Got off to my first day of the season at Mountain Creek (first time visiting). I arrived at the parking lot a little after 10 and it took an hour and 15-30 minutes to get my ticket (more on that later). Once I was finally on the slopes around noon, I roamed around the whole place, enjoying the adventure while simultaneously documenting the chairlifts for Remontees-Mecaniques.
The whole place was very chaotic, as I kind of expected at an 'urban' ski area. And I loved it. Tons of beginners out on advanced runs. Jerry's everywhere. A snowboarder came barreling by right next to where I was putting my skis on and wiped out right in front of the base lodge. A kid goes off a big jump with not enough speed to get over the flat part, gets maybe 3 feet of air, and lands squarely on his back. People skiing around the chair in the detachable terminals to catch up to their friends. Another guy caught an edge, lost his balance, went barreling forward across the loading area, and practically did a face plant. Then he somehow managed to to thrust himself backwards onto the chair as it crossed the loading line. I couldn't believe he made that comeback. There was a fair amount of carnage loading and unloading the chairlifts, but the lifties rarely stopped the lifts, slowing if necessary until the situation resolved itself.
Every lift had 1-2 runs open and even with the upcoming rain, they were in total expansion mode, making snow on a bunch of other trails. It was the second day of the season for the Sojourn double so it was great being able to ski everything without getting in a car. I find it interesting that they didn't make Sojourn a two way lift. It would allow them to connect both sections of the ski area without having to make so much snow on the connector trail. But the long connector run was interesting in itself.
The run of the day was off of Bear Peak which was also the least crowded area. South Peak was the busiest lift, especially because the lines weren't being managed for most of the day. The Cabriolet was also busy, but not as bad. One thing that was different than usual is that it was the younger people who were the most chatty and initiating the conversations on the chairlift rides up.
If there's one thing they could use, it would be a second beginner chairlift. The lines there were quite long for just a boring wide open run that people from the upper mountain could take as a shortcut. It just didn't seem like a great experience at all for beginners.
I called it a day around 4:30 given the long upcoming drive back home. All and all, I really enjoy the skiing.
Sunset from Bear Peak.
All right, now a bit of a rant. Getting the ticket was by far the worst ticketing experience I've ever had. I used a WNEP ski punch card I had purchased a month ago that gets a day at 9 ski areas. I expected them to just punch a hole in the Mountain Creek logo and give me a ticket. I looked on their website the night before just in case they required reservations, but all they said was that tickets must be purchased in advance. So I figured I must be good since I wasn't purchasing a ticket.
When I arrived, the ticket people had never seen the card before, but coincidentally, there was another guy also trying to use the card. They weren't able to get us a ticket, but they said we needed to send an email to the info@mountaincreek email asking to use the tickets. This wasn't possible for me being a flip phone user, but no problem, the other guy just added my name to the email message. They also called a manager from the Vernon base area who drove over to help, but all she could do was text the email people to hurry up. So even though there were five people standing around doing tickets, all they could do was scan barcodes and hand out tickets. All the people who walked in looking for tickets were turned away until they could purchase the tickets online. They assured me that there was no 'person I could call to help' and that there was no 'real ticket window' anymore because 'everything was online' (the ticket people were all standing in the hall). One person hinted a tad annoyance that we hadn't emailed the day before, but this was my first time visiting Mountain Creek so I'm not sure how I could have known that. So we waited and waited and an hour went by and we were still standing around waiting. I didn't say a word of criticism or imply the slightest annoyance because it would have been pointless to take it out on them. But as someone who enjoys skiing as a way to get away from it all, I just couldn't believe the ridiculousness of having to login to email to get a ticket when all it would take would be for someone to punch a hole with a hole puncher and hand me a ticket. And I also couldn't believe that the people with the power to help were hiding behind an email account rather than actually helping customers directly.
Finally, the email people replied. It became clear that part of the reason for the complexity was so that the ski area leadership could get to know the customer better at the inconvenience of the customer. An account was required to set up and enough personal information was collected to make an identity theft artist shout with glee. And the icing on the cake for an identity theft artist, a picture was required. I can understand this for a season pass, but this was just a day ticket. Normally I fudge a little bit of information here and there for unreasonable requests, but given that it was in person and being done by the other guy, it all went in. All in all, it was a horrible experience and I won't being going back there anytime soon.
Not to get off topic, but I really do think I know why there is this narrative that customers are being bad to employees the past few years. It has nothing to do with the customers or the employees, but has everything to do with worse experiences. Manufactured complexities and invasive data collection being what I experienced, but also gotchas and bait and switch schemes.
The funny thing is, after the whole ordeal, they forgot to punch a hole in the punch card.
