying to determine the affects of mega passes on eastern ski areas may come up a bit short on creating a reliable or conclusive data sample.

JimG. said:

I worry that certain megapass member resorts will experience crowding and that others will not.

It is very odd to me that the Cats were empty except for Hunter this past weekend (for me Fri Sat).

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that's the least odd thing i've ever read on here. hunter has always been the popular one, and now its the popular and cheap one with epic.

people don't even know plattekill exists.

njdiver85 said:

I ski at Mount Snow. Megapass in full effect there given they were ground zero for the big snowstorm last week. What was truly disappointing was that they were still at Pre-Christmas staffing levels, leaving much needed lifts idle, such as Heavy Metal over at Carinthia, or limited ability to manage the lines. On Sunday, my pass was never scanned all day given lack of staff.

Early season staffing levels has been an issue in the past, and so far this year the large open trail count at this early stage, and megapasses only serves to amp this issue up to 11. Is it really that hard to increase staffing levels by 10% early season and put all that into lift ops? The money spent will pay off in more satisfied customers who will remain Epic next year rather than jump to Ikon, for example.

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I only had my pass scanned once or twice yesterday. However, I think it also helped the line run faster/more smooth. I'm fine with that.
They also finally had GSE running which is nice and helps reduce wait time for both summit lift options.

So, all this discussion on how multi resort passes is creating crowding at the resorts begs the question, what will northeast ski industry look like in 5 years? Skier visits have been flat for the last 20 years. it seems like this increase in skier visits at multi-pass resorts must be resulting in an overall decrease at non-multi-pass resorts or, are we seeing the beginning of greater skier visits? With Epic Pass and to a lesser extent Ikon Pass, available at multiple resorts in the northeast, will the initial surge seen at Stowe two years ago, lessen this year. I got to believe that a fair amount of people will forgo the longer drive to try the other Vail resorts closer to home. Will enough people be feed up with the crowding and start visiting the smaller resorts?

How many pass holders Vail picks up with the purchase of Peak? I forgot...

It'll take a couple season for this "state" to pan out.

On the one hand, all the Peak pass holders suddenly have a chance to ski in the west for not much extra. How many will take advantage of that? Those who had already been going out west will definitely limit their trip to Vail resorts. But how many others who never gone out west will try it once just because? They will have an impact to the Vail properties out west. But they won't make too big a difference to Vail properties in the east (ok, maybe will increase crowding at Stowe a little).

On the other side of the equation is people like me. I had not factor Hunter or Mount Snow in my pass purchase back in spring time. I bought the pass to ski in Vail resorts out west. How many people like me are there who are now suddenly crowding into Hunter and Mount Snow? In other words, how many Epic pass holder who were not Peak pass holders been added to the formerly Peak mountains?

abc said:

How many pass holders Vail picks up with the purchase of Peak? I forgot...

It'll take a couple season for this "state" to pan out.

On the one hand, all the Peak pass holders suddenly have a chance to ski in the west for not much extra. How many will take advantage of that? Those who had already been going out west will definitely limit their trip to Vail resorts. But how many others who never gone out west will try it once just because? They will have an impact to the Vail properties out west. But they won't make too big a difference to Vail properties in the east (ok, maybe will increase crowding at Stowe a little).

On the other side of the equation is people like me. I had not factor Hunter or Mount Snow in my pass purchase back in spring time. I bought the pass to ski in Vail resorts out west. How many people like me are there who are now suddenly crowding into Hunter and Mount Snow? In other words, how many Epic pass holder who were not Peak pass holders been added to the formerly Peak mountains?

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Here's my anecdotal take on this, and I agree with your assessment of Epic (but not prior Peak) passholders checking out the Peak resorts now valid with their Epic passes.

Granted I only have a 7 day sample size (all weekends and Thanksgiving Friday) this season so far. As a regular Mount Snow skier, a fairly surefire way to figure out if you're on the Bluebird with someone who likely hasn't been to Mount Snow before (or atleast in the last 8 seasons since the Bluebird was installed) is that they will go to manually put the bubble up before the chair even enters the top terminal since they're unaware it goes up by itself and didn't read the signage on the safety bar telling them it goes up by itself.

The first 2 or 3 seasons the Bluebird was operating this was a fairly common thing to see (or more often say to someone I was on the chair with who was trying to put the bar/bubble up). Then for 2 or 3 years, before Peak made Mount Snow unrestricted to most of their pass products, you really didn't encounter too many folks a season who would try and put the bar/bubble up themselves. Now the last couple seasons when Peak made Mount Snow unrestricted to most of their pass products, I started to see a noticeable uptick in those folks trying to put the bar/bubble up themselves presumably since they hadn't ridden it, or any other bubble chair before. Now the last 4 weekends in the beginning of the "Epic era" at Mount Snow, my encounters with "bubble newbie's" sure has seemed much more frequent than it has since the 1st few seasons of the Bluebird, as well as hearing folks ask for directions around the mountain or base lodge.

I strongly suspect that there is a good amount of the "let me try out some of these drivable distance resorts now on my Epic pass" going on. I will be curious to see if this keeps up for the entire season or has been a function of the quantity of terrain available, quantity of new snow recently fallen, and geographic proximity to the population centers that put an early season demand on Mount Snow?

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I was at Hunter yesterday. Shared a chair with a pair of "regulars".

I mentioned I hadn't skied at Hunter for quite a few years... One of them commented: "we met quite a few who hadn't skied at Hunter for some year but starting again this season. I wonder why?"

Well, I shared with them my motivation: it's now on my Epic pass. So I'll likely ski there a few times.

So, it does look like there're quite a few folks like me who are skiing Hunter. I bet at Mount Snow too.

drjeff said:

Here's my anecdotal take on this, and I agree with your assessment of Epic (but not prior Peak) passholders checking out the Peak resorts now valid with their Epic passes.

Now the last 4 weekends in the beginning of the "Epic era" at Mount Snow, my encounters with "bubble newbie's" sure has seemed much more frequent than it has since the 1st few seasons of the Bluebird, as well as hearing folks ask for directions around the mountain or base lodge.

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Yep! That!!

I strongly suspect that there is a good amount of the "let me try out some of these drivable distance resorts now on my Epic pass" going on. I will be curious to see if this keeps up for the entire season or has been a function of the quantity of terrain available, quantity of new snow recently fallen, and geographic proximity to the population centers that put an early season demand on Mount Snow?

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All of the above reason, which I think will add to crowds, especially on "good" days like the past weekend.

How much of an impact? I don't know.

Los said:

Yes, I believe it is. Vermont ski areas are desperate for help - lift attendants and snowmakers in particular.

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Not just a VT problem!

KustyTheKlown said:

that's the least odd thing i've ever read on here. hunter has always been the popular one, and now its the popular and cheap one with epic.

people don't even know plattekill exists.

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OK, odd for me anyway. I drive into the parking lot of a ski area and see lines like that and I'm off to the next ski area. I've done that more than a few times. But you mentioned the magic word for most people anyway, and that word is cheap.

Cheap seems most important nowadays.

JimG. said:

OK, odd for me anyway. I drive into the parking lot of a ski area and see lines like that and I'm off to the next ski area. I've done that more than a few times. But you mentioned the magic word for most people anyway, and that word is cheap.

Cheap seems most important nowadays.

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I like cheap but also quality and quality includes trails, crowds and snow.

Smellytele said:

I like cheap but also quality and quality includes trails, crowds and snow.

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I'll pay a bit extra for trails and snow without the crowds.

Quietman said:

Not just a VT problem!

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Right... Not that it matters, but I wonder if it's slightly less of a problem in NH just given the fact that the state population is more than double that of Vermont while the number of ski areas are about the same...