Today was my first day on the slopes with the new lift ticket policy. Some of you folks who have been skiing at Mt Bachelor since the beginning of the season may have some positive experiences with this new crazy system. My first impression is, just plain stupid. Nice try, but whoever designed the system must have been heavily medicated. First the assessment chart. At first glance one would need a PHD in rocket science to decipher it. Then the rating system. By whose standards do we evaluate Rough, Manageable, Fair, Comfortable? Are they by Rambo standards or Wayne Newton? Who is the lift and weather Czar that makes these daily assignments? I was told that the decision is made the night before on pricing for the next day. That’s pretty omniscient! What happens if the day does not turn out as expected? You’ve shelled out your 69 bucks and then what? A refund? Not! Or the opposite: You started with a bargain day for $49 dollars and then the sun comes out and the wind dies down and then what? You think they are going to open the summit? Doubt it! What incentive does the Mt. have, once it has decided on a $49 day, to open anything additionally – like on some of those great powder days? The whole system seems wrought with too much ambiguity and grey zones. (There are so many scenarios that I could imagine.) And doesn’t this penalize folks who don’t ski on the Summit or the backside. “Yeah I paid $69 dollars to ski all day on Sunrise because it was deemed comfortable.”
Will this be another unsuccessful attempt on the part of Mt. Bachelor to try to be profitable and attract skiers? Anybody want to put odds on this system still being in place next season?
R. Huberman
Editor’s note: While Mt. Bachelor sets the initial pricing based on the forecast for the following day, it can change the rate based on real conditions in the morning before the first ticket it has sold, which it has done four times this season, according to Marketing Director Alex Kaufman.
This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2010.
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Darn. 3 comments calling out the above as slanderous and then tsweekly.com crashes and we lose them. Alas. Will re-prashe:
We decide based on open terrain and level of weather impact (as we clearly state on our website). We have had numerous middle days where we open summit. 2 in the last week! Your claims that we won’t open summit are based on habit hate, not on actual examples. We’ve been proving that conspiracy theory wrong all year. Even opened summit at 1:55 pm last Thursday when we got visibility at 12:30 and pulled rapid fire avy control. The scenarios you write about are contigent on us being the devil and are akin to fear mongering.
We base the decision on how much terrain is likely to be open (which is the main driver) and the amount of impact the weather will have on a persons comfort level. If it's blowing 70 with no visibility or rain that is a less enjoyable scenario than bluebird with low winds. The vast majority of people seem to agree with that idea. Good/big day is top price day, small/gnarly day is bottom price and day in between is the middle. That's what's up. It’s step two of transparency in the same way that the snow report is legit now.
Today was the top price. 5th day of the season like that on the sliding scale. We had bluebird and the whole mtn. Tomorrow we will be $59. Likely no summit but all other terrain and reduced visibility with snow but fun otherwise. We have three levels of experience here depending on the day, and this helps us price to them. Daily numbers to this point have been 17 at the bottom price, 28 at the middle and 5 at the top on all of our sliding scale days.
Of course the vast majority of Central Oregonians save on the walk up tourist price since we create products for them to do that. The new 12-day for $33 a day, Club Card for $49 a day or a season pass that they use massively. Or others just visit during the 4 charity weeks (just raised $48,000) or ski for schools, etc.
Happy to chat about this in person. My office is above ski patrol in WV.
yesterday (saturday) was worth it at twice the price!
No one in Bend can write anything w/o this douchy Kaufman jumping in as Bachelor’s savior .. I’m sick of reading his BS that he gets paid to say..