Vail Sucks 2021/20??

obienick

While I’m sure most if not all postings at Vail are copy-paste jobs, no one is complaining about that. It’s the fact they can’t even bother to proofread their postings to indicate the correct mountain or fix fundamental phrasing issues and typos. It does not instill confidence in potential employees or customers. If they can’t write a job advert correctly, what other corners are they cutting?

The big article on the Stevens Pass fiasco alleges that maintenance standards of lifts are lacking. Which we see elsewhere with the breakdowns at Attitash, Wildcat’s Snowcat (a beginner lift none the less where skiers are perhaps riding their very first chairlift), the Grand Summit Express terminal crash that made JerryOfTheDay, or the joke of last Wednesday at Crotched followed by the double going down either Thursday or Friday after the lift maintenance blitz that they had to close the mountain for.

rickbolger

Speaking of copy & paste, from that article in the Everett WA Herald. It's the most damning thing I've read or heard yet, straight from an on-mountain employee who actually did ask management:

“Our higher-ups tell us nothing,” said the lift operator. “All we’re told is, ‘We’re working on it.’ But we’re supposed to be the ones that are working on it. And none of us are working on it. So we know that’s a lie.”

bousquet19

rickbolger;c-52653 wroteSpeaking of copy & paste, from that article in the Everett WA Herald. It's the most damning thing I've read or heard yet, straight from an on-mountain employee who actually did :s ask management:

“Our higher-ups tell us nothing,” said the lift operator. “All we’re told is, ‘We’re working on it.’ But we’re supposed to be the ones that are working on it. And none of us are working on it. So we know that’s a lie.”

:s :s :s

hazlntskier

A couple of things I have noticed with Vail taking over different New England areas.

Vail is used to managing resorts where most of the customers fly and are there for multiple days (Breck, Keystone Park City being the exception for Denver/Salt Lake folks). The biggest New England resorts do draw from other East coast cities (DC, Philly etc.) but the majority of customers are driving for the weekend or the day. Therefore they will watch the weather/conditions very carefully before heading out. Since Vail has reduced the communications from the local area, it makes it very difficult to evaluate the conditions etc.
In my opinion they need to manage the different type of resorts by the market and size where the decisions are made by the market and resort size, not one size fits all.
Pure Destination - Rockies, Whitsler etc. These resorts should focus on the whole package, lodging, extra activities etc. I tend to think this is what they are trying to force onto all the resorts.
Weekend Destinations - Vermont (Stowe, Okemo, Mt. Snow). These resorts need to focus on managing the weekend traffic etc. and conditions. While lodging is important, the primary issue is getting terrain ready for the weekend. Without consistent conditions and choice of terrain, people will walk with there feet to other areas.
Day trip destinations - Mt. Sunapee, Attitash, Wildcat, Hunter and some of the PA resorts etc. These resorts are the ones where communication is key since a lot of people will not drive if the conditions/weather are not good.
"Urban" - Crotched, Afton Alps, Other Peak resorts etc. These areas need to focus on school groups, racing leagues, new skiers (low rental/lesson packages like Pat's Peak POP Saturday). These resorts also need to refresh the trails often. Usually with shorter runs it is possible for them to resurface most of the mountain two days. The key here is get new people to try the sport and then they will spend more $$ and the bigger resorts.

I don't know if this is true, but I believe I heard that the Mueller's (Triple Peaks) would offer passes to family members of employees and Vail only provides the employee a pass. This can be a big negative for parents with kids from the local community and even weekend warriors. Parents will be willing to do ski school or other similar jobs if the whole family can ski for the season.

I do believe they need to open up the content on the web sites for the individual areas to manage the messages, not just a small Twitter feed. I understand the ticketing etc. needs to be centralized. If the local management can't be trusted to convey the correct message they need to correct that, not edit all the content from a central location. The biggest rule for websites is keeping the content from being stale. This requires constant work.

Peter

hazlntskier;c-52683 wrote I don't know if this is true, but I believe I heard that the Mueller's (Triple Peaks) would offer passes to family members of employees and Vail only provides the employee a pass. This can be a big negative for parents with kids from the local community and even weekend warriors. Parents will be willing to do ski school or other similar jobs if the whole family can ski for the season.

Dependents of full time employees get free season passes. Dependents of part time employees can buy a pass for $40.

ciscokid

bousquet19

hazlntskier;c-52683 wroteA couple of things I have noticed with Vail taking over different New England areas.

Vail is used to managing resorts where most of the customers fly and are there for multiple days (Breck, Keystone Park City being the exception for ...

(snip)

... I do believe they need to open up the content on the web sites for the individual areas to manage the messages, not just a small Twitter feed. I understand the ticketing etc. needs to be centralized. If the local management can't be trusted to convey the correct message they need to correct that, not edit all the content from a central location. The biggest rule for websites is keeping the content from being stale. This requires constant work.

Hazintskier, this analysis touches on many of the observations and complaints about the shortcomings and outright failures of Vail's management approaches. Well said.

I wonder if Vail management has the capacity to recognize these faults and the chutzpah to change.

Woody

timberleaf

I wonder if Vail management has the capacity to recognize these faults and the chutzpah to change.

Having spent the last 10+ years working for a Fortune 40 corporation, I can only say:

Thanks for the laugh... I needed that! :)

Ski them all

Having spent 70 dollars recently at a fortune 19 company I find this whole thread embarrassing how about a trip reports ; blah blah blah

shpride

Ski them all;c-52703 wroteHaving spent 70 dollars recently at a fortune 19 company I find this whole thread embarrassing how about a trip reports ; blah blah blah

I skied Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Attitash. Had a fun enough time. They didn’t groom for Sunday but it may have been because of the rain and then freeze up expected later in the day? Lift lines were never bad. Saturday and Sunday it rained so no lines isn’t a surprise.

joshua_segal

Ski them all;c-52703 wroteHaving spent 70 dollars recently at a fortune 19 company I find this whole thread embarrassing how about a trip reports ; blah blah blah

There are regular trip reports on the following Vail owned eastern properties including Mount Snow, Okemo and Crotched.

SJ is a fairly small group and apparently we don't have any Attitash, Wildcat, Sunapee or Stowe regulars to write their trip reports.

The Vail Sucks thread, as tedede pointed out, is a lot of anger and negativity. As a moderator, I've been reluctant to close it. For the most part, the participants are presenting well-documented experiences that point to negative interactions with regard to season passes, horrific crowding, poor customer relations and slow on the uptake for the 2021-2 season.

As long as the thread doesn't devolve into personal insults, one of the other moderators may shut it down, but I resist doing so.

I do suggest that those who do not like this thread, just stop reading it.

riverc0il

The only issue I have noticed is the piling on and belaboring of points. The nit picking of minor issues is a bit weird, too. Vail is certainly topical given the current move towards multi-mountain passes, so I think the thread seems fine overall.

I just saw this article about this morning about NH Vail issues:
https://www.concordmonitor.com/crotched-mountain-ski-new-hampshire-vail-44370835

It will be interesting to see how Vail does for 2022-2023 season passes. This year's passes are already in the books, they cleaned up on pass sales. So, they don't have strong incentives to create the best product this season.

If a day ticket buyer doesn't see a lot of open terrain, they may go somewhere else or stay home. But a season pass holder has already spent their money regardless of value. But that could cost Vail next season.

lotsoskiing

riverc0il;c-52713 wroteThe only issue I have noticed is the piling on and belaboring of points. The nit picking of minor issues is a bit weird, too. Vail is certainly topical given the current move towards multi-mountain passes, so I think the thread seems fine overall.

I just saw this article about this morning about NH Vail issues:
https://www.concordmonitor.com/crotched-mountain-ski-new-hampshire-vail-44370835

It will be interesting to see how Vail does for 2022-2023 season passes. This year's passes are already in the books, they cleaned up on pass sales. So, they don't have strong incentives to create the best product this season.

If a day ticket buyer doesn't see a lot of open terrain, they may go somewhere else or stay home. But a season pass holder has already spent their money regardless of value. But that could cost Vail next season.

Agreed. It will also be interesting to see if they decide that they need to off some areas. It seems they are overextended.

I also hear so many comparisons to ASC, but I have to say that Les saved some areas (SR, Sugarbush) and, as Newpylong says, they "blew the snot" out of their areas' snowmaking capacity (though put ion questionable pipe in some areas (Sugarbush). They did overextend themselves and had some silliness (remember The Slug at Mt Ellen?), but on balance they were good for those areas. It will be interesting what the future holds for Vail, who seem headed on the same track though with different issues and mistakes.

DrJeff

riverc0il;c-52713 wroteThe only issue I have noticed is the piling on and belaboring of points. The nit picking of minor issues is a bit weird, too. Vail is certainly topical given the current move towards multi-mountain passes, so I think the thread seems fine overall.

I just saw this article about this morning about NH Vail issues:
https://www.concordmonitor.com/crotched-mountain-ski-new-hampshire-vail-44370835

It will be interesting to see how Vail does for 2022-2023 season passes. This year's passes are already in the books, they cleaned up on pass sales. So, they don't have strong incentives to create the best product this season.

If a day ticket buyer doesn't see a lot of open terrain, they may go somewhere else or stay home. But a season pass holder has already spent their money regardless of value. But that could cost Vail next season.

My hunch is as long as they keep the Epic Pass price low (in the 4 to 5 days of walk up prime season tickets break even point at most of their resorts now) that the number of few times a year folks they pick up based on the price point of the Epic pass will offset the number of folks who out of frustration/disgust with them don't re-up next season.

Given their data driven approach to most everything, I am sure that they will have modeling that suggests their retention rate for next season as well as new Epic passholders within a few weeks of when they go on sale.

Also, at some point one would presume that they'll start moving the prices back up a bit to where the break even point is a day or 2 more than it currently is as an attempt to balance revenue and "reasonable" volume. The age old reality/challenge for a ski area though is the vast majority of days a season they're operating at a customer volume that is far less of what the infrastucture can handle reasonably, and then there's a minority number of days when the resort is operating around/at/above what the reasonable capacity is, and how can they try and push more folks to those majority of off days and take a few away from the minority of busy days?

Will also be interesting to see if the folks out in CO realize that many of their smaller resorts that they own now, with some adjustments in how they (Vail) is seemingly running them now, can be a profit source and not a sore spot, even if the core customer base of those resorts isn't regularly, or even ever, getting their Epic passes scanned during the season at a Western "destination" resort. That could be an area where the new CEO, Kirstin Lynch, can make a legacy move like Rob Katz did with the EPIC pass products. Only time will tell I guess

conrad

Obviously this is not representative of everyone, but here's the trends of epic pass sales to these three New England groups I would predict for 2022. Totally subject to pricing, though.

Passes to skiers dedicated to a home mountain owned by Vail = Steady except down for a few of the mountains doing exceptionally poorly.

Passes to weekend warriors = Slight to moderate drop, especially in NH region

Passes to casual skiers who ski 5-10 days a year with maybe a trip out west = increase

And I think Vail will be okay with drops in the second category because they don't want their areas to be overcrowded.

ILOVE2SKI

DrJeff;c-52716 wrote
riverc0il;c-52713 wroteThe only issue I have noticed is the piling on and belaboring of points. The nit picking of minor issues is a bit weird, too. Vail is certainly topical given the current move towards multi-mountain passes, so I think the thread seems fine overall.

I just saw this article about this morning about NH Vail issues:
https://www.concordmonitor.com/crotched-mountain-ski-new-hampshire-vail-44370835

It will be interesting to see how Vail does for 2022-2023 season passes. This year's passes are already in the books, they cleaned up on pass sales. So, they don't have strong incentives to create the best product this season.

If a day ticket buyer doesn't see a lot of open terrain, they may go somewhere else or stay home. But a season pass holder has already spent their money regardless of value. But that could cost Vail next season.
My hunch is as long as they keep the Epic Pass price low (in the 4 to 5 days of walk up prime season tickets break even point at most of their resorts now) that the number of few times a year folks they pick up based on the price point of the Epic pass will offset the number of folks who out of frustration/disgust with them don't re-up next season.

Given their data driven approach to most everything, I am sure that they will have modeling that suggests their retention rate for next season as well as new Epic passholders within a few weeks of when they go on sale.

Also, at some point one would presume that they'll start moving the prices back up a bit to where the break even point is a day or 2 more than it currently is as an attempt to balance revenue and "reasonable" volume. The age old reality/challenge for a ski area though is the vast majority of days a season they're operating at a customer volume that is far less of what the infrastucture can handle reasonably, and then there's a minority number of days when the resort is operating around/at/above what the reasonable capacity is, and how can they try and push more folks to those majority of off days and take a few away from the minority of busy days?

Will also be interesting to see if the folks out in CO realize that many of their smaller resorts that they own now, with some adjustments in how they (Vail) is seemingly running them now, can be a profit source and not a sore spot, even if the core customer base of those resorts isn't regularly, or even ever, getting their Epic passes scanned during the season at a Western "destination" resort. That could be an area where the new CEO, Kirstin Lynch, can make a legacy move like Rob Katz did with the EPIC pass products. Only time will tell I guess

Don’t forget, they keep selling more passes for an additional reason: they are buying more mountains.

tedede

Vail has never sold off a mountain.

rickbolger

tedede;c-52722 wroteVail has never sold off a mountain.

There's always hope! Think positive thoughts! Gosh this is such a negative thread ;)

conrad

tedede;c-52722 wroteVail has never sold off a mountain.

...willingly. They were forced to divest Araphoe Basin at one point.

obienick

I skied Sunapee a couple weeks back. Took the traditional pic from the top of Skyway ledges. Never felt motivated to write a full report due to a blah time. It was all around an unorganized mess.

Here goes…

6 parking attendants for a weekday, none of which were really trying. You must boot up in your car, or boot up in the lodge and walk back to you car with your bag which is a joke. They have since “improved” the experience by offering $10 back check.

They had scanners around the lodge activating passes and checking if your pass worked. Do you activate every time? No explanation. One customer furious theirs didn’t work as their waiver was signed but Vail said nope it wasn’t and there was no solution. They had stacks of faceless passes for what?

One lift scanner only doing one line; one scanner doing 95% of the work; one failing miserably to make 4s and pick which line the next person came from. [HINT: scan everyone from one side of the queue, then all lines go, then restart].

And let’s not even get into Vail’s obsession about scanning everyone every time (up in your grill in a PANDEMIC!) even through the only way you can get to the lift by skiing is if you previously rode the lift. You can simply scan everyone coming from the lodge direction … but that’s what you get when you pay below market rates and reward your underpaid employees with bounties for catching theft of service, and being convinced gates are bad because you MIGHT have to move them to groom and you MIGHT have an issue with the gate once or twice.

Stoping the lift to take recycling from the summit mid-AM despite summit lodge closed. Stopping the lift to clear snow from the load ramp. Of my 13 runs 3 times the lift was stopped as I was loading for them to clear the load line in the snow (I think it’s every time chair 1 comes to bottom).

Icy trails, bad grooming, death cookies despite 5” of snow 48 hours prior.

Only 2.5 ways down. No beginner terrain. An Instructor clearly over-terrained a private lesson.

Not an Experience of a Lifetime™.

I didn’t want to post originally as it wasn’t a good time. I didn’t want to be criticized for being overly picky. If it was Day 1 it’d be a fine day, but not after a couple weeks of ops and right ahead of one of the 3 big ski periods in NE. But every little stupid $#!7 adds up to make the day not fun or not want to go back.

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