Yeah... right.... I'll go through your rant point by point for David's clarification and everyone else's as well.
"THIS PARK IS FOR ANTS!
Largest park. Momentum has 5 lanes of which two are moguls. COC has 7 lanes all of which all are park lanes. That means we are well over double the size of PARK. Best park... Momentum's staff always seem to get their check out's for magazines done in our park. Lines of jumps and rails as well as a rail garden, 22 foot pipe, 22' 1/4 pipe, two airbags, possibly three, the 2010 Olympic pipe builder is our park builder, private lifts. It's amazing how many more features you can pack into a park double the size of any other park. The only way to become the best all around skier is to ski the most variety of features. Only COC offers that variety. Watch the videos from every camp and check how many ways they can shoot the same feature from a different angle making you think their park is huge. Then watch our videos and check out all the features in the background of shots. The record I think is 22 features in one shot. Ridiculous. The Camp of Champions park is groomed by snowcat every night and the features are groomed the same way. Also and just as important, the flats are groomed too. You don't want to be hauling ass out of a feature and eat it in the flats due to non existent grooming. Momentum hand digs a lot of their features and grooms about 1/4 as much as we do. We have the safest park with the least amount of injuries according to Blackcomb ski patrol and The Whistler Medical clinic. They also rave about how we take such great care of the kids that do get injured and they wish the other camps did the same. Hardly a "Junkshow", I'm sorry we fired one of your friends for not doing their job or you for being unable to hang a banner. Internal difficulties... not once we got rid of all the people that weren't up to our standards.
Why we're so blunt this year
The reason we are so blunt in out ads this year is because we are sick of half size parks pretending to be bigger than ours. I've been friends with Tim Windell forever, and while we were hanging out shooting the breeze at a friends wedding, he told us he wishes his park was as big as our park. That should put an end to that subject.
Coaches sleeping with campers... straight up didn't happen. I own the camp and I can tell you it never happened. Period.
F-ing our customers.... Ummmm nope.
We built or pricing structure to make it so you could get as little camp as you wanted or as much camp as you wanted, instead of having one all inclusive price that made you pay for stuff whether you wanted or needed it or not. The pricing structure is designed for you to take stuff way not add it on. Overnight camp is $1885 with coaching. If you want to sleep in your car and ski every day with out coaching, take away everything except park access and tickets and camp is $695. Nowhere is cheaper than that. Take away as much or as little as you want to get to the price you want. Coaching is $790. Accomm for $400. Bring a sleeping bag and save $50. Sleep in your car save $400. Shop at the grocery store so you don't have to buy dinner and save more. We didn't split the prices out to charge you more for stuff we split the prices out to save you money by giving you the option of seeing what adds up in the price of a camp and letting you decide if you want to pay for it or not. We dropped our base price by $500 this year and then split out the entire cost of camp so you could decide what you want to pay for and what you don't. So instead of F-ing campers as you put it we are actually making it so more people can come to camp instead of having one price suits all. Hardly F-ing our customers. It's called giving people as many options as possible to save them money so it's not just rich kids coming to camp. Having grown up with a single parent and ski racing, I learned at a young age the route to the Olympics is have rich parents and go to summer camp. That's why I quit racing. That is why every year I try to make camp as cheap as possible so kids that grew up like me, skiing every day of the winter with no money can have the possibility of coming to camp. The tax is the gov, so that is not camp charging you more. I hate the HST as much or more than most people. It's a straight up rip off.
On snow time
We get so many people that come to camp that can't believe how long the day is at COC and how much time we put in on snow. We always thought a day was a day, you got on the lift when it opened and came down when it closed. Former Windells staffers, coaches, and campers have told us that they were lucky to get on the hill by 10:30 and we done at 2:30. You don't read that on their website. At COC you can get on the lift at 7:15 and ski with your coach from 8:00 AM when you get to the glacier. You download at 3. That is 3 hours longer a day on snow. See the previous paragraph for the reason we pack in so much stuff into your camp, because no matter how much or little you paid to come to camp, it's still a lot of money and we want you to get every drop of skiing and fun you can from your trip to camp.
Snow Quality
The reason the glacier closes at the end of COC is because there isn't enough business to keep it open. Momentum and COC both only run when the snow quality can be guaranteed to be the same from the first week of camp to the lat week of camp. You pay a lot of money to come to camp and if I couldn't give you the exact same quality the last week of camp as we gave kids the first week of camp, I'd feel like I was ripping you off. That's why we do 4 weeks. I'm sure John at Momentum feels the same way.
Tom Wallisch
Pro's come and go between camps. If Tom hated COC so much why is he coming back this summer? Junk show? Huh? Whatever on that. One man's gold is another man's junk show. Doug and Jeff of Newschoolers always tell us how much they love coming to COC because the park is so great and the camp is so organized. I'll take their word for it. You can too or not.
After Skiing Activities
COC has so much to do after the lifts close it's nuts, we have all the same activities that Whistler has to offer that Momentum uses, water ramps, golf, Monkido, movies etc etc, but we also build our own 60,000 square foot giant playground in The Compound. A Big Air Bag to huck into on bikes, a perfect 48 foot wide miniramp, dodge ball, bball, crazy inflatables, multi trampolines, flat and on angle (the video should be up tomorrow), dryslope rails, a mulch pit for bikes, and so much other stuff I can't even think of it all. I will have a new feature going in this summer in The Compound that will change the summer game again. I can't show it till Camp A, but I'm sure everyone will copy it for the following summer, like they did with jump design, rail design, private lifts, air bags, superpipes, coaching techniques. When you come to COC you get the camp that is leading the way not following. The Dorm is basic, but what more do you need? Nothing to break and no hotel guest/kid haters means more fun. Being up there means we can crank the tunes, get stupid, and have more fun than should be allowed and have the best week of our lives.
I hope that clears up any questions anyone reading this might have. If not hit me back here or send me an email to info(at)campofchampions.com or call me at 888-997-2267. I'd love to hear from you.
Original question poster - I hope you make it to COC this summer, but if you don't, when you ride up the T-bar at the end of the day, try not to cry when you cruise by our park wishing you hadn't listened to some hater. We've been here for 23 years and we'll be here for you for the next 23 years as well so either way, this summer or a summer in the future... We'll see you soon
Ken Achenbach
Camp of Champions Founder, Owner, and Director.
