VAIL SUCKS

[Mum skier]

People confuse a nostalgia for vail's properties with hatred. Personally it took one year as an epic passholder for me to realize vail does not offer the premium experience my family is looking for.

We replaced crotched with pats, sunapee with ragged; attitash and wildcat with loon and sunday river. In all four cases the experience is significantly improved over what vail offers. This however does not preclude us from being upset that we are unable to raise our kids at the mountains we grew up skiing.

But that’s a lot of extra ski passes you have to buy. Do you really buy Pats, Ragged and a New England pass in one year?

 

[deadheadskier]

Full-time Vail people find Vail to be a good employer, offering internal opportunities for advancement, health insurance, dental insurance, 401k, etc.

I see an analogy with Comcast/Xfinity: many of their customers/past-customers hate them but, their employees like them because they are well-treated.

The significant exodus of long tenured employees at Wildcat and Attitash would disagree with you.

Lifetime Stowe resident friends of mine who worked at the mountain for decades would also disagree with you.

 

[KustyTheKlown]

'full-time' = accountants and legal staff in broomfield

 

[thebigo]

But that’s a lot of extra ski passes you have to buy. Do you really buy Pats, Ragged and a New England pass in one year?

Ragged and Boyne bronze pass. Ragged was $379, don't remember the boyne cost, maybe in the $575 range? Pats is 50% off with ragged pass, only go a few times a year for night skiing when the kids have early release.

Yes more expensive but you get what you pay for. Besides, pass cost is only a small percentage of the overall cost. Closing in on 30 days before Christmas, likely get close to 100 days this season. Works out to around $12 - $14/day if we add k spring. Spend far more than that on food/beverage every day, not to mention transportation/gear/training etc.

 

[Former Sunday Rivah Rat]

People confuse a nostalgia for vail's properties with hatred. Personally it took one year as an epic passholder for me to realize vail does not offer the premium experience my family is looking for.

We replaced crotched with pats, sunapee with ragged; attitash and wildcat with loon and sunday river. In all four cases the experience is significantly improved over what vail offers. This however does not preclude us from being upset that we are unable to raise our kids at the mountains we grew up skiing.

Agreed. I would love to ski the Cat again, but I refuse to give the Vail pricks one friggin penny!

 

[SLyardsale]

It might be nostalgia for you and I would like to point out there are 385 pages and 7670 posts on this thread. The majority of them are not about nostalgia.

disagree. vail so ruined the ski experience at these eastern resorts - otherwise there wouldn't be 386 pages on this - we'd like our mt's and better experiences back - but they aren't coming back. the crotched employees have banded together to accuse those of us speaking out against vail corporate of employee harassment against them. the moderator at snow journal shut down the vail sucks thread there only to have it immediately reposted with a new thread - now he is posting back here at alpine zone more often then over there because he can't even win in his own forum - i guess if i was a property owner at a vail resort and also an employee of the company at that resort i would try and boost the corp too - he has no other options. i have a fundamental problem with a moderator who is a vail employee, moderating a vail sucks thread on a folksy ski chat and i take anything he says over here with a huge grain of salt.

 

[raisingarizona]

Meh, F Vail.

 

[cdskier]

Full-time Vail people find Vail to be a good employer, offering internal opportunities for advancement, health insurance, dental insurance, 401k, etc.

You're giving Vail credit because they're doing things that they're essentially required to do for full-time employees (either by law in the case of health insurance or just to be competitive in the job market with things like dental and 401k)?

 

[eatskisleep]

Agreed. I would love to ski the Cat again, but I refuse to give the Vail pricks one friggin penny!

Same here. I don’t think so
Much it is that we hate vail employees or anything like that. We just want to have our mountains back to what they were before.

 

[FBGM]

Full-time Vail people find Vail to be a good employer, offering internal opportunities for advancement, health insurance, dental insurance, 401k, etc.

I see an analogy with Comcast/Xfinity: many of their customers/past-customers hate them but, their employees like them because they are well-treated.

Ha!

They are not good to work for. I was upper management and they sucked. Pay was less then competitors. Pressure put on you was a lot. You were also just a number to them and they would replace you with someone else at any chance. They don’t care about experience - they will find another person to fill the hole

 

[doublediamond]

I really suspect the Epic Pass Northeast Facebook group to be operated by corporate or at least run by an employee propping up the company off hours. Negative posts get deleted there all the time.

 

[deadheadskier]

Ha!

They are not good to work for. I was upper management and they sucked. Pay was less then competitors. Pressure put on you was a lot. You were also just a number to them and they would replace you with someone else at any chance. They don’t care about experience - they will find another person to fill the hole

Not true. Need to be an F&B manager first for half a year before being a GM!

Appears to be a strict requirement

 

[jimmywilson69]

Yeah not looking forward to the new guy at Roundtop who of course came from F&B at Heavenly but grew up in Central PA. He's made the comment to people who work there that " the last 2 years were Vail Light and moving forward its going to Vail". I don't know what the fuck that means, but its pretty pretentious. Plus the guy who was GM the past 2 years was promoted to Western PA to Run 7 Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel Mountain which is an obvious upward move. So obviously "vail" thought he was doing a good job.

Its like this guy read the Vail Douchebag's Guide to managing...

Even my wife said he was in F&B how does that make him qualified to run a ski resort of any size!

 

[eatskisleep]

I wish Vail would let me run Wildcat. At least I was a pass holder there for years. Place would be top notch with the right budget and a staff that works well with their management.

Also to note: it sounds like Crotched is run well and has a dedicated team. Maybe the Attitash/Wildcat crews should train with the Crotched team to see how they run things. @joshua segal have you skied Attitash/Wildcat since the Vail takeover? How did you think it compared to when it was Peaks running or even better, pre-Peak?

 

[thebigo]

I wish Vail would let me run Wildcat. At least I was a pass holder there for years. Place would be top notch with the right budget and a staff that works well with their management.

Also to note: it sounds like Crotched is run well and has a dedicated team. Maybe the Attitash/Wildcat crews should train with the Crotched team to see how they run things. @joshua segal have you skied Attitash/Wildcat since the Vail takeover? How did you think it compared to when it was Peaks running or even better, pre-Peak?

Crotched opened after Christmas last year.

 

[2Planker]

The significant exodus of long tenured employees at Wildcat and Attitash would disagree with you.

Lifetime Stowe resident friends of mine who worked at the mountain for decades would also disagree with you.

Right on , I can name 6 people with more than 30 years experience each, in Lift Ops, Lift Mech., Patrol, and other full time “on snow” positions who gave Vail a chance but walked away after the last 2 years.
I/we still ski there on Comps and a Chamber Pass but they get nothing more from us

 

[joshua segal]

I wish Vail would let me run Wildcat. At least I was a pass holder there for years. Place would be top notch with the right budget and a staff that works well with their management.

Also to note: it sounds like Crotched is run well and has a dedicated team. Maybe the Attitash/Wildcat crews should train with the Crotched team to see how they run things. @joshua segal have you skied Attitash/Wildcat since the Vail takeover? How did you think it compared to when it was Peaks running or even better, pre-Peak?

Where I live neither Wildcat nor Attitash make sense. The Vail areas to which I go regularly are Sunapee, Okemo and Mount Snow. All have been well-run (IMO), although Sunapee had very limited skiing early season. I do agree that the Crotched team is exceptional, and many are saying that the "Pre-Vail Crotched vibe is back.

 

[joshua segal]

Crotched opened after Christmas last year.

True. No snow and no personnel last year. It was a miracle that we did as well as we did! This year, we've got both!

 

[deadheadskier]

Right on , I can name 6 people with more than 30 years experience each, in Lift Ops, Lift Mech., Patrol, and other full time “on snow” positions who gave Vail a chance but walked away after the last 2 years.
I/we still ski there on Comps and a Chamber Pass but they get nothing more from us

I will likely buy some Epic Day passes in the future to ski Wildcat and Stowe again. Maybe next year. My favorite VT and NH mountains that Vail completely ruined. I love the terrain at both too much to never ski them again out of spite.

It just sucks because I was literally 24 hours away from signing a seasonal rental for 2020-21 and begin living out my dreams of raising my kids skiing at Wildcat. Then Covid stopped the world, so I decided to pause. Stuck with passes and we all saw what happened that winter of 20-21.

Conservatively, Vail lost $100k in revenue over the next 15 years by pissing me off enough to leave. I bet Bigo would have invested similar in his family at Cat. That's the impact of losing just 2 diehard skiing families of 4. $200k

 

[KustyTheKlown]

Sweet lift detach at breck with dude in chair falling 13 feet