Crystal Mountain Becomes Alterra

[Buster Highmen]

Wifey just showed me the "open letter" from Crustal on Facefuck. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Can you cut and paste that here?

[Stikki]

An Open Message to Our Crystal Guests

Today was a day of extremes. The snow and conditions were like mid-winter. The entire mountain was open and skiing and riding superbly. We all had to remind ourselves it is still November and we have been open and enjoying the mountain we all love for more than a week with many still to come.

At the same time, for many of you who were here today, you’ll know there were challenges in the guest experience. The ride up was steady but slow. Parking took time. The experience during the morning rush at the ticket windows was less than comfortable. We’ve heard from many of you the mountain was too crowded – from the standpoint of being a safe and comfortable experience in this challenging pandemic environment. We also heard about frustrations with our newly introduced reservations system.

First let us say we listen carefully to each piece of feedback – we had hundreds of conversations with guests today, most of them in person and also via our contact center, social media and email.

We believe there’s a host of reasons why today was as it turned out. The overnight snow, snowing on the ride up, the newness of our reservations platform, not being able to offer indoor dining to name a few. But also the fact that we have such good snow, other PNW resorts not yet open, our guests staying close to home for the Thanksgiving holiday, all of it conspired to make for a challenging day. And underscoring it all, our collective responsibility to wear masks, keep social distances in the base area, the mazes and on the mountain, and generally to responsibly keep each other safe so that we can all continue to enjoy this one respite from the challenging world we’re now living through.

For our part, Crystal is limiting the capacity of visitors to the mountain to be able to keep our experience safe and enjoyable. We’ve been open for 8 days and we are still learning what that capacity is. Today we believe we reached and exceeded it. To be candid, over the past 10 years or so we’ve never had more than a fraction of the visitors we saw today this early in November. If we could turn back the clock today, we would have set today’s capacity lower. And we've done that for tomorrow, Friday and through the weekend. We’ve learned, we’ve listened, and we want to apologize for today’s challenging experience. All we can say is that our intent was and will continue to be to enable as many visitors to the mountain as we can safely enjoyably accommodate while operating safely for our guests, our staff and our community. Today we got it wrong, tomorrow we’ll get it right, and each day that passes we’ll continue to dial it in.

All we would ask of our guests is to bear with us as we navigate this new landscape. We will get it right. We ask you to support us in doing what you individually can do to enhance the experience: please mask up, please be cognizant of your fellow guests and give them space, be a little patient of each other and help us all beat these enormous challenges.

With that we look forward to spending Thanksgiving with you, our Crystal family tomorrow.

[Stikki]

Then why did you sell so many passes? And continue to sell passes? Take some damn ownership of the problem!

[Buster Highmen]

Alterra sold us Crystal season passes, uses the reservation system to limit season pass use, then sells day tickets.

Then sends a letter like that.

[oftpiste]

someone from there needs to be reading this thread..... while there's a lot whining (my own included) there's a lot of legit concern and suggestions from peeps who've been doing this a long time.

[Buster Highmen]

It's pretty simple.

Customer satisfaction is tied to setting expectations.
Alterra set passholders expectations by promising to prioritize pass holders:
...
This effort starts with controlling resort visitation levels to avoid overcrowding. We are prioritizing access for season pass holders and will tightly regulate the number of daily lift tickets that will be available by advance purchase only.
...
Rusty Gregory
Chief Executive Officer
Alterra Mountain Company



Given our COVID-19 dynamic, I wouldn't have any problem with the reservation system if the above bolded principle was followed.

I can get over the failure to uphold the initial claim to not have reservations for passholders.

I also understand that there's unaccounted events in the course of a day, like lifts failure or other infrastructure anomalies.

If they continue to sell day tickets while blocking seasons pass holders, I think we have a very legitimate gripe.

[Dromond]

Based on this response, I’m wondering if there is some tension based on the Ikon transition. Perhaps the mountain itself gets much lower profit per individual season pass, and thus faces more requirements to sell day tickets even when many passes were already sold. (I also assume it’s Alterra that makes decisions on how many passes to sell.) Pile that on to the legitimately lowered other revenue sources that they cite and you can see why they would end up doing it in this way that devalues the passes already sold.



Crystal Mountain: there’s still plenty of capacity on the mountain midweek/non-holiday. We are looking for opportunity during this restrictive way of operating. We are a business trying to navigate our way through an unprecedented times. After the early closure last March, limited capacity over the summer and now this winter, elimination of walk-up tickets, no indoor dining etc we are doing what we can to protect the livelihood of our staff who rely on their jobs at Crystal to support their families.

[L82thegate]

Whatever the number of reserved passholders + ticket sales was yesterday, it was double what a reasonable, social distancing, COVID spread prevention number would / should look like. That's real and whatever they were thinking regarding numbers is pure nonsense. This is completely in their control. I'm not thinking it was a learning experience for them. Enough days under their belts this year to know they conducted an over-sell of gigantic proportion. The "why" question has some nasty under-currents but I'll leave that alone for now.

[Buster Highmen]

Based on this response, I’m wondering if there is some tension based on the Ikon transition. Perhaps the mountain itself gets much lower profit per individual season pass, and thus faces more requirements to sell day tickets even when many passes were already sold. (I also assume it’s Alterra that makes decisions on how many passes to sell.) Pile that on to the legitimately lowered other revenue sources that they cite and you can see why they would end up doing it in this way that devalues the passes already sold.



Crystal Mountain: there’s still plenty of capacity on the mountain midweek/non-holiday. We are looking for opportunity during this restrictive way of operating. We are a business trying to navigate our way through an unprecedented times. After the early closure last March, limited capacity over the summer and now this winter, elimination of walk-up tickets, no indoor dining etc we are doing what we can to protect the livelihood of our staff who rely on their jobs at Crystal to support their families.

This is the old "poor chickens in the henhouse" argument.

The chickens don't decide how much to charge for seasons passes or how many to sell.

The chickens don't set expectations or policies. Alterra does. Using the plight of the chickens to justify or obscure their mismanagement doesn't fix the problem.

[Toadman]

We need another ski area.

Or double the size of current ski areas. Ski train up to Sunrise on Mt Rainier?

[Toadman]

Then why did you sell so many passes? And continue to sell passes? Take some damn ownership of the problem!

'cause Capitalism?

[neutrinoone]

We need another ski area.

Forest Service: You'll get nothing and like it!

[2Harsh]

Been reading the over the 200+ comments in response to the open letter on Crystal's FB page. I see that people have figured out that the reservation system and the on hill pass scanners are not currently integrated - so passes can be used at the lift without a reservation?! WTF! Crystal noted that they are auditing and sending warnings to the rule breakers. But how many people will trying and game the system on a big pow day if the only consequences is a no, no email?

[Buster Highmen]

Been reading the over the 200+ comments in response to the open letter on Crystal's FB page. I see that people have figured out that the reservation system and the on hill pass scanners are not currently integrated - so passes can be used at the lift without a reservation?! WTF! Crystal noted that they are auditing and sending warnings to the rule breakers. But how many people will trying and game the system on a big pow day if the only consequences is a no, no email?

The threat is to disbar the abusers.
I'd be fine with that as long as Alterra adhered to their promise of prioritizing pass holders.

[counterfeitfake]

I guess I used my pass without a reservation on Tuesday? I thought I had one, but realized later I somehow accidentally hadn't finished the process for a group of reservations. No nasty gram yet. I never would have thought you could do that. So they'll let you do something you're not supposed to, and can only sanction you afterwards. What poor planning and implementation.

[Buster Highmen]

After I uncorked my fhine whine to Mr. DeBerry, I just received:

We’ve stopped all day ticket sales on peak reservation days. We do have a few days (specifically this weekend) where tickets went on sale long before we knew that Thanksgiving (an otherwise minimally attended weekend) was going to blow up as much as it did. As soon as we saw ticket sales and reservations rising, we cut off the sales of tickets, but there were indeed too many out there as yesterday showed us. We certainly expected more than most Thanksgiving weekends, but it’s difficult to describe how much more demand we’ve experienced when compared to anytime in our history. I can assure you that, nine days into a season full of new challenges and surprises, we’re dialing it in and finding our balance.

Thanks for your patience as we do so. Our peak days are dedicated to passholders first from this point forward and I think you’ll notice the difference.

[Norseman]

Frank "Dial it in" DeBerry

[XavierD]

how hard can it be to link the scanners to the reservation system. Seems pretty easy to me. They can figure out if I'm using my basic pass on blackout dates or beyond my quota of 5, but not if I don't have a reservation?

[PNWbrit]

how hard can it be to link the scanners to the reservation system. Seems pretty easy to me. They can figure out if I'm using my basic pass on blackout dates or beyond my quota of 5, but not if I don't have a reservation?

It's not difficult to do at all.

[Buster Highmen]

The scanners may be attached to one database and the reservations on another. That would make the ability to detect a reservation less than synchronous.

[powder_to_the_people]

After I uncorked my fhine whine to Mr. DeBerry, I just received:

We’ve stopped all day ticket sales on peak reservation days. We do have a few days (specifically this weekend) where tickets went on sale long before we knew that Thanksgiving (an otherwise minimally attended weekend) was going to blow up as much as it did. As soon as we saw ticket sales and reservations rising, we cut off the sales of tickets, but there were indeed too many out there as yesterday showed us. We certainly expected more than most Thanksgiving weekends, but it’s difficult to describe how much more demand we’ve experienced when compared to anytime in our history. I can assure you that, nine days into a season full of new challenges and surprises, we’re dialing it in and finding our balance.

Thanks for your patience as we do so. Our peak days are dedicated to passholders first from this point forward and I think you’ll notice the difference.

Perfect. So that means that by the end of the weekend, when pictures of the base area being overcrowded for 5 days straight are all over the internet, Inslee will have reasonable ground to shut the resort.

[The AD]

I wonder what John Kircher thinks of all this...

[PNWbrit]

The scanners may be attached to one database and the reservations on another. That would make the ability to detect a reservation less than synchronous.

I built just such a system for office access for locations around the country that require an online reservation, limit on numbers, manager's consent and submission of wellness/covid19 precautions certification.

It also automatically generates an email requesting feedback/concerns on each particular visit

But we are talking about Alterra who let us not forget accidentally published the page announcing purchase of Crystal before the deal was done.

[ptavv]

how hard can it be to link the scanners to the reservation system. Seems pretty easy to me. They can figure out if I'm using my basic pass on blackout dates or beyond my quota of 5, but not if I don't have a reservation?

This may be rather technically challenging. It's easy to have pre-set dates for types of passes that a scanner will recognize (assuming it knows the correct date), it doesn't even need internet connectivity to do it, just a small-ish database of pass types and restrictions.

A live-updating, ever changing central database for the scanner to check against (not to mention that the Crystal passes and the Ikon passes use two separate databases that don't talk to one another) requires high bandwidth connectivity (to make the query fast) and would be pretty challenging to computer up (can't even just dump the reservation file at 8am or so to avoid its dynamic nature, because on low-use days people can make a reservation from the parking lot).

I'm totally unsurprised that they just do a post-hoc audit and they send nasty grams. Particularly with how many challenges there have been with people thinking they have a reservation when they don't and driving up there (i.e. lots of people are showing up without reservations but in good faith).

The stuff about people coming home from a day of using their reservation, not being able to book a new one, canceling the day they used, then getting a nasty gram? That's 100% on Alterra / Crystal because that is literally one "if" statement in the email generator code that would take less than 5 minutes to write if you had access to the code base.

I built just such a system for office access for locations around the country that require an online reservation, limit on numbers, manager's consent and submission of wellness/covid19 precautions certification.

It also automatically generates an email requesting feedback/concerns on each particular visit

But we are talking about Alterra who let us not forget accidentally published the page announcing purchase of Crystal before the deal was done.

Don't forget that Crystal's in-house reservation system is so non-existant that they're using Eventbrite. I can't imagine there's an API to connect an Eventbrite database to their pass scanners, much less a dynamic real time updating one.

[ptavv]

Crystal was decidedly less crowded today, for what it's worth. My kiddo only made it until 11:45 before she was done for the day, but driving down F-lot was totally empty.

The whole base situation with the firepits being reserved for restaurant patrons and there being nowhere to, oh I don't know, warm up a 5 year old, besides your vehicle, which can't be parked particularly close makes it really hard to get kids stoked on skiing, which sucks.

It's weird that any restaurant in Seattle or Tacoma with sidewalk space or a porch owns more portable outdoor heaters than Crystal Mountain seems to.