Originally Posted by
gone2alpine
Time to chime in on this thread. I watched all of the Phantom hoopla for year 1 to see what real people were saying and results seemed encouraging. This year Phantom 2.0 came out and I decided that it was time to give it a go. It's been a bit of an ordeal. Initially, I planned on the DIY route and ordered some from a popular online retailer. Being December, I was finding it hard to find enough bluebird days to get the correct amount of UV light to cure the two parts.
So in looking for alternatives to natural UV cures, I discovered the video that introduced that cure stations were now available in some local shops. So off I went to the one local shop that has the station, and laid down another $99 for the product and $50 for application. The results were less than encouraging for sure. The shop had warned that it might take a few runs for excess product to wear off and that may cause initially slow skis. Five days and approximately 100K vertical feet later, things were going really bad. It was a real drag in just about all conditions and my ski buddies had resorted to calling me Pokey. I contacted DPS and product manager Nick did his best to discover a solution. His first suggestion was to ask the shop to do a base grind to "refresh" the surface. He arranged for that to happen.
A few days later, I retrieved my skis from the Phantom capable shop and found that they did not have a base grinder, so they simply reapplied the Phantom treatment. That shop also blamed everyone in the world except for themselves for the trouble. Took the skis out for a day and it was a "no go", literally. Gave it about five runs, one being a straight-line in Alpine Bowl at a speed of 16 mph. This time I took the skis to my regular shop and had a base grind done (but no additional wax applied).
The first few days, everything seemed pretty normal and life was good. But by about day 7 and another 100K feet, life is a drag again and my name reverted from Snake Oil to Pokey. This morning I went ahead and hot waxed again. Thank god.
I wonder how much of the Phantom success stories is just people wanting to believe that "this has to be working" because I just spent $99 on it. There's a sucker born every minute, and this time I was one of that crowd.
FWIW, I have the original kit for DIY application (sans box) available if a Tahoe mag wants to claim it, free, at Alpine Meadows. The weather conditions for DIY application look primo for the next two weeks.