The local ski “resorts” raised their lift prices by $2 or $3 this year. I suppose that’s to be expected, but it’s still a pain in the ass. Fortunately, we’ve had a little bit of snow, I was able to hit the slopes the night before Thanksgiving. I don’t ever remember (in 18 years of skiing/boarding) being able to ride before Thanksgiving. The local hills opened the week before, the bigger resorts up north opened Thanksgiving Day or the day after.
Anyways, I also made it out on the day after Thanksgiving for the evening session at one of the local dirt-hills. The morning pass is good from 10am to 5pm, and the evening pass from 3pm to 10pm, so there is some overlap. As I was leaving the ticket window, I heard some kids trying to extend their morning pass, they were willing to pay extra to stay a few more hours.
A morning pass is $30. An evening pass is $30. An all-day pass is $37, seems like you should be able to upgrade your pass for $7 and a processing fee of some sort, right?
Wrong! You are not able to convert a morning pass to an all-day pass.
This is the policy everywhere I’ve ever shredded, “upgrades” are not available. The only way to extend your lift ticket is by purchasing another, full-price lift ticket. So, you have to pay an additional $30 for something that you could’ve bought (with some foresight) for $7. Of course, almost nobody is willing to do this, and these kids were no exception to the rule.
Which makes me wonder why the policy is as it is. For this policy to be profitable, you’d have to sell one of these full-price tickets to 20% of the people who would’ve bought a regular-priced extension. I sincerely doubt that they sell full-price tickets to even 1% of the people who’d be willing to pay an additional $7.
Effectively, the resorts have set the price of extending one’s lift ticket so high as to completely eliminate any demand for ticket upgrades. “If you’re not willing to give us an additional $30, we don’t want any of your money” is a stupid way to do business when the marginal cost of an additional skier is essentially $0, and especially since many of the local hills are struggling financially over the past few winters.
If they’re not willing to “upgrade” their pass for $7, why not offer an extension for, say, $10 or $15?
Are the slopes so busy that it makes sense to exclude only the most determined from extending through the evening? I doubt it, but I don’t know. I don’t want to assume stupidity, even though stupidity seems to be the explanation.
No, but that would be a good reason to do it. Most of the local hills are struggling like Joe Namath to make money the last few years.
From now on if we go in the morning we should buy the all day pass for $37. Then stand in front of the ticket booth and sell that same pass to somebody going for the afternoon ski for $20. I know its probably not transferable, but how are they going to know. This way we only paid $17 for skiing, saving $13, and the person who wants to go in the afternoon can go for $20, saving $10. Its a win/win for the consumer.
I like that idea. Not to self: buy zip-ties to attach lift ticket/wicket to your pants.