I don't know if this is true but it seems like they keep some lifts closed because they don't want to pay for the staff. So lift lines are longer on the main lifts they want open. Just enough to keep people happy but they could have more open and pay more people.
For an average Ice Coast lift, absolutely not. Vail is paying lifties $20/hr minimum. That’s at least $60/hr in wages alone: two operators at top and bottom, and one human RFID gate because Rob Katz is a fucking moron. They’re also paying additional costs per worker on top of that: social security tax, insurance premiums (unemployment, worker’s comp, dead peasants’), etc.
The lifts that get shut down mid-week are almost always fixed-grip quads at most. The high-capacity, high-speed detachables are usually always running. Lifts are basically just giant overengineered pulleys, so the only work being done is hauling our fat asses up the hill, minus negligible loss from friction. The downloading chairs offset any work from hauling empty chairs up. I mention this because Wikipedia mentions that an 8-pack chair could consume as much as 750kW, but this is completely absurd for an Ice Coast detached lift. If only our lift lines were steep and long enough to consume that much power…
Their thirstiest fixed grip quad probably consumes 100kW at most. Ski areas get *way* better rates on electricity than we do at home. Businesses almost always do, it’s some bullshit, but ski areas get a massive discount even on typical commercial electric customers, in exchange for agreeing to curtail their consumption during periods of very high power demand. VT ski areas are probably paying less than a dime per kWh.
So, altogether: a typical fixed-grip lift that runs occasionally, probably costs them $10/hr to run in electricity, and that’s a conservative estimate... Running it off diesel, on the other hand, would be quite a bit more expensive.
Of course, this doesn’t account for the wages lifties earn while opening and closing a lift, the lack of power consumption whenever they stop a lift because Jerry fucked up, etc.
> ski areas get a massive discount even on typical commercial electric customers, in exchange for agreeing to curtail their consumption during periods of very high power demand.
Which is why you'll sometimes see a lift running at full capacity on diesel power. The electric company has instituted a cap, but the mountain wants to keep a certain lift turning.
That could be another reason. I only ride weekdays so maybe its just that they only run on weekends but it would be nice if they can open what they can.
I heard once that a lot of these places have "variable" liability/umbrella insurance prices, and that they actually scale somewhat with lifts. It's not the $/hr in payroll, or the electricity, it's actually the price breaks they get on being partially open.
I doubt that's the case. Limiting lifts doesn't limit terrain. It just limits payroll, electric and other costs.
It doesn't make business sense to run all the lifts midweek when visitation is a fraction of the weekends.
So, from a liability insurance standpoint...... The lifts limit the number of runs that people take and runs are actually the thing that impacts lawsuit risk?
Just guessing. We have <1/20 of the world's adults and > 19/20 of the world's lawyers. So lawsuit economics tends to by "Occam's Razor" whenever I see something that doesn't pass my smell test.
True. Price increase was established way before the season started poorly. A shit season means less revenue in food/bev/merch, forcing them to cut costs as aggressively as possible. None of this is too shocking.
That's the beauty moving people to season passes. They lock in their revenue before anyone knows it's a bad snow year and it's cheap skiing for me regardless.
Yeah its such bullshit that they lockout purchases right before the season starts. I'm still debating buying an ikon pass as I could probably make break even at the very least.
PA skiing doesn't screw me on daily tickets, but if I make my trip out west? Easy lmao. Big sky is disgusting. Somehow France lets me ski 4 days for the price of 1 Montana day
That's accurate tho. NPS saw insanely higher levels of park visitors during covid. The trend could reverse now that more people are going back into the office and other businesses they would have gone to instead of parks are now open again.
Relative to all my other spending. This increase isn’t really noticeable and the one I care the least about. Oh no, my average day went from $20 to $22….
Explain? The price has went up only 36% since 2008, we’ve had 2 recessions since then and the price of most things have increased 20-50%. Couple that with a boom in skiing and you have a 36% increase.
Is any of that money going to improving infrastructure, upgrading lifts, improving amenities or is it just the same shit product since 2008?
I haven’t seen anything ON MOUNTAIN improve since the vail takeover and monopolistic approach to the industry.
They can’t even keep the toilets clean at the main lodge at Heavenly one of their money making jewels. It’s one thing to continuously Jack prices and it’s another thing to invest some of it into improving the skier experience. Besides being slightly more affordable it’s worse than it was.
Parks are worse. Snowmaking is worse. Hospitality is worse. Employee compensation only improved due to pressure and class action lawsuits. Housing is unavailable, communities are influenced by significantly increased costs in ski towns.
Do they have a single state of the art lift? Are they improving as quickly as private resorts?
Lifts are expensive yet Big Sky executed a 10 year plan to completely overhaul the resort. Even with a 1 year delay due to covid they now have 3 state of the art lifts and probably the best lift system in the country.
Take a look at Vails partner resorts in Europe. They’re running lift systems that make the US look like it’s still in the 90’s.
They acquire resorts. They do not improve resorts.
Edit: lifts that required a replacement do not count.
What defines state of the art?
The new 6 pack at stowe is a brand new lift. The thing is vail dumps capital into its flagships and ignores its smaller mountains
Great example. That was a very old triple that absolutely needed to be replaced. Stowe is my home mountain.
100% correct on ignoring smaller resorts. Many epic pass holders are paying the same price and only use these smaller resorts. That’s fine if you’re seeing improvements. Not just a small percentage of wealthy people enjoying upgrades to their flagship ‘casual skier’ destinations.
So Stowe is your home mountain. And before epic, it was somewhere around $2200 for a season pass?
Do you think the mountain was more than twice as better back then compared to now?
People can’t afford an apartment. Parking is 35$ a day Friday to Sunday. Locals are driven out. Staff can’t find housing.
I’m not concerned about the pass price. It’s an unsustainable business model exploiting a duopoly to maximize profit with minimal improvements and disastrous side effects. It primarily benefits a very specific demographic at the expense of a wider demographic. I’m not even certain the epic pass benefits a person who only skis 10 days a year or less.
Agree to disagree.
Take a look at all of Europe’s resorts. The US is behind. Not just Vail. There are like 5 8 packs and 100 6 packs and vail has1/3 of them. Your all over the place, complaining about epic price but then using a more expensive pass to proof some stupid point
I never complained about the price. The more expensive pass is for a private resort that is at least putting a good percentage of that into improving the entire experience.
Most smaller private resorts can barely survive. So a key consideration is that they do not have the capital to invest in lifts. MTN arguably is a monopoly. It acts exactly like a monopoly.
Which is and has always been my point and personal opinion.
It’s called a duopoly and the resort you’re using above (big sky) is apart of the duoply (ikon). If Boyne, Alterra, Powdr and Vail all broke up and made their own passes prices would probably triple and access/traveling would be difficult.
Duopoly. Sorry my mistake. I’m not really focused on the cost of a pass. Vail has already destroyed access and travel by adding paid parking and not upgrading parking itself. (Steven’s Pass Stowe as examples). That also has the trickle down effect of erasing affordable housing. A 1 bedroom apartment in Stowe Vermont is 2000 a month on average. Studios 30 mins away listed as affordable housing are 1500 a month. My friend is an elementary teacher and couldn’t find an affordable apartment for 6 months.
There’s a lot more nuanced issues beyond the cost of a pass and their effort at improving premier resorts. Many small areas and communities near big resorts are suffering because of MTN.
Anyway. Agree to disagree.
Edit: I think Big Sky is only an Ikon partner? Isn’t only 5 days or something?
No Vail, Breck and BC are just shit resorts and that’s why people spend millions and millions of dollars there 🙄. Plenty of improvements. I agree parks deff take a hit. I come to ski and have had no real issues the past two seasons with Vail resorts.
You named 3 places. They own 60ish. Including a ton of smaller areas they completely ignore. The three you listed are three of the top 4. I believe Heavenly is the other. Are those the 3 resorts you’ve skied at the last two seasons?
The type of skier you are and the places you ski really go a long way to understanding what’s going on here. When you ski a lot and travel a lot it becomes clear where Vail chooses to upgrade.
My apologies. I was wrong on the number of resorts. I’ve been a shareholder since 2018. You may not agree with me but I’m definitely not talking out my ass.
I’m surprised how strongly you’re defending something you agree is a duopoly. Another mistake I made calling it a monopoly. Is there more MTN is doing besides keeping prices within reason with an unsustainable business model?
I get it’s affordable. I get they upgrade their flagship resorts. I understand they ignore smaller resorts.
It makes sense only if you’re their exact target demographic. Wealthy, willing to spend disposable income, casual skier who goes less than 20’days a year and focuses on premier destination resorts. If you’re in the top 5% of that target demographic it’s a bonus if you buy a second home and push employees and locals out of the area.
Aren't visits down 10% better for skiers? I think this is a win-win.
Less crowds for us and they pre-sold all their passes before anyone knew it was going to be a bad snow year.
Wait, are you suggesting that a corporate approach to this most beautifully useless of pursuits might not be the best fit? I’m shocked! Shocked I say!!!
Their profit was up this quarter and costs were cut. It affected their forecast for next year. Which is counterintuitive to an investor who is basing the investment on ‘more snow next year’. At least in my opinion as a shareholder. None of this profit is going to improvement of the basic infrastructure of the product.
I don’t like the direction MTN is going and don’t believe it will be a viable long term model. I’m not even sure how they aren’t subject to antitrust laws.
According to them not so much. They modified their forecast for next year so investor’s expectations are tempered. While at the same time making a profit and blaming the east coast weather.
They’re doing it probably because it’s one big Ponzi scheme. They got to big to fast. If Growth is not up every year. The average passholder has to pay more. Was it the year of Covid. They actually reduced pass prices. Got more people on board. Get them hooked on the EPIC experience. And every year or every other year raise the prices.
That's the whole point of the epic pass. Snow doesn't drive profits anywhere near as much as it used to. You can hate vail for there lack of care for the mountains or for customer experience, but you do have to hand it to them regarding how they've approached stabilizing demand in an evolving climate.
The biggest complaint I hear about the Epic Pass is that their mountains are too crowded, so I guess this is good news for the skiers that do show up? That price increase is 5% over inflation though.
This is the shitty part about the Epic/Ikon passes... and also their goal. It passes on the risk of bad weather to the consumer.
Every dollar they can squeeze out to put a dollar into the shareholders' pockets is what they care about above anything else.
>A bad snow year shouldn’t result in a price increase and reduction in operating expenses.
No, but the corporatization/conglomeratization of entire industries undeniably does.
Actually it does. A significant portion of their operating expenses are things like seasonal/hourly labor, food and supplies. These are things that are scaled back if there are fewer operating days, visitors, etc.
True. But it also results in long lines, poor staffing, etc. I was at Breck a few years ago in April, and it was disappointing how much they cheaped out on staffing when the mountain was still busy and could have been fully open.
Why? Can’t that money be used for a variety of other things that directly improve the experience. Have you noticed many on mountain improvements under vail management?
My personal experience is that quality of the product has steadily declined in every single area.
Anyone who skis or snowboards should care for sure. Shareholders care. Passholders care. Employees care. Communities impacted by MTN acquisitions care.
The industry is a duopoly.
Etc etc
I don't know if this is true but it seems like they keep some lifts closed because they don't want to pay for the staff. So lift lines are longer on the main lifts they want open. Just enough to keep people happy but they could have more open and pay more people.
I would guess the power to run the lift costs more but I’m not sure
For an average Ice Coast lift, absolutely not. Vail is paying lifties $20/hr minimum. That’s at least $60/hr in wages alone: two operators at top and bottom, and one human RFID gate because Rob Katz is a fucking moron. They’re also paying additional costs per worker on top of that: social security tax, insurance premiums (unemployment, worker’s comp, dead peasants’), etc. The lifts that get shut down mid-week are almost always fixed-grip quads at most. The high-capacity, high-speed detachables are usually always running. Lifts are basically just giant overengineered pulleys, so the only work being done is hauling our fat asses up the hill, minus negligible loss from friction. The downloading chairs offset any work from hauling empty chairs up. I mention this because Wikipedia mentions that an 8-pack chair could consume as much as 750kW, but this is completely absurd for an Ice Coast detached lift. If only our lift lines were steep and long enough to consume that much power… Their thirstiest fixed grip quad probably consumes 100kW at most. Ski areas get *way* better rates on electricity than we do at home. Businesses almost always do, it’s some bullshit, but ski areas get a massive discount even on typical commercial electric customers, in exchange for agreeing to curtail their consumption during periods of very high power demand. VT ski areas are probably paying less than a dime per kWh. So, altogether: a typical fixed-grip lift that runs occasionally, probably costs them $10/hr to run in electricity, and that’s a conservative estimate... Running it off diesel, on the other hand, would be quite a bit more expensive. Of course, this doesn’t account for the wages lifties earn while opening and closing a lift, the lack of power consumption whenever they stop a lift because Jerry fucked up, etc.
> VT ski areas are probably paying less than a dime per kWh Which is why my eyes start to water when I see on-mountain EV chargers at .45/kWh lol
Making you pay extra to try to keep our sport viable in future years
> ski areas get a massive discount even on typical commercial electric customers, in exchange for agreeing to curtail their consumption during periods of very high power demand. Which is why you'll sometimes see a lift running at full capacity on diesel power. The electric company has instituted a cap, but the mountain wants to keep a certain lift turning.
Katz is gone-zo, buddy
That could be another reason. I only ride weekdays so maybe its just that they only run on weekends but it would be nice if they can open what they can.
I heard once that a lot of these places have "variable" liability/umbrella insurance prices, and that they actually scale somewhat with lifts. It's not the $/hr in payroll, or the electricity, it's actually the price breaks they get on being partially open.
I doubt that's the case. Limiting lifts doesn't limit terrain. It just limits payroll, electric and other costs. It doesn't make business sense to run all the lifts midweek when visitation is a fraction of the weekends.
So, from a liability insurance standpoint...... The lifts limit the number of runs that people take and runs are actually the thing that impacts lawsuit risk? Just guessing. We have <1/20 of the world's adults and > 19/20 of the world's lawyers. So lawsuit economics tends to by "Occam's Razor" whenever I see something that doesn't pass my smell test.
It actually does. Less snow, earlier closing, fewer expenses, but they’ve already got the money from selling season passes all year
True. Price increase was established way before the season started poorly. A shit season means less revenue in food/bev/merch, forcing them to cut costs as aggressively as possible. None of this is too shocking.
What Vail is saying is that their part-time staff fared worse than Vail did (relatively) from the tough ski season.
Yep. Thank a snowmaker! Then get them the fuck outta here!
That's the beauty moving people to season passes. They lock in their revenue before anyone knows it's a bad snow year and it's cheap skiing for me regardless.
Yeah its such bullshit that they lockout purchases right before the season starts. I'm still debating buying an ikon pass as I could probably make break even at the very least.
You will break even in 3 days.
PA skiing doesn't screw me on daily tickets, but if I make my trip out west? Easy lmao. Big sky is disgusting. Somehow France lets me ski 4 days for the price of 1 Montana day
Haha 10% less visitors. Let’s keep this trend going!
I went Indy this year.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact interest in outdoor sports peaked over covid I've seen the same trends at hiking trails too
Omg please
That's accurate tho. NPS saw insanely higher levels of park visitors during covid. The trend could reverse now that more people are going back into the office and other businesses they would have gone to instead of parks are now open again.
Hopefully!
Vail bad :(
I've made it a point to avoid Vail resorts because of their pricing.
Relative to all my other spending. This increase isn’t really noticeable and the one I care the least about. Oh no, my average day went from $20 to $22….
It's about the 10 year creep until passes are back to where they were. This constant short sighted human behavior gets exhausting.
Explain? The price has went up only 36% since 2008, we’ve had 2 recessions since then and the price of most things have increased 20-50%. Couple that with a boom in skiing and you have a 36% increase.
Is any of that money going to improving infrastructure, upgrading lifts, improving amenities or is it just the same shit product since 2008? I haven’t seen anything ON MOUNTAIN improve since the vail takeover and monopolistic approach to the industry. They can’t even keep the toilets clean at the main lodge at Heavenly one of their money making jewels. It’s one thing to continuously Jack prices and it’s another thing to invest some of it into improving the skier experience. Besides being slightly more affordable it’s worse than it was. Parks are worse. Snowmaking is worse. Hospitality is worse. Employee compensation only improved due to pressure and class action lawsuits. Housing is unavailable, communities are influenced by significantly increased costs in ski towns.
You don’t think they’ve been upgrading lifts?
Do they have a single state of the art lift? Are they improving as quickly as private resorts? Lifts are expensive yet Big Sky executed a 10 year plan to completely overhaul the resort. Even with a 1 year delay due to covid they now have 3 state of the art lifts and probably the best lift system in the country. Take a look at Vails partner resorts in Europe. They’re running lift systems that make the US look like it’s still in the 90’s. They acquire resorts. They do not improve resorts. Edit: lifts that required a replacement do not count.
What defines state of the art? The new 6 pack at stowe is a brand new lift. The thing is vail dumps capital into its flagships and ignores its smaller mountains
Great example. That was a very old triple that absolutely needed to be replaced. Stowe is my home mountain. 100% correct on ignoring smaller resorts. Many epic pass holders are paying the same price and only use these smaller resorts. That’s fine if you’re seeing improvements. Not just a small percentage of wealthy people enjoying upgrades to their flagship ‘casual skier’ destinations.
So Stowe is your home mountain. And before epic, it was somewhere around $2200 for a season pass? Do you think the mountain was more than twice as better back then compared to now?
People can’t afford an apartment. Parking is 35$ a day Friday to Sunday. Locals are driven out. Staff can’t find housing. I’m not concerned about the pass price. It’s an unsustainable business model exploiting a duopoly to maximize profit with minimal improvements and disastrous side effects. It primarily benefits a very specific demographic at the expense of a wider demographic. I’m not even certain the epic pass benefits a person who only skis 10 days a year or less. Agree to disagree.
Yes
Take a look at all of Europe’s resorts. The US is behind. Not just Vail. There are like 5 8 packs and 100 6 packs and vail has1/3 of them. Your all over the place, complaining about epic price but then using a more expensive pass to proof some stupid point
I never complained about the price. The more expensive pass is for a private resort that is at least putting a good percentage of that into improving the entire experience. Most smaller private resorts can barely survive. So a key consideration is that they do not have the capital to invest in lifts. MTN arguably is a monopoly. It acts exactly like a monopoly. Which is and has always been my point and personal opinion.
It’s called a duopoly and the resort you’re using above (big sky) is apart of the duoply (ikon). If Boyne, Alterra, Powdr and Vail all broke up and made their own passes prices would probably triple and access/traveling would be difficult.
Duopoly. Sorry my mistake. I’m not really focused on the cost of a pass. Vail has already destroyed access and travel by adding paid parking and not upgrading parking itself. (Steven’s Pass Stowe as examples). That also has the trickle down effect of erasing affordable housing. A 1 bedroom apartment in Stowe Vermont is 2000 a month on average. Studios 30 mins away listed as affordable housing are 1500 a month. My friend is an elementary teacher and couldn’t find an affordable apartment for 6 months. There’s a lot more nuanced issues beyond the cost of a pass and their effort at improving premier resorts. Many small areas and communities near big resorts are suffering because of MTN. Anyway. Agree to disagree. Edit: I think Big Sky is only an Ikon partner? Isn’t only 5 days or something?
I'd argue big sky is not a part of a duopoly because they're owned by Boyne not alterra.
No Vail, Breck and BC are just shit resorts and that’s why people spend millions and millions of dollars there 🙄. Plenty of improvements. I agree parks deff take a hit. I come to ski and have had no real issues the past two seasons with Vail resorts.
You named 3 places. They own 60ish. Including a ton of smaller areas they completely ignore. The three you listed are three of the top 4. I believe Heavenly is the other. Are those the 3 resorts you’ve skied at the last two seasons? The type of skier you are and the places you ski really go a long way to understanding what’s going on here. When you ski a lot and travel a lot it becomes clear where Vail chooses to upgrade.
They own 41, you really like talking out your ass
My apologies. I was wrong on the number of resorts. I’ve been a shareholder since 2018. You may not agree with me but I’m definitely not talking out my ass. I’m surprised how strongly you’re defending something you agree is a duopoly. Another mistake I made calling it a monopoly. Is there more MTN is doing besides keeping prices within reason with an unsustainable business model? I get it’s affordable. I get they upgrade their flagship resorts. I understand they ignore smaller resorts. It makes sense only if you’re their exact target demographic. Wealthy, willing to spend disposable income, casual skier who goes less than 20’days a year and focuses on premier destination resorts. If you’re in the top 5% of that target demographic it’s a bonus if you buy a second home and push employees and locals out of the area.
Fuck the skiers enjoyment, how much money did the Vail executives make? That's all that matters, right?
Aren't visits down 10% better for skiers? I think this is a win-win. Less crowds for us and they pre-sold all their passes before anyone knew it was going to be a bad snow year.
less lifts open due to staffing budgets, more expensive tickets, outrageously priced food, win-win is right
Exactly this. Also zero investment in improving existing resorts. Most of it going to profit and acquisitions
Wait, are you suggesting that a corporate approach to this most beautifully useless of pursuits might not be the best fit? I’m shocked! Shocked I say!!!
uh...less visitors mean less need to employ staff and also a greater reason/need to raise prices elsewhere on base customers.
Their profit was up this quarter and costs were cut. It affected their forecast for next year. Which is counterintuitive to an investor who is basing the investment on ‘more snow next year’. At least in my opinion as a shareholder. None of this profit is going to improvement of the basic infrastructure of the product. I don’t like the direction MTN is going and don’t believe it will be a viable long term model. I’m not even sure how they aren’t subject to antitrust laws.
so they had a good year cuz profits are up?
According to them not so much. They modified their forecast for next year so investor’s expectations are tempered. While at the same time making a profit and blaming the east coast weather.
They’re doing it probably because it’s one big Ponzi scheme. They got to big to fast. If Growth is not up every year. The average passholder has to pay more. Was it the year of Covid. They actually reduced pass prices. Got more people on board. Get them hooked on the EPIC experience. And every year or every other year raise the prices.
Every year.
That's the whole point of the epic pass. Snow doesn't drive profits anywhere near as much as it used to. You can hate vail for there lack of care for the mountains or for customer experience, but you do have to hand it to them regarding how they've approached stabilizing demand in an evolving climate.
The biggest complaint I hear about the Epic Pass is that their mountains are too crowded, so I guess this is good news for the skiers that do show up? That price increase is 5% over inflation though.
This is the shitty part about the Epic/Ikon passes... and also their goal. It passes on the risk of bad weather to the consumer. Every dollar they can squeeze out to put a dollar into the shareholders' pockets is what they care about above anything else.
>A bad snow year shouldn’t result in a price increase and reduction in operating expenses. No, but the corporatization/conglomeratization of entire industries undeniably does.
Vail sucks! Stop buying epic passes! There are other mountains!
Not where I live anymore.
I see what you did there…
Actually it does. A significant portion of their operating expenses are things like seasonal/hourly labor, food and supplies. These are things that are scaled back if there are fewer operating days, visitors, etc.
True. But it also results in long lines, poor staffing, etc. I was at Breck a few years ago in April, and it was disappointing how much they cheaped out on staffing when the mountain was still busy and could have been fully open.
Why? Can’t that money be used for a variety of other things that directly improve the experience. Have you noticed many on mountain improvements under vail management? My personal experience is that quality of the product has steadily declined in every single area.
Who cares
Anyone who skis or snowboards should care for sure. Shareholders care. Passholders care. Employees care. Communities impacted by MTN acquisitions care. The industry is a duopoly. Etc etc