Cannon's new website

[awf170]

http://www.cannonmt.com/rates.php?lid=1

Well I guess I like it more than the old one, still dont like it much but I guess it is a improvement. $54 for weekend adult ticket now($5 up from last year) and $42 midweek($4 up from last year)

 

[dmo]

Definitely an improvement.

 

[thetrailboss]

Improvement in the website. Not an improvement in ticket prices :x Stowe still hasn't posted theirs and has in fact told the Burlington Free Press that they may not this year...how arrogant because they "don't want to deter people." OK, makes sense...we won't tell you how much until you show up and have no choice. :evil:

 

[bvibert]

The website is better IMHO.

The price increase doesn't seem that bad to me, I expect most places will be increasing their day rates by similar amounts...

 

[hammer]

The website is better IMHO.

The price increase doesn't seem that bad to me, I expect most places will be increasing their day rates by similar amounts...

I've seen a number of similar price increases so far. Good news to the season pass holders, bad news for the rest of us...

 

[bvibert]

The website is better IMHO.

The price increase doesn't seem that bad to me, I expect most places will be increasing their day rates by similar amounts...

I've seen a number of similar price increases so far. Good news to the season pass holders, bad news for the rest of us...

Yeah it stinks as non-pass holder, but we knew price increases were coming...

 

[ozskier]

Circus made it. Cirus is amazing. Hands down right up there, if not better than Propeller.

 

[dmo]

I think that what awf was trying to get at is that while similar rate increases may be standard this year, it sure seems like a big jump for Cannon.

 

[thetrailboss]

Circus made it. Cirus is amazing. Hands down right up there, if not better than Propeller.

Speaking of websites...hey Ozzy why does the Sunday River Website look different? The banner now has snowmaking clouds over White Heat, Barker, and one of North Ridge Trails...

 

[riverc0il]

The website is better IMHO.

The price increase doesn't seem that bad to me, I expect most places will be increasing their day rates by similar amounts...

two years ago i think cannon was $48. maybe $45 a year before that or so? seem bad to you now? :lol: while day prices are on the rise lately, cannon has gone up significantly compared to other ski areas and they are pretty much on par now with wildcat, a bench mark i always compared cannon to as a better value which cannon used to be well under...

i am really glad i went with the burke pass that has $25 at cannon. the transition away from the frequent skier card to the 'zoomer' card made it so skiers had to ski twice as much to earn a free ticket. no word on the web site if twofer days will continue. i can't believe i even have to wonder about that!

web site is definitely an improvement. their web master still had a losey overall idea, imnsho.

 

[bvibert]

The website is better IMHO.

The price increase doesn't seem that bad to me, I expect most places will be increasing their day rates by similar amounts...

two years ago i think cannon was $48. maybe $45 a year before that or so? seem bad to you now? :lol: while day prices are on the rise lately, cannon has gone up significantly compared to other ski areas and they are pretty much on par now with wildcat, a bench mark i always compared cannon to as a better value which cannon used to be well under...

I was wondering about that. It does seem like they're going up faster than others, I guess they're trying to catch up now...

To put it in perspective, my home mountain charges $43 for 15 trails and 625' of vert...

 

[ga2ski]

Circus made it. Cirus is amazing. Hands down right up there, if not better than Propeller.

Speaking of websites...hey Ozzy why does the Sunday River Website look different? The banner now has snowmaking clouds over White Heat, Barker, and one of North Ridge Trails...

TB - They have a few different banners.
One for clear conditions.
One for snowmaking in progress with smaking clouds on White Heat (White Cap Peak), Right Stuff (Barker Mountain), Risky Business (Spruce Peak) and Dreammaker (North Peak).BTW - these are not trails that they are making snow on, it respresent snowmaking.
And one with snow flakes falling when it is snowing.

I wonder if they can have the snowmaking and the snowflakes fall at the same time.

 

[thetrailboss]

Circus made it. Cirus is amazing. Hands down right up there, if not better than Propeller.

Speaking of websites...hey Ozzy why does the Sunday River Website look different? The banner now has snowmaking clouds over White Heat, Barker, and one of North Ridge Trails...

TB - They have a few different banners.
One for clear conditions.
One for snowmaking in progress with smaking clouds on White Heat (White Cap Peak), Right Stuff (Barker Mountain), Risky Business (Spruce Peak) and Dreammaker (North Peak).BTW - these are not trails that they are making snow on, it respresent snowmaking.
And one with snow flakes falling when it is snowing.

I wonder if they can have the snowmaking and the snowflakes fall at the same time.

I would have never known that...thanks! :beer:

Also, why did they scrap the old "Sunday River" font for the newer non-descript text.

 

[RIDEr]

Circus made it. Cirus is amazing. Hands down right up there, if not better than Propeller.

Speaking of websites...hey Ozzy why does the Sunday River Website look different? The banner now has snowmaking clouds over White Heat, Barker, and one of North Ridge Trails...

TB - They have a few different banners.
One for clear conditions.
One for snowmaking in progress with smaking clouds on White Heat (White Cap Peak), Right Stuff (Barker Mountain), Risky Business (Spruce Peak) and Dreammaker (North Peak).BTW - these are not trails that they are making snow on, it respresent snowmaking.
And one with snow flakes falling when it is snowing.

I wonder if they can have the snowmaking and the snowflakes fall at the same time.

Wow, great answer and great question. How often does the site get updated for snow conditions?

 

[awf170]

The website is better IMHO.

The price increase doesn't seem that bad to me, I expect most places will be increasing their day rates by similar amounts...

two years ago i think cannon was $48. maybe $45 a year before that or so? seem bad to you now? :lol: while day prices are on the rise lately, cannon has gone up significantly compared to other ski areas and they are pretty much on par now with wildcat, a bench mark i always compared cannon to as a better value which cannon used to be well under...

i am really glad i went with the burke pass that has $25 at cannon. the transition away from the frequent skier card to the 'zoomer' card made it so skiers had to ski twice as much to earn a free ticket. no word on the web site if twofer days will continue. i can't believe i even have to wonder about that!

web site is definitely an improvement. their web master still had a losey overall idea, imnsho.

even since they put that HSQ in, prices have been skyrocketing. If I remember correctly it was under $40 before they point it in :-?

I would have to say that this jump now makes wildcat a better deal than cannon. I wish cannon had a 3 day card like mrg or wildcat

 

[skibum1321]

web site is definitely an improvement. their web master still had a losey overall idea, imnsho.

As Oz said, it is Circus Media, not a webmaster. Not too many ski resorts make their own webpages. Sure, most of them have a guy to update the site, but most of the time it's just a marketing guy. I would be surprised to see many ski areas with a webmaster.

I think Circus is good. Personally, I think Pixelmedia is really good, but they don't really hit the ski area market and they tend to go for more professional type sites. It tends to be more function than glitz, unlike Circus and Propeller, who hire more designers than programmers. [/end_geek_talk]

 

[skibum1321]

Does anyone know if Cannon has anything like Vermonter days (most VT resorts have them) for NH residents?

 

[riverc0il]

Nh rez get a much cheaper pass. i thought there was a mid-week NH rez day, but i can't remember.

wildcat and cannon are pretty equal value wise. but cannon has wildcat whooped on terrain, so i still think cannon wins out even with a high day ticket rate. pending twofers are still en vogue at cannon, they have two, not just one, twofers at a MUCH cheaper price. still very much cheaper at cannon mid-week.

 

[awf170]

Nh rez get a much cheaper pass. i thought there was a mid-week NH rez day, but i can't remember.

wildcat and cannon are pretty equal value wise. but cannon has wildcat whooped on terrain, so i still think cannon wins out even with a high day ticket rate. pending twofers are still en vogue at cannon, they have two, not just one, twofers at a MUCH cheaper price. still very much cheaper at cannon mid-week.

I say we just agree that wildcat and cannon are the cheapest and best ski areas in NH

 

[ozskier]

Ok, so now we're going to get into the in house designer vs. hiring some outside firm like Propeller / Circus / Snowspin.

I come from the in house design school at Sunday River, I'd say that 90% of our site is has been developed in house, the 10% that isn't is related to the backend features of the website that are around 4 years old and are in the process of being phased out. As many of you geeks are aware, the site is powered by PHP and mySQl. It also uses CSS for the text stylesheets, I wish the site was position based, that will probably happen in the future, but the current framework would require a ton of development time to convert to a css position based template.

The flash banner at the top of the winter homepage has three backend controls...

1. Normal - It shows the picture of the mountain covered in snow.

2. Snowmaking - As some of you have seen, it shows a cloud of snow over some of the bread and butter trails.

3. Snow - This places the snow graphic on the image that shows flakes falling over the image.

When the snow-repoter logs in to do their morning/afternoon report, adjusting the homepage banner is something that they have to do. It is simply a pulldown box that activates the three separate functions.

IMHO, Circus does an AMAZING job creating CSS position based sites with insanely customizable features and backend items for content management. That all comes at a cost...

Ohh yeah, some other reasons why it pays to have an in house design team...

1. We run phpBB. Yep, we're one of the last resorts to still host our own message board ;-) I catch a ton of flak for being such a hard-ass, but if the msg board is going to stick around you've got to play rough with the punks. AZ runs the same shizz.

2. Photopost. Lets us whip up a gallery in minutes. I'm psyched to see that Alex used it to whip up a couple snowmaking galleries already. I'm going to be using it this season for weekly photo galleries.

3. Custom RSS Feeds. The snow report is now available as an XML feed. Hopefully the event calendar and What's Happening will be available. Small steps.

By using open source apps we can post feature rich content quickly and present it professionally. Opposed to waiting for a customized app from the site developers.

Not to mention SR has Nick Lambert, resident brand management, photographer, web designer, etc. Good luck finding another resort that has someone on the payroll that wear that many hats and pull of that kind of pro material.

It is 11:15 on a Friday night, what the hell am I doing here? Back to cards and continuing my farewell weekend... And Sky, no, I don't know about CO yet. This is my annual "We're not going to see Dave until May party", not the "Dave is moving to CO to work at Freeskier" party... Which, could be happening soon as long as my resume pays off.

http://www.ozskier.com/blog/2005/11/dave-amirault-farewell-tour.html