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EPIC 2021-2022 Announcement =Pass cost cut 20%

catskillman

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LEAKED: Epic Pass Price Cut by 20%
The Denver Post had a story queued up on embargo this morning when Vail decided to delay their announcement by one day due to the tragic mass shooting in their community. This story was cached by Google, and while the full cache has been removed, Google still displays the summary in the search results and I consider that to be confirmed as to the basic facts, but the full text of the article was only recoverable from a Reddit thread and cannot be confirmed in it's entirety. The full story appears below this introduction.

This article claims that Vail Resorts is reducing the price of the full Epic Pass by $196, and the Epic Local Pass by $146. That's significant. The full Epic Pass will start off at $783, and the Epic Local Pass will start at $583.

What this story doesn't detail however is the company's direction when it comes to regional pass products such as the Northeast Value Pass and the Northeast Weekday Value Pass. The price cut makes the Epic Local Pass cheaper than the Northeast Value Pass was last season, but not the Northeast Weekday Value Pass. If that pass was eliminated, a number of Northeast passholders on the weekday pass product would actually end up paying more, though overall most Epic Pass holders would be paying less.

This move by Vail continues two main strategies; 1) sell on value, and 2) lock as many people in as possible on passes. The obvious question though is whether people will want to go ski at a resort that looks like a Walmart at midnight on Black Friday. Surely a record number of people will next season at least.



=========== Cached Story Below ===========

Epic Pass Price Slashed 20% for 2021-2022 Ski Season

The duel between ski industry titans over season pass sales took a stunning turn Tuesday when Vail Resorts announced that prices for next season’s Epic Passes will be 20% lower than what it charged for those passes this season.

The Epic Pass for next season, which goes on sale Tuesday, is priced at $783. That’s $196 less than the 2020-21 Epic Pass when it went on sale a year ago, and $216 less than rival Ikon Pass is charging for a comparable 2021-22 season pass. Ikon announced its 2021-22 prices on March 11.

The more limited Epic Local Pass is priced at $583, which is $146 lower than last year’s price of $729. Ikon is charging $729 for its comparable 2021-22 product, the Ikon Base Pass.

Both Vail Resorts and rival Alterra Mountain Co. (Ikon Pass) are headquartered in metro Denver, and there was no immediate response from Alterra to Vail’s escalation in the season pass wars. Epic passes haven’t been this cheap since the 2015-16 season, when the Epic Pass was good at only 11 U.S resorts. Now it’s good at six resorts in Colorado alone, and more than 70 destinations around the world.

“The main driver here is, we want to move ticket buyers to a pass,” Vail Resorts chief executive Rob Katz said in an interview. “That has been a strategy of ours going all the way back to the introduction of the Epic Pass back in 2008. We’ve made huge inroads on this front. We started looking at some of our learning over the last couple years, and we thought we could actually reduce the price, bring more people into the program, and actually have it be profitable and a good decision for the company.”

Katz said Epic Pass sales for the 2020-21 season were strong, helping the company withstand the challenges that came with COVID-19 capacity restrictions and the reservations system it employed to control numbers on its mountains. That helped drive the price cut for next season’s passes.

“We’re not cutting the price of a lift ticket,” Katz said. “We’re cutting the price of a pass, which means you have to buy it before the season. That, we believe, is the crux of how you ensure stability and economic prosperity for the entire skiing and riding ecosystem.

Katz said Vail Resorts sold 1.4 million Epic Passes for this season. That meant lots of money in the bank before the first snowflake fell. That triggered us to say, ‘We’re doubling down on this strategy,’ Katz said. “We think skiers and riders can be the beneficiaries. It’s actually making a great trade with our guests to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to keep providing you more and more value to help us make this business and this industry more successful.'”

Vail Resorts business declined this season because of the pandemic, which included operating lifts at 50% capacity or less. Katz sent a letter to pass holders last week, saying the company does not plan to use a reservations system next season.

“Obviously this year was not as good as previous years,” Katz said. “But given the environment that we were operating in, and all the challenges that we all faced around COVID, we feel like this year has been absolutely successful. I think it’s been due to a few things. One is pass sales, which was very strong going into this year.”

Epic passes are good at all resorts owned by Vail Resorts as well as “partner” resorts owned by other companies. Those destinations include Telluride, Sun Valley in Idaho and Snowbasin in Utah. Ikon Passes are good at Alterra mountains, including Winter Park and Steamboat in Colorado, as well as partner resorts that include Aspen Snowmass, Copper Mountain, Arapahoe Basin and Eldora.
 

thebman11

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I can only imagine what this will do for extra crowds next year when skier visits are restricted. I have skied at Stowe for 10 years and have never seen crowds like this year (weekdays look like weekends!). I never even tried to go on a Saturday! I will probably make the move to a smaller hill next year.... bummer.
 

dblskifanatic

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This is not leaked it is already on snow,com - we just bought our Epic Military Veteran and Veteran Dependent passes. $447 each THAT is a great deal. Gives us everything the Full Epic Pass provide except partner resorts and we are OK with that!
 

cdskier

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This is not leaked it is already on snow,com

He copy and pasted from a post that was made on Facebook by someone yesterday... So at the time the Facebook post was made, it was leaked info. At the time the post here was made, it was no longer leaked info.
 

dblskifanatic

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I can only imagine what this will do for extra crowds next year when skier visits are restricted. I have skied at Stowe for 10 years and have never seen crowds like this year (weekdays look like weekends!). I never even tried to go on a Saturday! I will probably make the move to a smaller hill next year.... bummer.

Vail resorts do not plan on restricting skier visits - no reservation system, So get ready! Question how many people will now go Epic instead of Ikon or better yet how many will go with both? For about $1300 (Ikon bas + Epic Local and even less if Veteran) The list of resorts you can ski is absolutely nuts!

Killington, Pico, Stratton, Loon, Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Sugar Bush, Windham - Ikon
Stowe, Mount Snow, Okemo, Sunapee, Crotched, Wildcat, Attitash, Hunter - Epic

Head out West is it is dreamy!
 
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Edd

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Vail resorts do not plan on restricting skier visits - no reservation system, So get ready! Question how many people will now go Epic instead of Ikon or better yet how many will go with both? For about $1300 (Ikon bas + Epic Local and even less if Veteran) The list of resorts you can ski is absolutely nuts!

Killington, Pico, Stratton, Loon, Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Sugar Bush, Windham - Ikon
Stowe, Mount Snow, Okemo, Sunapee, Crotched, Wildcat, Attitash, Hunter - Epic

Head out West is it is dreamy!
I might be one of those people who go both. Got some thinking to do.
 

Blurski

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Vail resorts do not plan on restricting skier visits - no reservation system, So get ready! Question how many people will now go Epic instead of Ikon or better yet how many will go with both? For about $1300 (Ikon bas + Epic Local and even less if Veteran) The list of resorts you can ski is absolutely nuts!

Killington, Pico, Stratton, Loon, Sunday River, Sugarloaf, Sugar Bush, Windham - Ikon
Stowe, Mount Snow, Okemo, Sunapee, Crotched, Wildcat, Attitash, Hunter - Epic

Head out West is it is dreamy!
I bought both well worth it based on being able to spend a fair amount of time out west next season and having so many NE resorts you can ski at.
I usually also by a mid week at MRG, we will wait on that one. It will be a bummer if restrictions are in effect again, this season on IKON is was hard to book last minute storm chasing trips to IKON resorts as they limited the tickets available to IKON pass holders from other mountains. Every time I looked only a few days in advance the best I could find was 1 or 2 days that I can get a ticket.
 

catskillman

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I can only imagine what this will do for extra crowds next year when skier visits are restricted. I have skied at Stowe for 10 years and have never seen crowds like this year (weekdays look like weekends!). I never even tried to go on a Saturday! I will probably make the move to a smaller hill next year.... bummer.
Agreed. Mid week days were like the old weekend days at Hunter this season. I am at Hunter today and the thought amongst everyone is they had to reduce the cost in order to keep the passholders who are disgusted from this year. They should have given them the discount, and charged anyone new a higher rate maybe?

BTW - Hunter is in touch shape. the 11th will be ugly, if they make it, based on the weather. The only plus is there is no one here!
 

dblskifanatic

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I like the logic discussed in the Vail Sucks Thread! Lift capacity was significantly reduced this year in some cases probably lower that 50% but Vail reported only a 11% drop in skier visits. get that back and have lifts operating at 100% capacity or close even will go a long way towards decreasing lift lines.
 

kingslug

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I'll just have to see how Stowe is next year..not going to judge it by this year..getting Ikon also as I want o ski SB more..its only 45 minutes from Stowe so I can hit either.
 

ThatGuy

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Decrease the length of the line only to have more people congesting the trails. Always a give and take.
 

PAabe

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Also it is possible more people might be skiing more out west instead of east coast next year, and it is possible people might be more busy with other commitments next year post covid (less work from home and more other activities going on). So at least there are a few things going for it
 

cdskier

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I like the logic discussed in the Vail Sucks Thread! Lift capacity was significantly reduced this year in some cases probably lower that 50% but Vail reported only a 11% drop in skier visits. get that back and have lifts operating at 100% capacity or close even will go a long way towards decreasing lift lines.

Are you really seeing lift capacities reduced by as much as 50% in reality where you're skiing? I'm not. My estimate on weekends at Sugarbush is about a 25-33% reduction. There's more than enough chairs going up with 3-4 people in order to offset the chairs going up with 1 or 2. You'd need to average 2 or less people per chair on a Quad to see a 50% reduction. I'm not seeing that. And then take a lift like Castlerock which is a double. To reduce capacity there by 50% (more than 50% reduction is impossible on a double), every single chair would need only 1 person on it. Not at all reality.

I can see areas with Gondolas having more of an impact on capacity. But areas with predominantly quads or smaller shouldn't be seeing a 50% reduction in capacity.

Decrease the length of the line only to have more people congesting the trails. Always a give and take.
Yea...a few less people on the trails has been one nice "feature" of this season.
 

PAabe

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Places with mostly quads and six packs taking most of the hit in capacity. For example, lines crazy at Blue mtn. with their main quad and six pack often sending up 1 person per chair (why) while Elk is busier than ever (not limiting tickets) but liftlines have been fine because they have mostly doubles.

Particularly big hit for the gondola/tram places. At Gore a lot of gondolas were going up with 1 person in them but most quad chairs had at least 2.
 
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