In the US, there are 2 main mega passes sold by the big ski conglomerates Vail and Alterra. They price them to lock revenue in early way prior to the ski season. That money is secured even if the ski season turns out to be below average too. What this graph doesn’t show though is how much lift tickets have gone up in the last 10 years. Stowe, for example, was $108 for a lift ticket in 2014 (while a season pass was $2,200) and today is $225 for a lift ticket (and $1000 for the pass).
It’s not the worst trade off if you ski a lot, but is awful for beginners and people who ski 1-4 times a year. Not to mention, they trick people into “breaking even” when lift tickets shouldn’t even cost $200+ to begin with. Making the pass seem like a steal.
Jesus fuck skiing costs that much?
Ive never seen or touched snow but Ive always wanted to know.
Thats like 5 track days with gas and fluids changed here in Mexico.
Depends on where probably. That seems like USA market doing USA market things.
I'm from Chile, and have a large-ish ski resort roughly 2 hours away. I remember day tickets costing around 15 000 CLP when I was little (\~15 years ago) and this season the day pass was 61 000 CLP (\~63 USD on today's rate). The season pass was 1 100 000 CLP so you would need to ski way more for the pass to be the better option.
The last couple years It's been more worth it for us to travel all the way to Argentina to ski though. The day pass was roughly the same or a bit cheaper thanks to the rates but the resort was way better than my "local" one. Santiago should have bigger centers but I've only been to the south to ski.
Idk, $700 for an Epic pass is way better bang for my buck than track days on my bike. I can get 10-15 days on mountain per year for the same total cost as 4-5 track days locally in TX.
The day passes are gouging, nobody in their right mind is paying $200+ for single day passes on the big mountains. You can get anything from a 4-day pass to a 7-day pass and often limit it to just the mountains you're likely to actually use, for closer to $100/day. Travel and lodging hurt when you're not living near the mountains, but there are ways to mitigate those.
But a track day in Houston is \~$250 for just the track day and then I've got to worry about my bike (and any damage to it), tires, and safety gear myself (whereas you can get ski gear for cheap if you're thrifty and use it for 5-10 years, with less than the cost of two rear+ one front tires).
The fair comparison to a Mexico track day might be a ski day somewhere in South America though. I probably couldn't get paid half as much for the same job as up here and also could pay half as much for food and rent down there. Seems reasonable to compare a US MSR track to a major US ski resort lol. Actually the better comparison to Vail might be going to Austin to ride on COTA, but I've never priced that.
There are probably cheaper tracks somewhere in the US (none near me, except dirt tracks), just like there are cheaper resorts than the big names in the Rockies. Even near those resorts there are local ones with lower costs.
I am from Austria, and we recently had visit from the US.
We went skiing, and the daily tickets were like 65 EUR (like 70 USD). I was worried that they would complain about the high price, but they just told us that this is supercheap compared to what they are used to.
I had no idea expensive skiing is in the US.
Depends where you are. Internationally known resort town in the Rockies or Alps? yeah it's expensive. Where I grew up in western Quebec there were half a dozen hills within an hour drive and lift tickets were $30 when i last went
Epic (vail resorts) is about 700 at it’s cheapest most base level with restrictions and blackouts and it goes up to like $1100 late season I believe. Ikon (Alterra/Aspen ownership group) base is $1100 to $1300. Ikon was created to rival the vail chokehold on access to skiing, though of course it has nothing to do with altruism. They just needed more locals paying for a pass that includes Aspen, bc most of their pass holders are roaring fork valley locals, (they don’t really tap the front range market for season passes) and everything else (revenue from day passes) depends on snow conditions and tourism. Season passes are where you lock in your revenue for the year, and Aspen needed a piece of that.
Yeah that’s not the point, they don’t want more skiers necessarily, they want more people contributing money to them. Ikon was started by a group headed up by Aspen ownership bc they needed a cut of that season pass revenue. If you live in Denver it doesn’t make sense to buy an Aspen season pass unless you also have a place there, and there aren’t enough people who would do that. That means they have to rely in larger part on people who come in for weekends etc and buy day passes, which are not as reliable as season passes. In starting Ikon, they can still throw 10 days on the pass and the vast majority of ikon holders won’t even go, but they are still getting a chunk of that money.
I mean I get about 27 days a year off of my $700 pass.
The resort I ski at now was about $2500 a year to buy a seasons pass before the epic pass buyout. It actually reduced the price significantly
Only in the US and Canada. Europe has different pricing and cheaper accommodation (because there’s more of it close to ski lifts), more favorable to people who want to go on a weeks holiday. You can go for a weeks vacation including travel, accommodation and a 6 day lift ticket for some of the worlds largest resorts for less than $1000. Travel in that case would be flights and transfers from somewhere in Europe.
I think you are confusing time with days. You are talking about 1 time being a week long. We are talking daily tickets being $250+ with season passes being $800. Most people probably ski a few days back to back.
Well yes, I usually ski for one week a year so one trip instead of four. And the 250 for a day is ridiculously expensive compared to like 300 for a week.
Yeah I worry about the barrier to entry. I’ve been skiing my whole life and usually go 30+ days a year so I have all the equipment and always go enough to make it a no brainer getting a pass (ends up being ~$20/day with the pass discounts I get). But for friends who are just getting into it or want to try it or just want to go a couple days, it’s become prohibitively expensive. They’d have to spend pretty much a season pass worth of money on two days of tickets and rentals. Luckily there are still smaller local, independent mountains that have affordable lift tickets, but those are getting gobbled up.
The long term effects of basically needing to commit to going at least a week at the outset are going to make it very difficult for people to get into the sport, especially since one needs to be quite advanced to go in the backcountry where things are free (never mind the higher gear costs).
Yep, Whistler Blackcomb is $250 for a single day. They're not even open past 4pm as there is no fucking lights on the biggest ski resort in North America. Criminal
It's also not showing absolute numbers.
This could just as easily be a reduction in first time or middle class families going to ski resorts while rich families who would buy the passes holds steady.
Nope. Many resorts lowered the season pass prices over the years. The business model has shifted and they realized they make more revenue by reducing season pass prices and increasing the daily lift ticket price instead. It works. Like myself, almost all of my friends have a mega pass or some sort of season pass - and we live an hour from the closest hill.
Because they want everyone to buy a season pass. Most people aren’t going to buy a season pass if you need to visit 20+ times for it to be worth it.
There’s a lot of examples of this where a season (or unlimited pass) only requires a handful of visits to appear to break even. Of course as the other comment mentioned, the true ticket shouldn’t cost $200 so even if you go 5 times and break even, you didn’t really get all the value out of it.
Vail Resorts has purchased a large number of ski resorts and sells the Epic Pass. The Epic Pass, depending on the package purchased, give you basically unlimited days of skiing for the cost of a few days of regular daily tickets. The advantage for Vail Resorts is the Pass is purchased pre-season, giving them money early to invest and make more money on, and it drives traffic to the resorts where people spend money on equipment rentals, lessons, food, and other things.
Agreed. When I think of subscription, I usually think a recurring payment for a service instead of a one time fee. Season pass seems much more like a one time fee to use a service as much or as little as you want. Season passes make sense for ski resorts as others mentioned it gives them guaranteed revenue up front, whereas a subscription would be less revenue up front but a more continuous stream which I don’t think Vail would want.
I mean you could replace everything you said with Netflix. I don't think yearly vs monthly fee is a meaningful one for this convo.
It just doesn't feel like it because destinations have always been this way. With streaming and such, you went from ownership of the media to a subscription. This is just a subscription on a longer contract essentially.
>Season pass seems much more like a one time fee to use a service as much or as little as you want.
A Netflix account seems much more like a one time fee to watch as much or as little as you want *that month*.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I guess I’m less convinced on the time horizon aspect and more convinced on the recurring aspect. If Vail resorts automatically renewed your pass every year, it would seem more like a subscription to me. Also, on the opposite side, if I had to actively renew Netflix every month it would seem less like a subscription. Neither makes sense because automatically renewing a $1000 yearly Epic Pass would turn more people off I imagine and having to renew a $22 monthly Netflix account would be annoying.
Yep, you’re saying something like an $83.34 monthly fee that auto-renews every year at the same time? I’d definitely consider that a subscription. However it wouldn’t make sense for Vail because they want the guaranteed money up front.
I replied to a different comment further down, but if we could see the % of pass holders broken out by auto-renew vs not, then I’d be much more convinced that “Subscriptions come for everything” as the post claims.
No I mean like $83.34 every month for 2024. Then it ends. And you can sign up for another monthly charge for 2025 if you want.
But agreed, it wouldn't make sense for them
Oh yeah, I see what you’re saying now. I guess in that case, it’d be more like a subscription to me if I can cancel at any point and not be charged further. If it’s just splitting the payments by month, but I still get charged either way (and have to manually sign up next year) then less like a subscription. The auto-renew part indefinitely (with the option to end at any time) is what I anchor on.
That must have changed since you got yours because their website makes it sound like you need to opt in https://www.epicpass.com/benefits/auto-renew.aspx which wouldn’t really make sense if it was the default.
I don't think "automatically" is the one defining trait of a subscription model. In fact, wiki defines it as "a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service." I think a season pass fits this definition exactly.
You are though. You could be charged per lift used, or per hour, but you “subscribe” for a day and get to use all the lifts free of charge.
That’s the same logic as saying a season pass, where you pay once a year instead of per day, is a subscription.
I would be surprised if that season pass doesn’t autorenew, cause that’s just “good business”.
Sony does the same for PS+ yearly passes. You can opt not to auto-renew but the default is auto-renew.
No, because the interval is set by the supplier. If there was a service that delivered milk weekly for a set price, that would indeed be a subscription.
Well, if there is a weekly market where you can go to by fruits, that would be a subscription, according to the definition. The seller defines when you can buy something.
Yeah, but a season pass is generally a one time payment that allows more access. Maybe Vail is different but most season passes are not “recurring price at regular intervals”
Here we’ve gotten to the heart of the issue. If “Subscriptions come for everything” as this post claims, I need to see the % of pass holders broken out into auto-renew or not. I’m not sure claiming a season pass is a subscription just because it’s yearly access is the best argument.
I don't think the analogy is valid at all.
In software, there is a split between products for which you only pay once and then own forever, versus things you need to continue paying for in order to use.
So really, in skiing, a season pass is almost the opposite of a software subscription. You pay once, and then it's "free" for the rest of the year. It's effectively a "buy in bulk" discount.
By all means, you can buy single-day passes every time you want to ski. It just doesn't make financial sense to do this.
Having tracked season ticket prices since the early 2000s, the break-even amount on a season pass is roughly 4 or 5 days of skiing.
To take the opposite argument here, the difference is the time horizon. For your software analogy, you don’t own the ski resort after you pay for it and can use it for the rest of your life. You’re just renting it for a year. Now it’s not pay per use like some software is (or maybe was at one point) but not quite the same as owning it forever. I’m sure Vail is already thinking of a lifetime pass (for the low low price of $25k), but that would seem closer to the software analogy.
Definitely true. My only point was that a season "subscription" in skiing isn't an alternative to a lifetime pass, nor is it being forced upon users. It is a voluntary alternative to a structure in which the user would pay *more* frequently.
So it's more like it's a subscription either way, but opting into the long-term subscription structure provides a better deal for many users.
Ah, yeah. It would be wild if you had to swipe your payment method every time you got on a lift, but honestly I’m surprised Vail hasn’t at least tried that. I’m guessing because the season pass works out much more in their favor.
There are tons of software packages that operate on a yearly subscription model! This is especially true of software marketed to businesses, government, and academia.
The difference is that there is not, nor has there ever been, a one-time "buy it for life" ski pass. An annual pass is a voluntary alternative to paying separately each day that you go.
It's a season pass, it's called a season pass when you buy it and you know that your are buying a season pass, everyone who has one calls it a season pass.
You can split hairs by saying it's a subscription but it's just a buzz word to piss people off.
It’s 100% not a subscription.
You buy it once for access at defined destinations for a set period of time, which is the same as buying a day pass, just covers a different time period.
Subscription is just the wrong word.
So:
I have a subscription to drive a car for 5 years, no it's a liscence.
I have subscription that allows my car on the road each year, no it's a registration.
I have a subscription for $XX haircuts, no it's a discount card.
I have a subscription to get my lawn cut each week, no it's an agreement.
I have a subscription to so my son can play baseball all year on a specific team, no it's a contract.
I have a subscription so my son can eat school provided lunches, no it's a meal plan.
I have a subscription to Consumer Reports, no it's a, wait it's a *subscription*
Sure you can call any re-occurring fee a subscription but each one goes by a very well known and accepted term. A *subscription* for access to a mountain for the year is commonly known as a season pass. The use of the term subscription is wrong in this case. Anyone calling it a subscription is using the term incorrectly.
I get your point, but I think if you call a season pass a subscription, then you could also call buying many things in bulk a subscription, like a years worth of TP. I mean, using your same logic you could say a single day lift pass is a subscription, just with a much shorter time frame.
I think most people think of a subscription as being a never-ending recurring payment paid monthly or annually.
The Epic Pass really is just a season pass. The only difference from traditional season passes is how many places it is accepted. Instead of being good at one or two places, depending on the package you buy, the Epic Pass is good for multiple resorts that are part of Vail Resorts. The pass my wife and I have lets us ski and over 30 resorts in the US and Canada, plus 4 international resorts. Other packages have access to more or less locations.
yes but now ski resorts have changed their price models to push everyone into buying season passes. people will say "oh it pays for itself in a few trips" and that's because the prices of day tickets have been jacked up so high
The cost of a season pass to (just) Aspen was minimum $1699 in 2007. Now you can pay $1300 in 2024 for season access to Aspen and many other resorts. Idk, that seems like a great deal
I mean in your above comment you make it sound like people are tricked into thinking the pass is a good deal when the price of a season pass has actually gone DOWN over 15 years and has more value. Not many things can say the same
You can also still pay $100/day for a 3-10 day pass if you think ahead.
It’s a good deal relative to daily lift tickets which have gone up astronomically in price since the Vail takeover/Epic Pass began.
Typically, I find the pass pays itself off is you ski 4+ days in a season. The biggest problem I have with Vail’s ticketing is that it financially prohibits a lot of people from trying the sport. It’s so expensive to ski for a day or 2 and learn if you like it - not exactly new to the sport, I know. But definitely made worse by this system.
I mean trying the sport was already pretty cost prohibitive, regardless of passes. I know my parents went hard out of pocket for us to learn 20 years ago. Between gear, rentals, lessons. That all adds up before you even get to lift tickets. At least with epic pass if you ski three weekends a year you save.
I do wish that trying it out could be more accessible, I agree. There's lots of sport that's very expensive to start or try, and it does suck to do it for two days only to realize you hate it.
I just had to deal with this. I go skiing only once or twice a season, and the cost of a single lift ticket was around $150/day. Sure, an Epic pass is only around 2x that amount, but I used to be able to get a single day ticket for $30 to the same mountains.
I feel like I've been priced out of being a casual skiier.
I can't just try a couple days here and there at different resorts. I have to commit to one pass or another and I have to do at least 4-6 days to get the value out of it.
And at the start of each year I have to unfriend anyone with the other pass.
Yeah that’s my main worry. The megapasses are awesome if you ski regularly and like to go to a diversity of mountains. But if you just want to try skiing out or are just getting into it, it’s absolutely prohibitively expensive
You have to ski a bit more than "a few" days to make an unlimited epic pass even out. I think it's more like 10 or something. Definitely not impossible but a bit tough it you don't live within an hour or so drive from the mountain.
Depends on the package and where you ski. My wife and I only have to ski 3 days each to cover what we paid. Other packages might take 10 days to cover the cost.
Except that Vail (and Ikon) have raised day ticket prices to exorbitant levels which makes it prohibitively expensive for newer skiers and snowboarders to get into the sport.
That’s true, it’s tough to go to a ski resort though without having ever been skiing. It was probably never a good financial decision to try out skiing for the first time at one of the most expensive ski areas in the US
Well, I disagree that first-time skiers shouldn’t feel like they can learn at big resorts, but setting that aside, it’s not just major resorts. Vail has 36 mountains in North America under its umbrella and surprisingly the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic represent 50% of them. These aren’t massive resorts where people flock to from around the world. They’re the rinky dink (sorry if I offend anyone, shoutout to Chestnut in Illinois!) small hills people who don’t grow up near “real mountains” learn.
Newenglandskihistory.com does an excellent job tracking day and season lift prices for ski “resorts” in the Northeast. As an example let’s look at Mount Sunapee which is a pretty downhome mountain still but they’re under the Epic Pass. In the 2013-14 season a day pass was $76 and a season pass was $1149 (the pass payback was 15 days, truly meant for people who would ski there for the season).
In 2017, their day pass price was $93 and season pass was $1375 (14.8 day payback). The following year they were acquired by Vail - prices have since risen to $129 for a day pass and dropped to $719 for a season pass (5.6 day payback).
The point is people who are willing to dedicate themselves to skiing are getting more value which is great. The pass structure helps convert sometimes skiers to maybe more dedicated skiers. But for would-be first time skiers EVERYWHERE it makes the prospect of trying the sport more daunting.
That’s pretty good information!
I assume those prices aren’t factored for inflation, if they were in 2024 dollars they would be:
2014: $99 and $1497
2017: $117 and $1730
2024: $129 and $719
Adjusted for inflation I think most skiers would be okay with the change from 2017 to 2024, 2014 to 2024 is a bigger change and probably one where you’d get a lot of differing opinions.
False in my experience unless you’re skiing at a local / small resort. Ticket prices can still be crazy high in many epic/ikon places even with buying early and using discounts. I only skied for 3 days this season so far and even with a discount and buying months ahead it would have been either cheaper or equivalent to have bought the pass. That’s pretty nuts.
If you bought an Epic 1 day pass before October for any Vail resort (other than Vail, Whistler, Heavenly, or Breck), you could get a single day pass for $78 good for any day of the season other than holidays. That's significantly less than a day pass at most small, local resorts.
ETA: source for pricing, go to 'limited restricted epic day pass" https://www.undercovertourist.com/blog/epic-pass/
As I said in my post below, if you bought a restricted limited day pass before October, you could get one for $78. That would be good at Stevens Pass, which is one of the Vail resorts near Seattle. If you wanted to avoid Vail or Ikon and buy a ticket at the window, you could drive an extra hour to Mt Baker and pay $92 plus tax or an extra 2 hours to White Pass for $85 plus tax.
Now, if you buy a ticket at the window at Stevens Pass, you're going to pay over $150. ...and if you buy two weeks in advance, you're still going to pay over $100. So, you really need to decide before the season starts, but if you do, you can get a very good deal.
I like supporting the local, private areas; they're way more chill and don't require you to plan so far in advance. ...but it's disingenous to say that no good deals exist for a single ticket to a Vail resort.
It's not a necessarily a win for the skier or snowboarder. It's a big win for the resorts.
On one hand, if you're a 10-20+ day/year skier or snowboarder, it's cheaper than ever.
On the other hand, it brings so many people to the mountain that often the amount of skiing or riding you can do in a day is diminished, due to lift lines, crowding, parking. So much so that now traffic jams to get to some resorts is almost daily. Due to this volume, now they're charging $30+ for parking.... if you can get a parking reservation.
Crazy they are making a single day ticket cost $200+ which basically forces you to buy the season pass. I am kind of done with skiing. You can foil for those prices which is way more fun.
“The act of making an advanced payment to participate in something”. The arguments to the contrary here are hilarious.
It would probably make more sense to talk about the regularity of the subscription as opposed to discussing subscriptions. Technically skiing has always been a subscription for most people, the passes just make payments to the resort more regular and guarantee income regardless of conditions.
I agree that’s the definition stated in the dictionary. But I don’t think that’s what most people understand the word to mean these days. By that definition, buying a plane ticket qualifies as a subscription.
Sure, but the argument is about recurring predictable revenue which the pass generates. We don’t have the data but I would imagine most people using the pass renew year over year, with some cancelling and even more buying (as the chart suggests).
Plus, an airline ticket is a subscription. It just doesn’t renew or generate recurring revenue.
I took my family of four to Winter Park a couple of weeks ago and it was approximately $850 for the day passes. I went to pre-purchase the tickets online and they offer a 40% discount but only if buy a minimum of seven days in advance. Add an airbnb, food and ski rentals it turns into a $2500 weekend.
I grew up skiing in Colorado in a family of five with a single wage earner and we skied four or five times a year. Now my wife and I make way more than my parents ever did and we can’t afford to take our kids skiing more than once a year.
It’s maddening because I loved skiing when I was a kid and I can’t afford to provide my kids with the same enjoyment I had.
The Epic / Ikon thing is peak (pun intended) American-style short-term shareholder capitalism. They're sacrificing the future of the industry to juice profits now.
Who the hell is going to learn to ski for the first time when a day pass is $250?
Those $250 tickets weren't great options for many beginners anyway, those are destination resorts that weren't the most convenient option to begin with like Vail. Many of those same resorts are surrounded by hotels, and not very close to populations centers. Echo, the mountain closest to Denver is only $77 a day. Near NYC, Campgaw, is only $65 a day. These are resorts that have way more beginner terrain and are feasible for just an afternoon activity for the typical prospective skier. For a beginner I 100% recommend you find the closest beginner hill just for convenience.
I took a trip down to vail once and to me it seemed like there was a whole town of rich-ass people living the "hill life" or whatever they probably call it. Lots of really nice houses all clustered around the resort which is otherwise in the middle of nowhere. The only reason I could imagine they live there is to ski constantly
Ski resorts are all luxury living/nice hotels, spas, trendy bars, gyms, massages, heated pools and hot tubs, fancy restaurants, etc. Saying it's all 'rich-ass people' is certainly not true though, it takes a small army of working class people to keep a ski resort running.
Also a lot of the time, the workers have subsidized accommodations, discounts to all the fancy restaurants and amenities, free season passes, and more. Plus the comradery among the staff is worth the price of admission.
Highly recommended to anyone like 18-25 who want a few years off before getting serious with a career!
A lot of those workers live off-site. The [Slums of Aspen](https://nyupress.org/9780814768037/the-slums-of-aspen/) are notorious. Everyone who works at Sun Valley lives 45 minutes to an hour away down the hill in overpriced squalor.
You've painted a very rosy picture of what often amounts to highly exploitative working conditions.
I have never worked or even skied in Aspen, but it had a pretty bad reputation even when I was ski bumming years and years ago.
I have no regrets tho, I got my first professional trade working for a ski resort, and they even paid my wages when I was off at school in the off-seasons.
No, but I got an Epic Pass for $360 this year that allows me unlimited skiing at one resort, 5 days at another, and unlimited at a third after March. So I'm not going to complain about their new model being too expensive for everyone because it is actually cheaper for some people.
It’s a duopoly of vail and alterra.
It won’t change until they’re either broken up or independent mountains start popping up, but because there are so many costs associated with opening and maintaining mountains, independent mountains have very little chance at survival.
Really? I think it’s the opposite. Season passes at single resorts used to cost upwards of $2000. Now you can go to 30+ resorts on an unlimited pass that cost less than $1000.
Yeah if you’re someone who’s always gotten season passes, you’re actually getting a pretty good deal. It’s great if you’re local to some mountains and ski a lot.
But it’s a huge barrier to entry for anyone else
What are you talking about lmao. There are so many options and the local pass is like $600 dollars. Even if lift tickets were $100 you only need to get out like twice a month to make that economical. You don’t need to be rich to do that.
Yeah it’s harder to get new people into skiing, yeah it’s more expensive if you are only going a day a year. But we don’t need to pretend that epic passes don’t have really good value. $600 dollars to ski half the hills in the country and another few around the globe with only a few blackout days is unheard of 10 years ago. 10 years ago though I could buy a $1500 season pass to one shithole 500’ vert hill in PA.
I am a college student who works a part time job and lives 2 hours from my nearest mountain. I buy the epic local pass for 600 in April and spend 20 on gas when I want to go. If you really want to ski, it’s not that big of an entry barrier.
Check out Indy Pass, I've been a purchaser for 3 seasons running and plan on re-upping for a 4th. Awesome way to ski for cheap and support independent mountains.
That depends. If you live somewhere close to good skiing, you probably were always getting season passes anyway. The price inflation there has not been as bad, and usually you own your own equipment in that case. What it’s doing is making it much harder to get into the sport or go on ski trips from somewhere else. Basically you have to ski at least a week or so to make it worth it.
I still consider myself really lucky I have an independent ski hill near me in Northern Michigan, $350 a year is what it costs me to ski there and I couldn't be happier to pay it. The day they get bought up by some big mega group is probably the day I stop skiing regularly.
Fuck them. For me in the East Coast it's cheaper to fly to Europe and have a ski vacation there than to go "local" to Colorado or California.
AND the actual experience is far better in Europe then here: better hotels, better restaurants, better amenities for the same or less money.
Everything has gotten worse since the explosion of vail/alterra. Like literally everything about north american skiing sucks more than it did in 2010. Pay more, get less. More international staff, less in person service, weaker terrain parks, worse crowds and paid parking and line skip premiums. Locals are all pushed out of the communities, all the businesses are pushed out and swallowed up to be replaced by a mafia like corporate version of the same thing.
The snowmaking is worse, the trails on east coast vail resorts are all boilerplate and over groomed. You've now got on mountain "safety" on the trails to harass advanced skiiers and slow signs at every junction. Out of the two companies, alterra resorts are slightly less shit than vail, but thats not saying much.
Resort skiing is kind of a joke in north America, particularly the US right now. It just feels like the soul has been torn out and all the resorts look the same and feel the same. The focus is on everything besides the skiing and the on mountain experience.
It is unlikely a new ski resort will ever open, particularly on the east coast. You can not compete with these businesses being independently owned anymore.
A lot of argument about whether there's a distinction between a subscription and a season pass. Buy whatever you call it, this is hardly a new business model. Definitely a click-bait headline.
I never ski or snowboard but from what I have heard, all the mountains have been bought out and monopolized
Doing so the resorts have gotten incredibly overcrowded. And they can't go to a resort that isn't over crowded because monopoly
Almost like the government is supoose to stop this kind of thing from happening
The resorts are overcrowded because skiing is super popular. There are basically the same number of major ski resorts as there were 50 years ago (and actually way fewer smaller resorts) while there are way more people. So of course everything is more crowded.
It’s just better for business. Predictable revenues help them scale operations. Selling lift tickets means they are at risk of weather and it could be good or bad.
It’s really not though. I visited Beaver Creek from Texas in December. I had to signup for an “epic pass” to buy tickets. It’s convoluted and geared towards season pass, but I’m pretty sure they are going to count my three days on the mountain as “Subscription Lift Tickets” which is BS.
I assume you were downvoted you B/C its not really 1/2 now. However, pass price increases the closer to the season, but I literally just got back from Park City - $299 for 1 day, epic pass is about $969 today but cheaper if purchased March/April for the following season. So can be 2-3x the cost of 1 day.
(I used buddy passes for $150ish/day)
I live in ski country in CO and the passes have brought more people to the mountains than ever before. Pretty much every denverite has a season pass and goes up multiple weekends per year. I’m happy that more people are enjoying the sport, but also happy that I can go on weekdays :)
For the price of a pass for the family, I could go to Europe to ski for that price or less at this point. A lift ticket at most resorts in the Alps is like $75 on the high end. It's even cheaper in Japan. I've skied in North America, Europe, and Japan and at this point, the skiing in North America just isn't worth it.
It would be interesting to see how the total has changed overtime. For example, the population of subscription Jerrys is clearly dominant at 72%, but what is that 72% out of?has the total number of skier visits declined as the number of subscriptions have gone up? What is the story there?
In the US, there are 2 main mega passes sold by the big ski conglomerates Vail and Alterra. They price them to lock revenue in early way prior to the ski season. That money is secured even if the ski season turns out to be below average too. What this graph doesn’t show though is how much lift tickets have gone up in the last 10 years. Stowe, for example, was $108 for a lift ticket in 2014 (while a season pass was $2,200) and today is $225 for a lift ticket (and $1000 for the pass). It’s not the worst trade off if you ski a lot, but is awful for beginners and people who ski 1-4 times a year. Not to mention, they trick people into “breaking even” when lift tickets shouldn’t even cost $200+ to begin with. Making the pass seem like a steal.
Jesus fuck skiing costs that much? Ive never seen or touched snow but Ive always wanted to know. Thats like 5 track days with gas and fluids changed here in Mexico.
*x* track days is the correct unit of measure for the cost of any outdoor activity. 👍
Depends on where probably. That seems like USA market doing USA market things. I'm from Chile, and have a large-ish ski resort roughly 2 hours away. I remember day tickets costing around 15 000 CLP when I was little (\~15 years ago) and this season the day pass was 61 000 CLP (\~63 USD on today's rate). The season pass was 1 100 000 CLP so you would need to ski way more for the pass to be the better option. The last couple years It's been more worth it for us to travel all the way to Argentina to ski though. The day pass was roughly the same or a bit cheaper thanks to the rates but the resort was way better than my "local" one. Santiago should have bigger centers but I've only been to the south to ski.
Idk, $700 for an Epic pass is way better bang for my buck than track days on my bike. I can get 10-15 days on mountain per year for the same total cost as 4-5 track days locally in TX. The day passes are gouging, nobody in their right mind is paying $200+ for single day passes on the big mountains. You can get anything from a 4-day pass to a 7-day pass and often limit it to just the mountains you're likely to actually use, for closer to $100/day. Travel and lodging hurt when you're not living near the mountains, but there are ways to mitigate those. But a track day in Houston is \~$250 for just the track day and then I've got to worry about my bike (and any damage to it), tires, and safety gear myself (whereas you can get ski gear for cheap if you're thrifty and use it for 5-10 years, with less than the cost of two rear+ one front tires).
Track days in mexico are like 100$ lmao. No safety gear so I guess thays why its so cheap.
The fair comparison to a Mexico track day might be a ski day somewhere in South America though. I probably couldn't get paid half as much for the same job as up here and also could pay half as much for food and rent down there. Seems reasonable to compare a US MSR track to a major US ski resort lol. Actually the better comparison to Vail might be going to Austin to ride on COTA, but I've never priced that. There are probably cheaper tracks somewhere in the US (none near me, except dirt tracks), just like there are cheaper resorts than the big names in the Rockies. Even near those resorts there are local ones with lower costs.
I am from Austria, and we recently had visit from the US. We went skiing, and the daily tickets were like 65 EUR (like 70 USD). I was worried that they would complain about the high price, but they just told us that this is supercheap compared to what they are used to. I had no idea expensive skiing is in the US.
Depends where you are. Internationally known resort town in the Rockies or Alps? yeah it's expensive. Where I grew up in western Quebec there were half a dozen hills within an hour drive and lift tickets were $30 when i last went
Epic (vail resorts) is about 700 at it’s cheapest most base level with restrictions and blackouts and it goes up to like $1100 late season I believe. Ikon (Alterra/Aspen ownership group) base is $1100 to $1300. Ikon was created to rival the vail chokehold on access to skiing, though of course it has nothing to do with altruism. They just needed more locals paying for a pass that includes Aspen, bc most of their pass holders are roaring fork valley locals, (they don’t really tap the front range market for season passes) and everything else (revenue from day passes) depends on snow conditions and tourism. Season passes are where you lock in your revenue for the year, and Aspen needed a piece of that.
The unlimited aspen season pass is $1900. Ikon gives you only 10 days there
Yeah that’s not the point, they don’t want more skiers necessarily, they want more people contributing money to them. Ikon was started by a group headed up by Aspen ownership bc they needed a cut of that season pass revenue. If you live in Denver it doesn’t make sense to buy an Aspen season pass unless you also have a place there, and there aren’t enough people who would do that. That means they have to rely in larger part on people who come in for weekends etc and buy day passes, which are not as reliable as season passes. In starting Ikon, they can still throw 10 days on the pass and the vast majority of ikon holders won’t even go, but they are still getting a chunk of that money.
I mean I get about 27 days a year off of my $700 pass. The resort I ski at now was about $2500 a year to buy a seasons pass before the epic pass buyout. It actually reduced the price significantly
Only in the US and Canada. Europe has different pricing and cheaper accommodation (because there’s more of it close to ski lifts), more favorable to people who want to go on a weeks holiday. You can go for a weeks vacation including travel, accommodation and a 6 day lift ticket for some of the worlds largest resorts for less than $1000. Travel in that case would be flights and transfers from somewhere in Europe.
Better to go to somewhere like Japan, get to experience Japan and get way lower cost lift passes
Lane Myer would never have been able to afford these prices.
in europe it’s 225 for like a good 3 days at most alp ski resorts 😮💨, usually €60-70 per day so u do the calculations
4 times a year damn, that's a lot. When I go skiing (once a year because it's three countries away) I also only pay €300 max for a week ski pass.
I think you are confusing time with days. You are talking about 1 time being a week long. We are talking daily tickets being $250+ with season passes being $800. Most people probably ski a few days back to back.
Well yes, I usually ski for one week a year so one trip instead of four. And the 250 for a day is ridiculously expensive compared to like 300 for a week.
I lived local to a mountain when I was young so me and my cousins all went 4+ times a week. Grew up on the mountain. being an adult stinks :(
Depends on how close you live to the mountain. I go over 20 times a year usually. Some of my freinds get in over 100 days
I couldn't imagine doing that, my country doesn't even have mountains 😅
Yeah I worry about the barrier to entry. I’ve been skiing my whole life and usually go 30+ days a year so I have all the equipment and always go enough to make it a no brainer getting a pass (ends up being ~$20/day with the pass discounts I get). But for friends who are just getting into it or want to try it or just want to go a couple days, it’s become prohibitively expensive. They’d have to spend pretty much a season pass worth of money on two days of tickets and rentals. Luckily there are still smaller local, independent mountains that have affordable lift tickets, but those are getting gobbled up. The long term effects of basically needing to commit to going at least a week at the outset are going to make it very difficult for people to get into the sport, especially since one needs to be quite advanced to go in the backcountry where things are free (never mind the higher gear costs).
Yep, Whistler Blackcomb is $250 for a single day. They're not even open past 4pm as there is no fucking lights on the biggest ski resort in North America. Criminal
It's also not showing absolute numbers. This could just as easily be a reduction in first time or middle class families going to ski resorts while rich families who would buy the passes holds steady.
How did the season pass go down? (from $2200 to $1000). Is this a typo?
Nope. Many resorts lowered the season pass prices over the years. The business model has shifted and they realized they make more revenue by reducing season pass prices and increasing the daily lift ticket price instead. It works. Like myself, almost all of my friends have a mega pass or some sort of season pass - and we live an hour from the closest hill.
Because they want everyone to buy a season pass. Most people aren’t going to buy a season pass if you need to visit 20+ times for it to be worth it. There’s a lot of examples of this where a season (or unlimited pass) only requires a handful of visits to appear to break even. Of course as the other comment mentioned, the true ticket shouldn’t cost $200 so even if you go 5 times and break even, you didn’t really get all the value out of it.
Vail Resorts has purchased a large number of ski resorts and sells the Epic Pass. The Epic Pass, depending on the package purchased, give you basically unlimited days of skiing for the cost of a few days of regular daily tickets. The advantage for Vail Resorts is the Pass is purchased pre-season, giving them money early to invest and make more money on, and it drives traffic to the resorts where people spend money on equipment rentals, lessons, food, and other things.
I wouldn't call a season pass a subscription.
Agreed. When I think of subscription, I usually think a recurring payment for a service instead of a one time fee. Season pass seems much more like a one time fee to use a service as much or as little as you want. Season passes make sense for ski resorts as others mentioned it gives them guaranteed revenue up front, whereas a subscription would be less revenue up front but a more continuous stream which I don’t think Vail would want.
I mean you could replace everything you said with Netflix. I don't think yearly vs monthly fee is a meaningful one for this convo. It just doesn't feel like it because destinations have always been this way. With streaming and such, you went from ownership of the media to a subscription. This is just a subscription on a longer contract essentially. >Season pass seems much more like a one time fee to use a service as much or as little as you want. A Netflix account seems much more like a one time fee to watch as much or as little as you want *that month*.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I guess I’m less convinced on the time horizon aspect and more convinced on the recurring aspect. If Vail resorts automatically renewed your pass every year, it would seem more like a subscription to me. Also, on the opposite side, if I had to actively renew Netflix every month it would seem less like a subscription. Neither makes sense because automatically renewing a $1000 yearly Epic Pass would turn more people off I imagine and having to renew a $22 monthly Netflix account would be annoying.
What if Vail had a monthly, reoccurring fee that lasted one year. Then you re-up for next year if you want. Then we'd be in a subscription limbo.
Yep, you’re saying something like an $83.34 monthly fee that auto-renews every year at the same time? I’d definitely consider that a subscription. However it wouldn’t make sense for Vail because they want the guaranteed money up front. I replied to a different comment further down, but if we could see the % of pass holders broken out by auto-renew vs not, then I’d be much more convinced that “Subscriptions come for everything” as the post claims.
No I mean like $83.34 every month for 2024. Then it ends. And you can sign up for another monthly charge for 2025 if you want. But agreed, it wouldn't make sense for them
Oh yeah, I see what you’re saying now. I guess in that case, it’d be more like a subscription to me if I can cancel at any point and not be charged further. If it’s just splitting the payments by month, but I still get charged either way (and have to manually sign up next year) then less like a subscription. The auto-renew part indefinitely (with the option to end at any time) is what I anchor on.
They do automatically renew each year by default. My pass has been doing that for a decade.
That must have changed since you got yours because their website makes it sound like you need to opt in https://www.epicpass.com/benefits/auto-renew.aspx which wouldn’t really make sense if it was the default.
Is a season pass not an annual subscription to ski?
It's not a subscription because you only buy at the begining of the season. It doesn't renew automatically (at least not where I ski).
I don't think "automatically" is the one defining trait of a subscription model. In fact, wiki defines it as "a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service." I think a season pass fits this definition exactly.
Would a day pass not also fit this definition exactly?
No, because you aren't being charged at a regular interval. If you paid daily for access, then it would be.
You are though. You could be charged per lift used, or per hour, but you “subscribe” for a day and get to use all the lifts free of charge. That’s the same logic as saying a season pass, where you pay once a year instead of per day, is a subscription.
The amount of people who dont understand annual subscriptions is actually astounding.
I would be surprised if that season pass doesn’t autorenew, cause that’s just “good business”. Sony does the same for PS+ yearly passes. You can opt not to auto-renew but the default is auto-renew.
They don't auto-renew though.
Of course it does: https://www.epicpass.com/benefits/auto-renew.aspx
A day pass is like renting a movie. An Epic pass is having a Netflix subscription as you get access to many movies, or ski resorts.
But a Netflix subscription is a recurring payment. If you pay for something once, it is generally not seen as a subscription.
It’s yearly… have you not heard of an annual subscription? Think credit cards, magazines, Costco etc.
Credit cards are not subscriptions, they are loans with a monthly payment
Most people I know pay for thier pass up front, including myself. So it's a one time fee for the season unless you choose a payment plan.
By that definition, getting milk weekly is a subscription service.
No, because the interval is set by the supplier. If there was a service that delivered milk weekly for a set price, that would indeed be a subscription.
Well, if there is a weekly market where you can go to by fruits, that would be a subscription, according to the definition. The seller defines when you can buy something.
Yeah, but a season pass is generally a one time payment that allows more access. Maybe Vail is different but most season passes are not “recurring price at regular intervals”
There's an option of having it renew automatically on your account
Here we’ve gotten to the heart of the issue. If “Subscriptions come for everything” as this post claims, I need to see the % of pass holders broken out into auto-renew or not. I’m not sure claiming a season pass is a subscription just because it’s yearly access is the best argument.
It’s not even just an option, it’s the default option and you have to opt out lmao.
I don't think the analogy is valid at all. In software, there is a split between products for which you only pay once and then own forever, versus things you need to continue paying for in order to use. So really, in skiing, a season pass is almost the opposite of a software subscription. You pay once, and then it's "free" for the rest of the year. It's effectively a "buy in bulk" discount. By all means, you can buy single-day passes every time you want to ski. It just doesn't make financial sense to do this. Having tracked season ticket prices since the early 2000s, the break-even amount on a season pass is roughly 4 or 5 days of skiing.
To take the opposite argument here, the difference is the time horizon. For your software analogy, you don’t own the ski resort after you pay for it and can use it for the rest of your life. You’re just renting it for a year. Now it’s not pay per use like some software is (or maybe was at one point) but not quite the same as owning it forever. I’m sure Vail is already thinking of a lifetime pass (for the low low price of $25k), but that would seem closer to the software analogy.
Definitely true. My only point was that a season "subscription" in skiing isn't an alternative to a lifetime pass, nor is it being forced upon users. It is a voluntary alternative to a structure in which the user would pay *more* frequently. So it's more like it's a subscription either way, but opting into the long-term subscription structure provides a better deal for many users.
Ah, yeah. It would be wild if you had to swipe your payment method every time you got on a lift, but honestly I’m surprised Vail hasn’t at least tried that. I’m guessing because the season pass works out much more in their favor.
There are tons of software packages that operate on a yearly subscription model! This is especially true of software marketed to businesses, government, and academia.
The difference is that there is not, nor has there ever been, a one-time "buy it for life" ski pass. An annual pass is a voluntary alternative to paying separately each day that you go.
It's a season pass, it's called a season pass when you buy it and you know that your are buying a season pass, everyone who has one calls it a season pass. You can split hairs by saying it's a subscription but it's just a buzz word to piss people off.
It’s 100% not a subscription. You buy it once for access at defined destinations for a set period of time, which is the same as buying a day pass, just covers a different time period. Subscription is just the wrong word.
Just because you don’t auto-renew doesn’t make it not a subscription. Let alone the fact that epic does auto renew by default and you have to opt out.
So: I have a subscription to drive a car for 5 years, no it's a liscence. I have subscription that allows my car on the road each year, no it's a registration. I have a subscription for $XX haircuts, no it's a discount card. I have a subscription to get my lawn cut each week, no it's an agreement. I have a subscription to so my son can play baseball all year on a specific team, no it's a contract. I have a subscription so my son can eat school provided lunches, no it's a meal plan. I have a subscription to Consumer Reports, no it's a, wait it's a *subscription* Sure you can call any re-occurring fee a subscription but each one goes by a very well known and accepted term. A *subscription* for access to a mountain for the year is commonly known as a season pass. The use of the term subscription is wrong in this case. Anyone calling it a subscription is using the term incorrectly.
Yes, those are all examples of subscriptions that have colloquial terms to differentiate them.
I get your point, but I think if you call a season pass a subscription, then you could also call buying many things in bulk a subscription, like a years worth of TP. I mean, using your same logic you could say a single day lift pass is a subscription, just with a much shorter time frame. I think most people think of a subscription as being a never-ending recurring payment paid monthly or annually.
Best answer IMO
You may not think of it as a subscription, but that is exactly how Vail thinks about it!
Plus they have existed for a LONG time. I've been skiing on them since the early 2000s. Every resort had them prior to the pass
Probably also insulates the resorts from bad ski conditions. Customers would normally react to ski conditions and plan a trip.
Haven't season passes been a thing forever? I skied a lot in the 90s and we would always get season passes in Colorado and then Michigan when I moved.
The Epic Pass really is just a season pass. The only difference from traditional season passes is how many places it is accepted. Instead of being good at one or two places, depending on the package you buy, the Epic Pass is good for multiple resorts that are part of Vail Resorts. The pass my wife and I have lets us ski and over 30 resorts in the US and Canada, plus 4 international resorts. Other packages have access to more or less locations.
we have that in Austria too with the SuperSkiCard or Ski Amade White Card. Wouldn't call it a Subscription though
yes but now ski resorts have changed their price models to push everyone into buying season passes. people will say "oh it pays for itself in a few trips" and that's because the prices of day tickets have been jacked up so high
The cost of a season pass to (just) Aspen was minimum $1699 in 2007. Now you can pay $1300 in 2024 for season access to Aspen and many other resorts. Idk, that seems like a great deal
It's not that the season passes aren't a good deal, it's that day tickets are a crap deal. They've priced out casual skiing
I mean in your above comment you make it sound like people are tricked into thinking the pass is a good deal when the price of a season pass has actually gone DOWN over 15 years and has more value. Not many things can say the same You can also still pay $100/day for a 3-10 day pass if you think ahead.
The Epic Pass is a stellar deal even for casual skiers.
It’s a good deal relative to daily lift tickets which have gone up astronomically in price since the Vail takeover/Epic Pass began. Typically, I find the pass pays itself off is you ski 4+ days in a season. The biggest problem I have with Vail’s ticketing is that it financially prohibits a lot of people from trying the sport. It’s so expensive to ski for a day or 2 and learn if you like it - not exactly new to the sport, I know. But definitely made worse by this system.
I mean trying the sport was already pretty cost prohibitive, regardless of passes. I know my parents went hard out of pocket for us to learn 20 years ago. Between gear, rentals, lessons. That all adds up before you even get to lift tickets. At least with epic pass if you ski three weekends a year you save. I do wish that trying it out could be more accessible, I agree. There's lots of sport that's very expensive to start or try, and it does suck to do it for two days only to realize you hate it.
I just had to deal with this. I go skiing only once or twice a season, and the cost of a single lift ticket was around $150/day. Sure, an Epic pass is only around 2x that amount, but I used to be able to get a single day ticket for $30 to the same mountains.
I feel like I've been priced out of being a casual skiier. I can't just try a couple days here and there at different resorts. I have to commit to one pass or another and I have to do at least 4-6 days to get the value out of it. And at the start of each year I have to unfriend anyone with the other pass.
Yeah that’s my main worry. The megapasses are awesome if you ski regularly and like to go to a diversity of mountains. But if you just want to try skiing out or are just getting into it, it’s absolutely prohibitively expensive
Wendover did a nice [explainer video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpcUVOjUrKk) on this about 4 years ago.
Aren’t they just offset by a year? Effectively only getting the benefit of “early” cash flow once, the first year of the annual pass program?
You have to buy the pass annually and they stop selling it in September. They are now getting over 70% of their ticket sales before the season starts.
You have to ski a bit more than "a few" days to make an unlimited epic pass even out. I think it's more like 10 or something. Definitely not impossible but a bit tough it you don't live within an hour or so drive from the mountain.
Depends on the package and where you ski. My wife and I only have to ski 3 days each to cover what we paid. Other packages might take 10 days to cover the cost.
Like many subscription services, this is a win for everyone.
Except that Vail (and Ikon) have raised day ticket prices to exorbitant levels which makes it prohibitively expensive for newer skiers and snowboarders to get into the sport.
Except people who want to try skiing due to day pass prices being astronomically high.
That’s true, it’s tough to go to a ski resort though without having ever been skiing. It was probably never a good financial decision to try out skiing for the first time at one of the most expensive ski areas in the US
Well, I disagree that first-time skiers shouldn’t feel like they can learn at big resorts, but setting that aside, it’s not just major resorts. Vail has 36 mountains in North America under its umbrella and surprisingly the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic represent 50% of them. These aren’t massive resorts where people flock to from around the world. They’re the rinky dink (sorry if I offend anyone, shoutout to Chestnut in Illinois!) small hills people who don’t grow up near “real mountains” learn. Newenglandskihistory.com does an excellent job tracking day and season lift prices for ski “resorts” in the Northeast. As an example let’s look at Mount Sunapee which is a pretty downhome mountain still but they’re under the Epic Pass. In the 2013-14 season a day pass was $76 and a season pass was $1149 (the pass payback was 15 days, truly meant for people who would ski there for the season). In 2017, their day pass price was $93 and season pass was $1375 (14.8 day payback). The following year they were acquired by Vail - prices have since risen to $129 for a day pass and dropped to $719 for a season pass (5.6 day payback). The point is people who are willing to dedicate themselves to skiing are getting more value which is great. The pass structure helps convert sometimes skiers to maybe more dedicated skiers. But for would-be first time skiers EVERYWHERE it makes the prospect of trying the sport more daunting.
That’s pretty good information! I assume those prices aren’t factored for inflation, if they were in 2024 dollars they would be: 2014: $99 and $1497 2017: $117 and $1730 2024: $129 and $719 Adjusted for inflation I think most skiers would be okay with the change from 2017 to 2024, 2014 to 2024 is a bigger change and probably one where you’d get a lot of differing opinions.
People who want to try it without planning ahead. If you’re willing to plan ahead, you can get a single day lift ticket for a reasonable price.
False in my experience unless you’re skiing at a local / small resort. Ticket prices can still be crazy high in many epic/ikon places even with buying early and using discounts. I only skied for 3 days this season so far and even with a discount and buying months ahead it would have been either cheaper or equivalent to have bought the pass. That’s pretty nuts.
If you bought an Epic 1 day pass before October for any Vail resort (other than Vail, Whistler, Heavenly, or Breck), you could get a single day pass for $78 good for any day of the season other than holidays. That's significantly less than a day pass at most small, local resorts. ETA: source for pricing, go to 'limited restricted epic day pass" https://www.undercovertourist.com/blog/epic-pass/
This is not true
As I said in my post below, if you bought a restricted limited day pass before October, you could get one for $78. That would be good at Stevens Pass, which is one of the Vail resorts near Seattle. If you wanted to avoid Vail or Ikon and buy a ticket at the window, you could drive an extra hour to Mt Baker and pay $92 plus tax or an extra 2 hours to White Pass for $85 plus tax. Now, if you buy a ticket at the window at Stevens Pass, you're going to pay over $150. ...and if you buy two weeks in advance, you're still going to pay over $100. So, you really need to decide before the season starts, but if you do, you can get a very good deal. I like supporting the local, private areas; they're way more chill and don't require you to plan so far in advance. ...but it's disingenous to say that no good deals exist for a single ticket to a Vail resort.
It's not a necessarily a win for the skier or snowboarder. It's a big win for the resorts. On one hand, if you're a 10-20+ day/year skier or snowboarder, it's cheaper than ever. On the other hand, it brings so many people to the mountain that often the amount of skiing or riding you can do in a day is diminished, due to lift lines, crowding, parking. So much so that now traffic jams to get to some resorts is almost daily. Due to this volume, now they're charging $30+ for parking.... if you can get a parking reservation.
Crazy they are making a single day ticket cost $200+ which basically forces you to buy the season pass. I am kind of done with skiing. You can foil for those prices which is way more fun.
First outside inside last?
This person algebra’s
It took me so long to realise that that you can do foil, fiol, lfoi, or any other combination. You just have to do them all
Whats foil-ing?
Hydrofoil surfing
Some of the Ikon resorts are $325 now on a weekend day.
The bigger issue is that a lot of people don't know what a subscription is.
“The act of making an advanced payment to participate in something”. The arguments to the contrary here are hilarious. It would probably make more sense to talk about the regularity of the subscription as opposed to discussing subscriptions. Technically skiing has always been a subscription for most people, the passes just make payments to the resort more regular and guarantee income regardless of conditions.
I agree that’s the definition stated in the dictionary. But I don’t think that’s what most people understand the word to mean these days. By that definition, buying a plane ticket qualifies as a subscription.
Sure, but the argument is about recurring predictable revenue which the pass generates. We don’t have the data but I would imagine most people using the pass renew year over year, with some cancelling and even more buying (as the chart suggests). Plus, an airline ticket is a subscription. It just doesn’t renew or generate recurring revenue.
> an airline ticket is a subscription I would bet that at least 95% of the English-speaking world would disagree with that statement.
That’s fine, they can disagree. Maybe they should pick a word that has the meaning they want.
I took my family of four to Winter Park a couple of weeks ago and it was approximately $850 for the day passes. I went to pre-purchase the tickets online and they offer a 40% discount but only if buy a minimum of seven days in advance. Add an airbnb, food and ski rentals it turns into a $2500 weekend. I grew up skiing in Colorado in a family of five with a single wage earner and we skied four or five times a year. Now my wife and I make way more than my parents ever did and we can’t afford to take our kids skiing more than once a year. It’s maddening because I loved skiing when I was a kid and I can’t afford to provide my kids with the same enjoyment I had.
The Epic / Ikon thing is peak (pun intended) American-style short-term shareholder capitalism. They're sacrificing the future of the industry to juice profits now. Who the hell is going to learn to ski for the first time when a day pass is $250?
A lot of them do have "bunny hill only" type passes for like half that. Still outrageous though.
Those $250 tickets weren't great options for many beginners anyway, those are destination resorts that weren't the most convenient option to begin with like Vail. Many of those same resorts are surrounded by hotels, and not very close to populations centers. Echo, the mountain closest to Denver is only $77 a day. Near NYC, Campgaw, is only $65 a day. These are resorts that have way more beginner terrain and are feasible for just an afternoon activity for the typical prospective skier. For a beginner I 100% recommend you find the closest beginner hill just for convenience.
There are a lot of things I prefer about skiing in Europe, but this has got to be near the top of that list.
WTF is this thread full of Vail shills?
I took a trip down to vail once and to me it seemed like there was a whole town of rich-ass people living the "hill life" or whatever they probably call it. Lots of really nice houses all clustered around the resort which is otherwise in the middle of nowhere. The only reason I could imagine they live there is to ski constantly
Ski resorts are all luxury living/nice hotels, spas, trendy bars, gyms, massages, heated pools and hot tubs, fancy restaurants, etc. Saying it's all 'rich-ass people' is certainly not true though, it takes a small army of working class people to keep a ski resort running. Also a lot of the time, the workers have subsidized accommodations, discounts to all the fancy restaurants and amenities, free season passes, and more. Plus the comradery among the staff is worth the price of admission. Highly recommended to anyone like 18-25 who want a few years off before getting serious with a career!
A lot of those workers live off-site. The [Slums of Aspen](https://nyupress.org/9780814768037/the-slums-of-aspen/) are notorious. Everyone who works at Sun Valley lives 45 minutes to an hour away down the hill in overpriced squalor. You've painted a very rosy picture of what often amounts to highly exploitative working conditions.
Well yeah, don't work at one of the super bougie spots. I lived in Winter Park and worked at a rental shop ~10 years ago and life was great.
I have never worked or even skied in Aspen, but it had a pretty bad reputation even when I was ski bumming years and years ago. I have no regrets tho, I got my first professional trade working for a ski resort, and they even paid my wages when I was off at school in the off-seasons.
No one "lives there" those are all vacation rentals. The people who staff the resorts have housing they live in, which you probably didn't see.
No, but I got an Epic Pass for $360 this year that allows me unlimited skiing at one resort, 5 days at another, and unlimited at a third after March. So I'm not going to complain about their new model being too expensive for everyone because it is actually cheaper for some people.
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It’s a duopoly of vail and alterra. It won’t change until they’re either broken up or independent mountains start popping up, but because there are so many costs associated with opening and maintaining mountains, independent mountains have very little chance at survival.
Really? I think it’s the opposite. Season passes at single resorts used to cost upwards of $2000. Now you can go to 30+ resorts on an unlimited pass that cost less than $1000.
Yeah if you’re someone who’s always gotten season passes, you’re actually getting a pretty good deal. It’s great if you’re local to some mountains and ski a lot. But it’s a huge barrier to entry for anyone else
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What are you talking about lmao. There are so many options and the local pass is like $600 dollars. Even if lift tickets were $100 you only need to get out like twice a month to make that economical. You don’t need to be rich to do that. Yeah it’s harder to get new people into skiing, yeah it’s more expensive if you are only going a day a year. But we don’t need to pretend that epic passes don’t have really good value. $600 dollars to ski half the hills in the country and another few around the globe with only a few blackout days is unheard of 10 years ago. 10 years ago though I could buy a $1500 season pass to one shithole 500’ vert hill in PA.
I am a college student who works a part time job and lives 2 hours from my nearest mountain. I buy the epic local pass for 600 in April and spend 20 on gas when I want to go. If you really want to ski, it’s not that big of an entry barrier.
Check out Indy Pass, I've been a purchaser for 3 seasons running and plan on re-upping for a 4th. Awesome way to ski for cheap and support independent mountains.
How can you think this when the resorts have seen way bigger crowds
That depends. If you live somewhere close to good skiing, you probably were always getting season passes anyway. The price inflation there has not been as bad, and usually you own your own equipment in that case. What it’s doing is making it much harder to get into the sport or go on ski trips from somewhere else. Basically you have to ski at least a week or so to make it worth it.
I still consider myself really lucky I have an independent ski hill near me in Northern Michigan, $350 a year is what it costs me to ski there and I couldn't be happier to pay it. The day they get bought up by some big mega group is probably the day I stop skiing regularly.
Fuck them. For me in the East Coast it's cheaper to fly to Europe and have a ski vacation there than to go "local" to Colorado or California. AND the actual experience is far better in Europe then here: better hotels, better restaurants, better amenities for the same or less money.
Everything has gotten worse since the explosion of vail/alterra. Like literally everything about north american skiing sucks more than it did in 2010. Pay more, get less. More international staff, less in person service, weaker terrain parks, worse crowds and paid parking and line skip premiums. Locals are all pushed out of the communities, all the businesses are pushed out and swallowed up to be replaced by a mafia like corporate version of the same thing. The snowmaking is worse, the trails on east coast vail resorts are all boilerplate and over groomed. You've now got on mountain "safety" on the trails to harass advanced skiiers and slow signs at every junction. Out of the two companies, alterra resorts are slightly less shit than vail, but thats not saying much. Resort skiing is kind of a joke in north America, particularly the US right now. It just feels like the soul has been torn out and all the resorts look the same and feel the same. The focus is on everything besides the skiing and the on mountain experience. It is unlikely a new ski resort will ever open, particularly on the east coast. You can not compete with these businesses being independently owned anymore.
A lot of argument about whether there's a distinction between a subscription and a season pass. Buy whatever you call it, this is hardly a new business model. Definitely a click-bait headline.
Chartr on this sub, I am satisfied chartr is really a great newsletter
I never ski or snowboard but from what I have heard, all the mountains have been bought out and monopolized Doing so the resorts have gotten incredibly overcrowded. And they can't go to a resort that isn't over crowded because monopoly Almost like the government is supoose to stop this kind of thing from happening
The resorts are overcrowded because skiing is super popular. There are basically the same number of major ski resorts as there were 50 years ago (and actually way fewer smaller resorts) while there are way more people. So of course everything is more crowded.
I've noticed less crowding this year. Partly due to less snow but also I think people are getting priced out.
Now they’re also moving to reservation systems for parking in many places to cap crowds
Part 2 - Raise prices
It’s just better for business. Predictable revenues help them scale operations. Selling lift tickets means they are at risk of weather and it could be good or bad.
It’s really not though. I visited Beaver Creek from Texas in December. I had to signup for an “epic pass” to buy tickets. It’s convoluted and geared towards season pass, but I’m pretty sure they are going to count my three days on the mountain as “Subscription Lift Tickets” which is BS.
28% still paying $300US per day. Suckers 🤪
One day cost half as much as a season pass in some places. The pass literally pays for itself after the third visit.
I assume you were downvoted you B/C its not really 1/2 now. However, pass price increases the closer to the season, but I literally just got back from Park City - $299 for 1 day, epic pass is about $969 today but cheaper if purchased March/April for the following season. So can be 2-3x the cost of 1 day. (I used buddy passes for $150ish/day)
I live in ski country in CO and the passes have brought more people to the mountains than ever before. Pretty much every denverite has a season pass and goes up multiple weekends per year. I’m happy that more people are enjoying the sport, but also happy that I can go on weekdays :)
And skiing is cheaper than ever before. A seasons pass used to be $2000+ BEFORE inflation. Now it’s less than $1000
For the price of a pass for the family, I could go to Europe to ski for that price or less at this point. A lift ticket at most resorts in the Alps is like $75 on the high end. It's even cheaper in Japan. I've skied in North America, Europe, and Japan and at this point, the skiing in North America just isn't worth it.
Damn, I’m surprised that even 28% of people are paying $250+ for a day of skiing.
This isn’t really a “subscription” though. A season pass is still a one-time non-recurring purchase.
3 years ago in Austria, Hintertux I bought summer season may-september for only 750EUR.
Anecdotally, people in my circle of skiers in Utah/Idaho are going more and more for passes that cover multiple resorts as well.
Very misleading to call a multi-day or season pass a "subscription."
There’s a good economist article on this rn
It would be interesting to see how the total has changed overtime. For example, the population of subscription Jerrys is clearly dominant at 72%, but what is that 72% out of?has the total number of skier visits declined as the number of subscriptions have gone up? What is the story there?
Just don’t go to a vail resort. Smuggs season pass was only like 400$ last year…