Here comes Vail!
As many of you no doubt heard, on August 8th 2016 Vail Resort announced they will purchase Whistler Blackcomb for $1.4 billion CAD (Unofficial Networks story). This comes on the heals of Whistler Blackcomb's $345 million CAD project announcement called the Renaissance project (Unofficial Networks story). The project calls for large investments focused on diversifying mountain offerings to support off season visitation as well as additional mountain facilities.
What does all this mean? Answer the bigs are getting bigger and lift tickets are going up in price! Well sort of. If you have skied Vail the last several seasons no doubt you paid upwards of $200 a day to ski. However daily ski pass pricing does not tell the complete Vail Story. In 2008 Vail introduced the EPIC seasons pass which is valid every day of the year, no blackout dates, at every Vail owned resort. The cost $809 (2016 price for adult). The idea behind this pass is to upsell Vail's clients from a week's worth of day passes to a pass good for an entire season. From a skiers stand point that's a good deal. From Vail's standpoint a pricing structure like the Epic pass can turn a 1 week vacationer into a 2 or maybe 3 week vacationer. Who wins in this scenario? Vail of course but wait the customer does as well they get to ski more. Just Maybe the skier wins more because with Vail Resorts we are not talking about just Vail Mountain you could take your 2nd or 3rd vacations some where other than Vail. You might like to try Park City for example, or Breckenridge, maybe Lake Tahoe or Europe. You could try any or all of these areas in a year or maybe you could try Whistler Blackcomb in 2017. All of these areas will be included in your EPIC pass for 2017.
But you say "I don't want to ski everywhere else I just want to ski Whistler!". Well your are in luck because the EPIC pass will save you about $330 over 2016 prices. Maybe you will only ever ski Whistler and nowhere else. This is where I begin to speculate, when Vail added Park City to the EPIC last year if you were a PC skier and you could navigate some blackout days you had some less expensive options. The EPIC Locale pass, adult $629, offers full seasons pass with blackout days of Thanksgiving, Christmas, MLK, and Presidents Day. So if you don't like skiing with the crowds this option is a distinct possibility.
We know from the Renaissance announcement Whistler intends to add water-slides, indoor activities, putt putt, castles, arborism, cheese graters, and animal husbandry. Ok I made most of that shit up but you get my point there was a lot of focus on activities other than skiing. Vail is not that. Sure Vail likes the off season activities, anything to fill up the resorts with people. But Vail knows what butters their bread and that is SKIING. Judging from past actions look to Vail to add ski facilities, more chairs, more gondolas, more acreage, more everything skiing.
Sure we are in for change but if you like to ski Vail knows how to make you happy.
See you on the slopes.
BTW there was snow at the Roundhouse today!
