Tahoe '23/'24 - Reserve Now For Best Pricing!!!

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Originally Posted by Ottime

^^^^^^I was thinking the same thing.

Still, many moons ago, I had a cheap (sub $400) unrestricted KW pass and could buy day tickets at Alpine for $39. I sprinkled a few days in at Homewood, Diamond Peak, Rose, Sugar Bowl and Sierra at Tahoe (they used to have a 2 for 1 mid week when you filled your tank at Shell). Oh, and BV. Day skiing was very reasonable. The Alpine Pass was expensive and Squaw even more so. N* and SAT had a reasonable dual pass if I recall. It was not just for the rich, except maybe Squaw, and then N* once the Ritz went in. KW was cheap and Heave had a reasonable blackout pass ($400??). But I liked being able to ski for a day, here or there, without spending a lot of money. Those days are pretty much done. Does REI even sell day vouchers anymore?



You give me hope for skiing this weekend. We were (are?) planning on heading up, but even Vailwood will be wet. Was hoping for sunny and warm, not wet and warm.

They have been 100% open for some time, which is more about how KW actually has snow than Vail in general, but at least the big corp overlord was not pinching pennies. It has been busy this year with the over all lack of coverage in the basin and with the epic* access. But there is still only so much parking and a lot of open terrain.

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Back in the early '90s a mid-week lift ticket at Iron Mountain was $15. If you stopped at Safeway in Jackson you could get a 2 for 1 coupon in the local news paper. My buddies and I would schedule our community college classes so that we had Fridays off. We would ski all day for $7.50!! Of course it was Iron Mountain so there was only three chairs and they were slow AF so you would be lucky to get 10 runs in. Ahhh, the good old days....

Iron Mountain was the very first place I ever skied. I had no idea how to ski.

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Originally Posted by El Chupacabra

Iron Mountain was the very first place I ever skied. I had no idea how to ski.

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For me it was Incline (now Diamond Peak). My aunt and uncle took me there (my parents don't ski). I think i was around six years old.

Last couple days have been real good, most satisfying tours of the season for me.

From yesterday
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Sitting at the pass right now debating on getting out of the car or not, couple wet inches on the ground currently

In the 70’s living in Denver I could get a bus ride and a lift ticket from the local mall, $7 for someplace like A-Basin, $12 for Vail. Steamboat was the most expensive cause of the long bus ride $14.

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Originally Posted by mcski

And 100 doller spring passes at AM

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Or $20 day tickets with a pass from a resort. Even if had already closed.

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Originally Posted by TahoeBC

Last couple days have been real good, most satisfying tours of the season for me.

From yesterday
Attachment 484215

Attachment 484216

Sitting at the pass right now debating on getting out of the car or not, couple wet inches on the ground currently

In the 70’s living in Denver I could get a bus ride and a lift ticket from the local mall, $7 for someplace like A-Basin, $12 for Vail. Steamboat was the most expensive cause of the long bus ride $14.

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Thanks for the stoke! Looks pretty damn good out there all things considered.

Lurker here procastinating from work. In defense of Snowmachine I believe his point wasn't that he'd pay more for the Ikon pass, but rather pay more for a season pass at one resort and not have free acess to other places..IE the old system. That is if day passes at other resorts weren't astronomical. JH is 400..a day. I'm guessing Palisades is right there with it. I fondly recall flying into SLC and heading to a local ski shop to buy 20% off day passes for Snowbird. And then beginning the desparate search for beer in 90's Salt Lake City.

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Originally Posted by Derelicht

JH is 400..a day.

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What currency exactly is it 400 a day in?


Sent from my CPH2417 using Tapatalk

You'd rather not know. I should add the 394 rate was over the holidays. At any rate it was intimidating.

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Originally Posted by crankplank

What currency exactly is it 400 a day in?

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Rack rate is $225. That's US $

For the resorts the obvious advantage is guaranteed income regardless of conditions. A secondary advantage is that once they take your money they have no incentive, at least in the short term, to please the customers. They can run fewer lifts even when there are huge lines and there's nothing anyone can do about it, especially with the consolidtation of passes. Until someone decides to sue them, if they can prove that conditions and crowds mean they could have and should have opened more terrain and lifts.

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Originally Posted by old goat

For the resorts the obvious advantage is guaranteed income regardless of conditions. A secondary advantage is that once they take your money they have no incentive, at least in the short term, to please the customers. They can run fewer lifts even when there are huge lines and there's nothing anyone can do about it, especially with the consolidtation of passes. Until someone decides to sue them, if they can prove that conditions and crowds mean they could have and should have opened more terrain and lifts.

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^^^This. I would add that resorts now have a bigger incentive to overstate the conditions so people show up and buy their $20 pizza and beers. That has become more of their revenue stream and if people don’t show up and purchase their absurdly overpriced services the balance sheets don’t look good and it makes harder to pay for opening more terrain. See old goats comment about them already taking your money and also now with consolidation your choices are limited.

Also it should be said that inflation works both ways, you can either raise the price or offer less for the same price. Thus far it seems that the majority of inflation in season passes has fallen into the latter category.

Take it or leave it but I was told my local mountain got a guaranteed $ 65.00 per day back from IKON for each day an IKON pass was used.
For a destination resort, that kind of additional income is hard to pass up and they DGAF if the season pass holders don't like it as long as the people on ski vacations keep showing up.

The snow reporters have been shamelessly lying about conditions and 24 hr snow totals. I e-mailed them and the GM and called bullshit. They have gotten a lot more realistic for now.

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Originally Posted by old goat

For the resorts the obvious advantage is guaranteed income regardless of conditions. A secondary advantage is that once they take your money they have no incentive, at least in the short term, to please the customers. They can run fewer lifts even when there are huge lines and there's nothing anyone can do about it, especially with the consolidtation of passes. Until someone decides to sue them, if they can prove that conditions and crowds mean they could have and should have opened more terrain and lifts.

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yeah bingo. The cheap season pass model is essentially a cost-saving model. There is no incentive to make the product more attractive to potential customers and every incentive to cut costs every day and do the worst things they can get away with.

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Originally Posted by dmcd

Anybody ski today?

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I skied Heavenly today. Weather was either fair, freezing water/rime ice on goggles, soaked Jacket and gloves, depending on location. The best snow on the hill was creamy, smooth corn on World Cup. If that chair had been running, we would have lapped that shit. Actually, pretty fun snow all over the hill. Managed to avoid the sharks, still defensive skiing. Stayed out of Mott and Killebrew.

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Originally Posted by old goat

You'd pay double for your pass so that fewer people would buy passes. Meanwhile I guarantee you that there are plenty of people willing to pay triple or more so that you won't buy a pass.

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Squaw passes were double the price they are now before they were acquired. I'm just saying that if the mega resorts want the same revenue stream, but want to deliver a quality product that the price has to go up. This is how it works with everything unless you can streamline and limit overhead. In this case, the pure quantity of people overshadows ability to serve a quality product. How do you up the capacity or lower the volume?

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Originally Posted by heckacali

Snowmachine, you know you contradicted yourself from the beginning of your post to the end of the post?

You start off by agreeing that rich people thinking making things more expensive to solve crowding is a shitty solution,
then at the end you state you would pay double for your pass to reduce crowds...

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You're absolutely right. I did. I should have specified that I think the answer is in zoning, STR regulation and public transit for reducing traffic, not toll roads. Reduce the number of people in town, control where they are staying in proximity to the ski hills and incentivize public transit.

I am willing to pay more for a quality experience.

I think both are important. Allow people a decent experience getting to the mountain. Create a better experience on the mountain. Like my last post said, you have to either expand mountain capacity (parking and on-hill) or reduce the number of folks.

What other solution am I missing?

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Originally Posted by heckacali

Not fact checking.

This is how humans converse.
You state an idea, others agree, or disagree and make supporting or dissenting statements.

An inconsistency of logic or position is open to be called out. And I believe I did it in a friendly manner, no name calling or absurd character assassination.

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:D

No way, dude. We're supposed to be total assholes on the internet!!

Hopefully I clarified my position, not that it matters. It's just my opinion. I miss the olden days. $19 student tickets at N* were super.

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Originally Posted by emcee

did somebody say integrated-development car-free ski resort??

https://kcet.brightspotcdn.com/dims4...-rendering.jpg

https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-...-national-park

as much as i love wilderness and environmental preservation, when was the last time you went to mineral king? 8 grumpy inholding landowners and 4 backcountry trailhead permits a day is dumb use compared to a shining example of pedestrian-centric european mountain development we could have had...

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That wasn't Disney's only proposal. There was a very similar plan for the Independence Lake Valley.

https://www.disneyavenue.com/2016/07...ly-talked.html

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Originally Posted by old goat

For the resorts the obvious advantage is guaranteed income regardless of conditions. A secondary advantage is that once they take your money they have no incentive, at least in the short term, to please the customers. They can run fewer lifts even when there are huge lines and there's nothing anyone can do about it, especially with the consolidtation of passes. Until someone decides to sue them, if they can prove that conditions and crowds mean they could have and should have opened more terrain and lifts.

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Yes, my wife runs finance for a software company that sells subscription based software. This is the basic model the mega resorts are following. Revenue up front, regardless of conditions. They can control almost all of the factors with the exception of mega years like last year where ops costs are huge. Years like this year they win big.

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Originally Posted by SnowMachine

That wasn't Disney's only proposal. There was a very similar plan for the Independence Lake Valley.

https://www.disneyavenue.com/2016/07...ly-talked.html

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I know it's the controversial position to take. But I think north Lake Tahoe could use another ski resort. Perhaps something north of 80 to keep people off 89. The last permitted new ski resort in California was Northstar.

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Originally Posted by SnowMachine

Yes, my wife runs finance for a software company that sells subscription based software. This is the basic model the mega resorts are following. Revenue up front, regardless of conditions. They can control almost all of the factors with the exception of mega years like last year where ops costs are huge. Years like this year they win big.

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Last year I suspect was a good year for them too--lots of closed days. Lots of days with upper mountain closed.

It's funny how so many of the solutions are ways to keep other people out of my way and off the mountain.
There are 10 million people within a four hour drive of Palisades.* A lot of those people have the money to ski. That's crowded, even if nobody visits from out of state. Nothing short of nuclear war or a Depression will change that.

*That's on the hypothetical dry pavement with light traffic. My personal record is 5 hours from Olympic to Donner Lake. But I was lucky, a lot of folks spent the night on 89.

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Originally Posted by SnowMachine

Yes, my wife runs finance for a software company that sells subscription based software. This is the basic model the mega resorts are following. Revenue up front, regardless of conditions. They can control almost all of the factors with the exception of mega years like last year where ops costs are huge. Years like this year they win big.

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Subscription models are a problem with society. Good for stock prices though. Instead of pay as you go. You pay for the right to go. Then pay again while using. I have no streaming subscriptions and I use only old stand alone software for my work. I'll never pay adobe a monthly subscription just to view a PDF.
If lift tickets were $100 I probably wouldn't buy a season pass. In the future you'll probably need a subscription or reservation to use the beaches at tahoe. Stop the subscription madness. As stated above this model does nothing to make products or services better, especially skiing.

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Originally Posted by Truckee Joe

I know it's the controversial position to take. But I think north Lake Tahoe could use another ski resort. Perhaps something north of 80 to keep people off 89. The last permitted new ski resort in California was Northstar.

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Carpenter Valley/Red Mountain - I say roll out the Red Carpet.
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Want to see the future?

I bought my first brand new motorcycle last year and paid an additional $600 to unlock electronic performance features that were already on the bike as it was delivered. The dealer just hooked it to the computer and pushed the "this sucker paid" button.
At least I am not paying a recurring charge monthly or annually to 'use' them, but I'm sure that's coming.

See how that can play out at a ski resort?
You want to ski KT? That's an additional usage fee, and maybe based on an AI surge pricing model based on crowds, demand and weather....

Rest assured there are data analysts proposing data driven models to extricate every possible dime from customers for the equity firms. They are just biding their time for rollouts so they don't shock the system too much.
Paid reserved parking is a low hanging fruit as it is a pain point for all customers to easily agree to.

/Pessimist rant against private equity firms