Tag: gondola

“Not worth the lift ticket prices”

Rude personnel, extremely strict rules… inconsistent feedback from people working here regarding the resort rules.

Not worth the lift ticket prices and f**k vail resorts altogether

This place is an absolute nightmare! Do not come here unless you want to wait in line for a shuttle for over an hour minimum and wait to park your car for an hour as well. Just parking your car will make you wanna leave it’s so chaotic. Have fun looking at the backside when you arrive, there’s fresh powder everywhere, however they won’t open it and force feed everyone into lines once you hit the front side. It’s honestly the worst resort I’ve ever been to. Just a giant trap to take your money away from you. Oh and when it’s time to leave be prepared to wait in another hour line to get back to your car and then another hour to leave. Avoid at all costs

2 hours to download from village to parking lot. 100+ people line built up from 3:30 to 4 waiting on first bus. Supply trucks were dangerously pulling in and out through the queue of people. Cutting left and right with no direction. Total mess.

No lights in the pitch black parking lot at 6 pm to top it off. This resort needs a total overhaul on customer service and parking functionality. Frankly unacceptable from an upper level management perspective. They have the $$ to do it right.

Don’t come here unless you stay on site. 4x Epic Pass holder. Heavenly and Kirkwood are visitor friendly.

After paying for very EXPENSIVE ticket during Christmas, we were informed by staff that the mountain is closed for the day due to safety reason and extreme weather, after only less than 2 hours of total time spent at the resort. When asking about partial refund or credit, nothing was offered and staff told us that “this situation happens frequently at the resort”.

Source: Google reviews

“Vail resorts & specifically Northstar are horrible”

Vail resorts & specifically Northstar are horrible! We came up to ski for the day. We are family of 4 & have a 14 year old disabled son & a 17 year old snowboarder. The plan was that I would ski with the 17 year old & my husband would hang back with our disabled son. When we arrived to the resort my special needs son would not let me out of his site. My husband & I decided to switch places. He was going to ski with our older son & I was going to hang back. So as my husband was getting on the gondola they confiscated the past because his picture did not match. We had no idea that the passes were non-transferable. We figured we had two skiers and two passes. It is written in the smallest possible letters on the back of the card which why would you even think to look there? When we explained our situation to the resort they were not only rude but had zero compassion for our situation. We were treated awfully!!! I will stick with the small non corporate ski resorts where they tend to treat people with respect & don’t belittle them, especially during a difficult situation.

Carmen Petti via Onthesnow.com

From the team: Yep, the whole Vail’s idea with “epic pass” is to sell as many passes as possible and cancel/revoke/suspend/etc as many passes as possible as well. The Vail & Northstar gestapo is making sure that stupid rule is enforced so their CEO gets her $6M+ bonus.

Vail Resorts Stamping Out on Those Leaving Their Equipment to Reserve Place in Line at Heavenly Mountain, CA

The reader who shared the picture says that “…people are placing their ski or snowboard equipment up in the front of the lift line in the morning, then go hang out in their warm cars until about ten minutes before loading the lift.”

Source: https://snowbrains.com

“Another scary Vail resorts accident”

..just witnessed the chair directly in front of us fall off the haul rope during a wind hold on the peak 8 superconnect at Breckenridge’s Peak 8 SuperConnect. The chair was close to the top terminal and fell about 20 feet. ski patrol was already there and the guy riding the chair is ok.

brettmgoldberg1 via Twitter

The lift involved was built by Leitner-Poma in 2002 and connects Peaks 8 and 9 with three stations. There are normally 190 chairs on the line.

..

This is the second carrier to fall from a detachable lift in North America this season. Earlier this month, an empty gondola fell from Mont-Sainte-Anne’s gondola, an incident blamed on human error after a grip attach fault. Last season, an occupied gondola cabin fell from the Sunday River Chondola in high winds. Prior to that, a chair detachment at Camelback, Pennsylvania injured three people in March 2021.

Liftblo

“We need a skier’s Bill of Rights!”

We went up to Northstar for 4 days and could only ski for 1 day. 2 Of the 4 was simple conditions and being shut down for good reason (rain and unexpected amounts of snow). However, on the 4th day: New Years Day, the day AFTER 36 inches of fresh powder had been dumped on the mountain, we arrived early (lifts were to open at 9:am). We parked, we arrived at the Gondola, only to be informed that the Express Lift is Closed and would likely not open and then we were instructed to get on the gondola line, which was so long that it weaved down and around and back up to where we just were.

We have had the same problem with Northstar before: they are under staffed and this morning, the excuse was “our people can’t get here”. We need a skier’s Bill of Rights! They charge big money for blackout day tickets so that you can expect to get on the mountain during peak days. However, and once again, we felt like the customer doesn’t matter and the Vale group doesn’t take their responsibility seriously to get people on the mountain! That’s the business they are in!

I sat out two days waiting for this day and fought off the family who wanted to to go home rather than sit around saying “these will be the best conditions ever”.  So why doesn’t the lifts open on the best day of skiing? I talked to a manager and said this: I said “You do realize that thousands of people have spent hundreds of dollars per person per day to enjoy skiing here today. It is Northstar’s business to provide safe and timely access to this beautiful day of perfect ski conditions. Do you realize that that’s the business you are in? The manager said – Do you know why we aren’t open? I said, because of lack of staff which happens here virtually all the time- he replied no, we have plenty of people, they just can’t get here. I said, with the money you are charging and all the costs for people to get here, you should have places for people to STAY HERE AND OPEN UP. He said- wait for it – ” We don’t have the resources to do that.” I said “I am done. We waited, got here, and now we are going to wait for two hours to wait for the gondola line to start which will be 2 hours minimum (that’s what they told us!) We
Are out of here. This resort sucks. Our friends arrived in Palisades and jumped on the slopes. What a waste of time and money.

Sean B. via Yelp

“Vail can’t hire competent managers to run the resorts”

Vail can’t hire competent managers to run the resorts and don’t care enough about front line employees. Profits over people all day everyday.

Joe Zimmerman via Facebook

Vail has to be one of the worst run companies I’ve ever seen. They pay their employees far less than competitors, and then blame anyone but themselves when they don’t have enough workers to operate the mountains that all of us paid thousands of dollars for passes on. They don’t care, they already have everyone’s money. I know Stevens Pass in Washington, at some point only 1 of the chairlifts was being operated by the lifts department, the rest were being run by other departments like rentals and ski school, simply because they couldn’t find enough suckers to work for their pitiful wages. I’ve heard from instructor friends that they went from 6 people per instructor, to an unlimited number of people per instructor, and my friend had 17 kids in her class. I can walk from my condo to the gondola in Vail, and next year I plan on driving to Copper Mountain and getting an Ikon pass instead. Vail Mountain is great, but the company that runs it can’t go bankrupt soon enough. Maybe then someone else will step in and actually run things the way they used to be.

Tommy Newnes via Facebook

I’m trying to find a way to make a official post to bring attention to what Vail Resorts is doing. OBVIOUSLY the WORST lines, services in many years. SO, since Vail is going to keep taking everyone’s money and NOT HAVE ENOUGH employees there is a solution. Our Government has a program which allows immigrants to come into the United States of America. It is a Visa called H2-A which allows U.S. Employers to bring in as many as they want. The H2-A visa is based on mainly ONE FACT. That is that there are NOT ENOUGH citizens of the United States to do the SEASONAL WORK which QUALIFIES the Employer as well as the immigrants. This Visa program I mainly designed for farmers and landscape companies during the season. What do you think?? I personally think that I myself would rather stay in a WARMER CLIMATE. If you like what I said please post it out there. And please check out the Government program H2-A Visa. It is VERY CLEAR. GOOD LUCK. and by the way SHAME ON VAIL ASSOCIATES for trying to be the WALMARTS of the SKI INDUSTRY. They are ruining it for EVERYONE

Peter Wolff via Facebook.com

Worst ski experience ever. If you like waiting in long lines for lifts and dining come on down. 30 minute lift lines and they continue to sell ski passes at the base. Lots of snow but 30% of mountain open making congestion all the worse. After buying 5 epic passes per year for 10+ years I am done. Ikon or mountain collective here we come.

Leonard Feiner via Facebook.com

5 things to know before you go to Northstar ski resort

  • Low elevation results in warmer and icier conditions, so even though they groom a lot, there are often patches of ice that catch you.  It can be really bad, which is why we gave it a relatively low rating of 3 after this happened to us multiple times.
  • Limited vertical
  • Northstar is the most popular Tahoe resort for hordes of Bay Area weekend skiers, so crowds are always an issue when conditions are good.
  • The parking lot situation is bad because the close-in lots fill up fast and then you have to park in the lots out by highway 267 and take a fairly long bus ride into the village.
  • Even if you get the closer-in parking, it’s a long walk through the village until you get to the gondola, which you still have to take before getting to the real skiing terrain.  It’s a long process.

Source: skinorthamerica100.com

“Vale Ski Resorts is putting their customers at risk of Omicron”

Vale Ski Resorts is putting their customers, their season pass holders at risk for Omicron at Heavenly Valley South Lake Tahoe!!! By insisting on grouping multiple parties in the small Timberlodge gondolas. Worst there’s no reason for doing this nonsense; especially on weekdays. Many of these strangers aren’t wearing masks! I’ve been a season pass holder here for as long as the resort’s existed but if they are going to intentionally put my family at risk for Omicron by crowding strangers in these small gondolas then I’ll be looking closer at other resorts and end a near 20 year relationship as season pass holder

via Yahoo Finance board

“What a massive waste of time”

It’s 12:20pm and we’ve been in so many lines that we haven’t been on a single run yet. What a massive waste of time.

Oh, and their lift tickets are more expensive than Squaw’s. Why?

Quit peddling waffles and focus your investments on building new lifts and logistical infrastructure.

This place just isn’t what it used to be in the 90s

Kevin H. (via Yelp)