Ikon 2020-21, Alterra vs Partners when it comes to lift access reservations

[marzNC]

No day tickets will be sold for the foreseeable future, they say. Surprisingly on Facebook the response to the reservation system has been very positive. Usually there are so many complaints about everything there. It's very easy to use--it's Eventbrite. I bought a 3-pack of tickets so I get to make a reservation, and made 2. I'm curious about next week and might try to get one depending on what I hear about these opening days.

The reservation system inspired my husband to buy a 3 pack and make 3 reservations as well. It just seems so much safer and more manageable if you know they are limiting people.

Clearly VR understood the advantages of a reservation system when it's based on software that is pretty well designed and limits that make sure the system doesn't get overwhelmed.

Interesting that Crystal is using two reservations systems. Ikon Reservations for Ikon holders and Eventbrite for the 3-pack tickets.

I took a look at my Ikon account for reservations. It shows that Sat, Dec. 5 there are no Ikon reservations available for Crystal.

Saw that on my Dec calendar that a few days couldn't be picked because I already have reservations in place. Makes sense that you can't make two reservations at different locations for the same day.

 

[Christy]

They are using Eventbrite for everything but the Ikon, looks like:

• Local Pass
• Hall Pass
• Crystal Pass
• Wild Card
• Founders
• Unused 19/20 ticket or voucher (valid until 12/31/20)

Interesting that Dec 5 is sold out for Ikon--when I pretend to make a reservation via Eventbrite, it says there are 203 tickets left. Hopefully that means they are capping Ikon so that local passes can be used. And hopefully its a meaningful limit of people! My reservations are for weekdays, but my husband is going weekends, including the 5th.

 

[marzNC]

Interesting that Dec 5 is sold out for Ikon--when I pretend to make a reservation via Eventbrite, it says there are 203 tickets left. Hopefully that means they are capping Ikon so that local passes can be used. And hopefully its a meaningful limit of people!

What I've heard is that coming up with a number is based mostly on adjusted uphill capacity. For instance normal capacity for a quad is based on having every chair loaded with four people. With social distancing rules in place, obviously the average number of people with all chairs loaded is less. Have to make assumptions about how many people will ski with someone they ride the lift with but can come up with a decent range for a reasonably good guesstimate. This season will be all about learning what works and what isn't effective to keep base areas from getting too crowded.

 

[Christy]

My husband heard on the news that Crystal's capacity is 30%. This is like a dream come true. This weekend is sold out but next week has plenty of spots. I will make a reservation for next week though "snow, heavy at times" could mean difficult driving so I might have to cancel.

 

[Christy]

Goodness. This just looks lovely. And today didn't even fill up with reservations! The rest of this week did though.



20 minutes after official opening--looks very very sane at the base.

 

[Jilly]

Lake Louise has decided to start parking restrictions after the passed weekend. Once the parking lot is full, that's it till somebody leaves. I'm sure this pass weekend was just....lets get out there for first turns. Things will calm down soon.

 

[Christy]

Since I am new to dealing with reservations there are a couple issues that are new to me. Apparently people came and skied Crystal without one--there's no way to prevent that. Crystal will have to, after the fact, make sure all pass use matched reservations. I wonder if that's an existing program they can easily run, or not. They are also now saying you get a warning once if you reserve but don't show up, and if you do it twice you may have your pass cancelled.

They said they made some changes and added some capacity to reservations, but didn't say what changes they made. They also said after Dec. 26th they will stop requiring mid week reservations, which seems odd, but we'll see. Things are always it flux...

 

[MissySki]

Since I am new to dealing with reservations there are a couple issues that are new to me. Apparently people came and skied Crystal without one--there's no way to prevent that. Crystal will have to, after the fact, make sure all pass use matched reservations. I wonder if that's an existing program they can easily run, or not. They are also now saying you get a warning once if you reserve but don't show up, and if you do it twice you may have your pass cancelled.

They said they made some changes and added some capacity to reservations, but didn't say what changes they made. They also said after Dec. 26th they will stop requiring mid week reservations, which seems odd, but we'll see. Things are always it flux...

Wait, people just showed up and were able to ski without a reservation? I thought there would be a mechanism for not allowing a pass to work if you didn't have a reservation, but now that I think about it, that seems complicated..

 

[Christy]

I think it was on Facebook that I saw Crystal say they would retroactively make sure pass use and reservations matched. I know I read it somewhere. This is all the reservation page says:

Be aware that unused reservations or attempts to visit without a reservation for the day could result in loss of access to the mountain.

 

[marzNC]

Wait, people just showed up and were able to ski without a reservation? I thought there would be a mechanism for not allowing a pass to work if you didn't have a reservation, but now that I think about it, that seems complicated..

Makes a huge difference whether or not a ski resort is using RFID or not. Even with hand scanning, that's not always going to catch someone with a season pass if there isn't a real time connection to the database that is used for lift access reservations.

Crystal is the example of how not having an integrated IT system like VR can put some Alterra resorts at a disadvantage during a pandemic.

Powdr opted to use a parking reservation system that is makes it much easier to control access. No parking reservation, no access to the parking lot, so presumably less likely that many people would bother to park in some hidden corner and hike to the base.

 

[marzNC]

Be aware that unused reservations or attempts to visit without a reservation for the day could result in loss of access to the mountain.

Assuming there is any scanning of passes, should be easy to match up databases after the fact. What's required to use the Eventbrite system? Just an email address? Have to enter a season pass ID number or a ticket number?

 

[marzNC]

Using the Ikon reservation system at a Partner resort with RFID will be different since an Ikon pass is the RFID card used to access lifts with RFID gates. Most of the Ikon Partners out west have RFID. When the MCP was new, there were resorts that didn't have RFID and that was inconvenient.

Taos is an exception because they really needed to install new lifts and spend other big money on infrastructure first after the ownership change a few years ago.

Boyne Resorts only recently moved to RFID. They wanted to develop a unique system, so implementation took a little longer than usual.

 

[MissySki]

Makes a huge difference whether or not a ski resort is using RFID or not. Even with hand scanning, that's not always going to catch someone with a season pass if there isn't a real time connection to the database that is used for lift access reservations.

Crystal is the example of how not having an integrated IT system like VR can put some Alterra resorts at a disadvantage during a pandemic.

Powdr opted to use a parking reservation system that is makes it much easier to control access. No parking reservation, no access to the parking lot, so presumably less likely that many people would bother to park in some hidden corner and hike to the base.

Yikes, yeah I guess I just hadn’t thought it through fully. They definitely need to get the word out that it’ll be tracked and people punished if they just show up without a reservation. I could see some people pushing that for sure.

 

[marzNC]

Yikes, yeah I guess I just hadn’t thought it through fully. They definitely need to get the word out that it’ll be tracked and people punished if they just show up without a reservation. I could see some people pushing that for sure.

One reason even small ski areas have invested in RFID is because a few people would try to pass around their season pass. With RFID there can be a picture that pops up on a tablet when the person with the pass goes thru a RFID gate. Have you ever seen someone asked to show their face after going thru a gate?

I remember a guy asking on a northeast regional ski forum if he would be prosecuted for letting his brother use his pass. The brother was only going to ski one weekend that season. The replies were quite and clear, he would be breaking the law based on the written contract on the back of the pass. He tried once to use the "not hurting anyone" argument but was shot down pretty fast.

Unfortunately trying to avoid paying for lift access is probably as old as the invention of lifts. I know Loon switched back to the metal wickets for day tickets because with the plastic holders people were cutting them and giving their ticket to another person later in the day.

 

[Christy]

Assuming there is any scanning of passes, should be easy to match up databases after the fact. What's required to use the Eventbrite system? Just an email address? Have to enter a season pass ID number or a ticket number?

All you do with Eventbrite is log in and click on the day you want to reserve. No pass number or ticket number required.

 

[Christy]

Managing capacity is definitely a work in progress. Crystal added more spots for today since it's been going well, but that was a mistake. Apparently today was a real sh**show. People sat in cars for an hour to park. Lines were slow, there was less mask compliance. Lot of complaints about people without reservations showing up. Take this with a grain of salt--who knows if it's true--but someone said ski patrol estimated 30% of visitors didn't have a reservation. There was a big mea culpa from Crystal on Facebook.

An Open Message to Our Crystal Guests

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

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

...

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

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

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

 

[MissySki]

Managing capacity is definitely a work in progress. Crystal added more spots for today since it's been going well, but that was a mistake. Apparently today was a real sh**show. People sat in cars for an hour to park. Lines were slow, there was less mask compliance. Lot of complaints about people without reservations showing up. Take this with a grain of salt--who knows if it's true--but someone said ski patrol estimated 30% of visitors didn't have a reservation. There was a big mea culpa from Crystal on Facebook.

An Open Message to Our Crystal Guests

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

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

...

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

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

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

I saw people complaining about some specific resorts yesterday (Big Sky and Crystal) saying that there were many weekends and holidays “sold out” to Ikon pass holders, but that day tickets were still available. That’s an interesting thing to balance..

 

[marzNC]

Managing capacity is definitely a work in progress. Crystal added more spots for today since it's been going well, but that was a mistake. Apparently today was a real sh**show. People sat in cars for an hour to park. Lines were slow, there was less mask compliance. Lot of complaints about people without reservations showing up. Take this with a grain of salt--who knows if it's true--but someone said ski patrol estimated 30% of visitors didn't have a reservation. There was a big mea culpa from Crystal on Facebook.

Thanks for the update.

Do you think a parking reservation system would work better at Crystal? What Powdr resorts are using is third-party software that seems fully developed. I assume for large events such as a music festival with a temporary parking lot in a field.

When Solitude started charging for parking in BCC, there was a huge uproar because people were spoiled by having free parking at all Utah ski resorts. But it seems clear that Crystal is not handling the increased demand well at all. In comparison, the level of effort that Mt. Hood Meadows went to come up with creative approaches to season pass offerings is more impressive. From what I know, the two are similar in being day trip areas for people from a local metropolitan area. So parking and/or bus access is a bigger deal than for ski resorts where there is a segment of the market that typically stays overnight.

 

[marzNC]

I saw people complaining about some specific resorts yesterday (Big Sky and Crystal) saying that there were many weekends and holidays “sold out” to Ikon pass holders, but that day tickets were still available. That’s an interesting thing to balance..

I would guess that the number of Ikon reservations was set up a while back for Big Sky. Since Big Sky is an Ikon Partner, hard to know what the process is for adding more Ikon reservation slots. My expectation is that those are meant more for travelers who are making lodging reservations at least a week in advance, if not weeks in advance even for early season. Boyne Resorts controls day tickets directly. That should mean that adjustments can be made more quickly based on lodging guest numbers, Ikon reservations, and the amount of terrain open.

In short the situations for Big Sky and Crystal are very different from an operational and market standpoint.

In general, there will be more variation for Ikon holders because the Alterra resorts are managed pretty independently and Ikon Partners are independent resorts with different approaches to handling parking and lift access capacity limits. However, for the average Ikon holder they are not likely to know or care about those differences. Especially if they are using Ikon as the pass for their home mountain.

 

[marzNC]

Read thru some of the comments on the Crystal FB page. Seems pretty clear that Crystal underestimated the number of people interested in skiing the Wed before Thanksgiving. Saw a comment about the fact that Stevens Pass is not open yet as another factor. At least for those people who don't buy a season pass to ski Crystal, but have Epic for Stevens.

During 2020-21, past attendance records for early season and midweek days may not be as useful for making an educated guess about demand for a given day. Especially before 100% of the lifts and most of the terrain is open for a location with thousands of skiable acres. What works in terms of keeping the number of people showing up to a manageable number for some ski areas may well not be as effective for others.

What will be the same is that after powder storms there will be more demand from locals doing day trips. I would guess that's when some people will complain about having to make any sort of reservation, whether for parking or lift access. It remains to be seen if Alterra resorts and any Ikon Partners with no reservation system in place can stick to that approach.