Eh... I'm in the camp that doesn't like carpets and believe that they increase the ride time in reality with mis-loads... even at an "advanced cliental" mountain like SB. I think a double running at 500fpm would've been ideal from a speed standpoint and would've been fine for capacity. In my experience with SB.... peanuts compared to yours... I've never waited more than 15 chairs for Valley House and frequently just ski on, and it just seems overkill for that chair to be a quad from a capacity standpoint. The unload is just horrifically tight for that many people on a chair and as Win said they don't even run it as fast as they can to limit the collateral damage up top. A double would've been able to go at the same speed if not a bit faster and would have less mis-loads.
But hey, it's there, and it will be there for the next 50ish years. I doubt either of us will see it's replacement so it's moot!
I think the "misload" issue is greatly exaggerated (at least as far as actually being an issue to the point that it causes a stop of the lift). Honestly I see Super Bravo stop more for misloads on weekends than VH. I'm a bit confused about the unload being "horrifically tight". There's more room at the top of VH than there is at the top of HG. Win said it was a bit steep for some guests, which I'd say is a different issue than "tight" (personally I'd argue they should be skiing GH, not VH if they have issues with handling the VH unload...unless GH is on hold for some reason). I never even really thought about it being steep prior to your comment making me go back and re-read what Win posted earlier in this thread. GH and SB are pretty flat unloads...so I guess comparatively speaking it is "steep", but really nothing at all that should be a factor in thinking the lift would have been better as a double vs quad.
From a capacity standpoint...I think there's several points to be made:
1) One of the intentions of installing a quad was to increase utilization of the VH pod as it was often felt it was underutilized (not necessarily sure I agree, although that could just be my selfishness in not wanting more people skiing Moonshine, Twist, Eden, etc...but that was a thought that went into the decision for a quad from what I remember).
2) The VH lift is your primary backup to service Gadd peak (and allow HG access) if SB is down for some reason. This reason alone justifies it being a quad vs double.
3) Even if there are short waits of only a handful of chairs or it is ski on, a good % of chairs on the line are usually still carrying people on a busy weekend. If the lift was a double with less capacity, you'd certainly have a line. Personally when SB has a line and VH doesn't, I often jump on VH to lap that pod a bit. Sure SB gets you access to a lot more terrain*, but I prefer skiing over standing in line.
4) *The upcoming re-grading and addition of snow-making to Reverse Traverse could be a rather significant shift in people's thinking with riding VH. That change will make it substantially easier to access HG, and the bottom 2/3 of all the trails off Super Bravo from VH. VH being a quad should really work well together with this plan. If a double had been installed instead, we'd all be complaining how it was a poor decision (and maybe they wouldn't even think the RT change would be worth it in that case if VH was still only a double).
Honestly with the lone exception of Castlerock where you intentionally want to limit capacity, it wouldn't make sense to have kept any other lift at a resort like SB a double during replacement projects. There's just so many benefits of a quad over a double beyond even just capacity.
