This place is trash. Takes 45 mins to 1 hour to get your rentals. I get the fact it’s Covid but the other resorts like Sierra and Heavenly got there customer boards and equipment in less than 10 mins even during Covid. Who ever is managing this place need to be demoted or should copy heavenlys and sierras model
C. D. (via Yelp)
Traveling to Northstar? Be prepared to wait hours in line for a shuttle.
Hours long wait at free parking to get on the bus that takes you to the mountain. Paid parking is mostly empty! Vail Resorts is ruining our ski day at Northstar!
Alex Colodner (via Twitter)
Crowds. Overpriced garbage food.
The reservation system is a massive farce. The crowds on the Sunday of MLK weekend were bigger than anything I had experienced in prior seasons. They also weren’t blowing any snow and temperatures were hitting the mid 50’s, making the riding conditions very dangerous. I was there in December and they were blowing snow while it was snowing. Dope logic, Northstar. The bar is closed for bogus reasons, and if you’re hungry get ready to pay $14 for a cup of chili and $7 for the most garbage cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my life.
Separate incident: My partner lost her phone on Saturday. Someone found it on the run and turned it in to the lodge. i could see it’s location. When she went inside to ask, the woman at the hand sanitizer station insisted that it wasn’t there and that it would be turned in to lost and found. She just said this based on the question. Do the employees get a morning lost & found report? Do they get a detailed briefing of all items in the lodge before their shift? I’m curious how she was so sure that it wasn’t there. I was waiting outside and after hearing this went in and showed her that the phone was in the building. That was enough to make her put in 5% of effort and go upstairs and ask. Sure enough it was there. Maybe try like a little bit, in the future.
“2-3 hours spent in lines”
I’ll start off by saying today was a miserable experience, and has inspired me to drop my Epic season pass and move to Icon instead. I figured, as a pass holder and with a reservation, Northstar would follow Covid guidelines and limit the amount of people allowed on the mountain. The line on a Sunday for the Gondola wrapped around the entire village, no social distancing, and more were coming at 9:30 when I finally gave up and left without seeing a ski slope. Had I stayed it would have been well over an hour wait just to get on to the mountain, not including the additional lines for ski lifts. Northstar has always had a traffic/people management problem pre pandemic, it seems worse now than ever. My season pass is rendered worthless if I cannot get near a ski slope without 2-3 hours spent in lines. AVOID!!! Other ski resorts in the area that don’t treat you like cattle and create super-spreader events. It’s a shame because I used to really like the runs at NStar.
Jeff C. (via Yelp)
“Beware – Vail Resorts is NOT a leadership company”
Senior leadership (Kirsten, Michael, Rob) are extreme micromanagers who do not tolerate dissent or welcome alternative points of view from those below them. They demand that they make all meaningful decisions for the company – and the only people allowed in the room with them are their VPs. As a Director in the corporate office, this was incredible disempowering because it meant that I had no real ownership. Vail describes itself as “the greatest leadership company on earth” – this is laughable. There is no empowerment to make decisions, no respect for work life balance (at one point the CMO literally asked if we could stop taking Thanksgiving as a company holiday, regularly demands people work on Christmas / New Years, etc.), and effectively zero career progression opportunities at the Director level and above unless your only focus is on pleasing those above you.
I really, really wanted to like this company. I loved my co-workers. It broke my heart to see it so thoroughly ruined by senior leadership. There is a reason there is SUPER high turnover (which has been the case for years, by the way). When I joined, the average tenure of my coworkers was less than a year. When I left several years later, the average tenure of my coworkers was less than a year. People come here thinking it will be great (who doesn’t want to work in the ski industry?), realize the reality of the situation, and then leave. I ignored the Glassdoor reviews when I took my job there and I regret doing so.
Advice to Management:
Honestly, with Kirsten about to become the new CEO, I would not recommend anyone work at Vail’s corporate office. She surrounds herself with people who reinforce her own viewpoints and systematically weeds out anyone who disagrees with her. She talks in public about the importance of sustainability and then literally hours later, in private meetings, creates crushing workloads for the teams under her – I have seen this happen on many, many occasions. These are hallmarks of terrible leadership and a toxic workplace culture.
Director in Broomfield, CO (via Glassdoor)
A skier who went missing Christmas Day at Northstar California Resort is now presumed dead.
Angelotta, a 43-year-old Truckee man who worked at a ski shop at the resort, told friends he was going to go skiing at Northstar before meeting them for Christmas dinner, the Sheriff’s Office said in previous statements. When he did not show up for the dinner, friends reported him missing. Angelotta’s ski pass was scanned around 11:30 a.m. on Christmas at Northstar’s Comstock lift, and his vehicle was found parked in the ski resort’s parking lot, but rescue crews were unable to locate him.
There was “no realistic possibility Rory has survived the severe winter conditions,” the Placer County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Thursday.
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article256964167.html
From the editor: we feel sorry for the victim’s family.
“Vail Resorts has contributed more to the destruction of our ski communities and our sport than they have created value”
As Stevens Pass skiers, snowboarders and customers who purchased Vail Resorts “Epic Pass,” we are disgusted with the mismanagement of the ski area, the failure to treat employees well, or pay them a livable wage, and the failure to deliver the product we all paid for and bought with hard-earned money during a pandemic.
Jeremy Rubingh (via TownLift)
Vail: “Unethical company making astronomical profits with slave labor”
You’re slave labor. They give you a free ski pass, but you can go work for Walmart or McDonald and make significantly more and pay for your own ski pass within a month earning the higher wages. They treat you like slave labor and you have zero room for growth, even if you save every penny you can’t afford to have a family or buy real estate. I worked for private clubs and saw Rob Katz a good amount and it was always hard to stomach after working there 5 years and earning 3 promotions that I was still only making $16/hour while him and his Wall Street buddy’s were making millions exploiting the land and their employees. I also had to get multiple surgeries after the ski season and racked up considerable medical debt. Left the company in 2020 and got a job immediately which paid me more in the first year than 7 at VR. I just went back for a wedding to find that my friends in upper management roles couldn’t even get a 5% raise when inflation is 6.3% and they’re paying new employees $16-$20/hr. That’s great for them, but the only reason VR is willing to do that is bc they won’t have workers otherwise with rising rent prices and a huge shortage of rentals due to landlords selling their properties to cash in. This company needs to have media attention like Walmart and Amazon for mistreatment of employees, but they pay millions a bear so that’s never heard of. I made a comment on a Forbes article bashing Walmart and Amazon and said they should take a look at VR and got called into my managers office the next day. They’re a shameful and greedy company that doesn’t care about you or the environment.
Advice to Management:
Hire executives from the ski resort, not Wall Street people like Rob Katz or the new CEO from Kraft Foods. Not like Kraft foods hasn’t been poisoning the country for decades lol. I’d also give this company and the CEO negative rating if I could. They’re ruining entire communities, ski towns and the environment.
Anonymous Employee (via Glassdoor)
Vail Resorts company reviews – Part-I
They get you with the salary, then come the 50+ hour weeks.
You get to work at the base of a terribly run company and mountain. Have fun busting you butt and not being able to enjoy your life.
Low pay, Terrible Communication, Never set up for success, No housing for employees
Advice to Management: Quit
Store Manager in Vail, CO (via Glassdoor)
Cons vastly outweigh the benefits.
Poor pay and benefits. Understaffed. Lack of HR department. Expensive/impossible to afford living near the mountains. Corporate bureaucracy at its finest… constant reorganizations and lack of basic support. No control or decision making power at the local level.
Content Specialist (via Glassdoor)
Poor Compensation
Poor compensation and we have to endure the complaints. Never work here. Terrible compensation for seasonal employees
Lift Operator in Beaver Creek, CO (via Glassdoor)
Grossly Irresponsible
Destroying the planet, ruining towns/communities, Putting lives in danger
Retail (via Glassdoor)
“Enjoy waiting in lines”
This is a great resort if you enjoy waiting in lines. 20 minutes waiting in a line of traffic going to the parking area, 30 minutes waiting for the parking shuttle, 1 1/2 hour waiting for rental skis I reserved ahead of time, 20 minutes waiting for ticket pickup, 20 minutes waiting for your first lift. Got here before 8 and wasn’t skiing until 11:30. Then it was 10 minute waits for the bathroom, 15 minute lift lines. It wasn’t even a particularly crowded weekend. Total waste of time. Go to literally any other Tahoe resort. I’ve been to 5 others this season, including during the true busy weeks around the holidays, and this was my only bad experience.
Jason R. (via Yelp)
With a limited amount of people allowed on the mountain they did a piss poor job on planning for the number of people they sold tickets to.
Jason J. (via Yelp)
Just to get tickets and you have to wait for a long line.
The line to get to the gondola is crazy long too.
They can’t handle the crowds. Skims lifts are over crowded.
Quan D. (via Yelp)
Photo credit: Quan D.
NorthStar California Sucks | VailEpicFail 