Don’t Call It a Comeback

partyandBS

partyandBS

Active member
Yo! Parks are fuckin back baby!

My refrence is from a CO standpoint.

A-Basin opened early and pretty standard had a few features

Keystone was next and had a pretty decent hike park shortly after opening. Good offering but the hiking wasnt the best but still sick.

Winter park opened and had a park only surface lift

Breck opened and had a park significantly earlier than last year. Last year they had zero features until after new years

Copper opened with a dope hike park and is gearing up to host grand prix and dew tour

even Purgatory seems to be making a decent push for their parks

I heard 7 Springs is focused on early season parks

Stowe had parks shown on their main instagram page which was not a thing when i was there for the 3 seasons after Vail bought them.

Are parks back in the limelight at your hill or am I drawing conclusions?

I can say from the meetings I’ve been in, the media teams are absolutely looking at the content shared by guests and they have noted the increase of park posts the start of the season. This type of feedback will lead to more focus on parks. When you stack your clips, tag the resort. They eat that shit up and that will influence them with how they advertise and where they send their money.
 
A Basin park crew say they are hoping to open up the lower park this year too. It hasnt been there for a minute so thats cool if they actually get to do that.

Also lovelands park is pretty setup with some rails right now.

**This post was edited on Dec 1st 2022 at 10:07:38am
 
Agreed, after Targhee's park being mediocre for a year or two, and then not even existing by the end of last season, we had two sick parks, with a bunch of features opening day!
 
Bogus opened with a sick park right at the base. They hosted a Snowboy Productions shoot with is why but was still cool to see. Not enough to build the big parks yet and it's looking promising. I know they upped their feature inventory this off season.
 
Apparently the management at 7 springs likes the parks because they realize it brings in a lot of people to the resort (no brainer). And they’re giving our park crew a good budget. And we’re open full time now, 9-9, 7 days a week. In past seasons you can expect 7 days a week not until Christmas, and even then, they didn’t have hours til 9 on Sunday thru Wednesday.

I hate vail but they’re definitely starting off on the right foot here.
 
North ridge has been on at Killington for weeks now

sugarbush had a hike park even and looks like they’re ready to push for a full park.

early season stoke is high hopefully this continues
 
hopefully my local has more than just this one corrugated! like they have so many small ah rails they could just throw up, looks like they are making the jumps right now though.

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Keep being vocal about it! When it’s good, say thanks! When it’s terrible, be polite but make it clear what you are looking for as a pass holder. I’m feeling overall like we are in a better spot than like 3 or 4 years ago in a lot of ways.
 
14485729:JITY said:
Vail doing something good?????

this can’t be right
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So my perception is that things like ‘epicliftlines’ have led to the general pop associating a problem at a few resorts to spread across their entire company. So I believe they are giving more power back to each entity to be unique and run there own ‘brand’ instead of the overlords at corporate saying this cookie cutter one size fits all model is the only way to go. Turns out most of the teams that actually are at the mountains recognize the desire for park skiing and the countless *free* media posts that come with it. Again just my speculation and not confirmed

Seems like the internet warriors are making positive change.
 
14485754:partyandBS said:
So my perception is that things like ‘epicliftlines’ have led to the general pop associating a problem at a few resorts to spread across their entire company. So I believe they are giving more power back to each entity to be unique and run there own ‘brand’ instead of the overlords at corporate saying this cookie cutter one size fits all model is the only way to go. Turns out most of the teams that actually are at the mountains recognize the desire for park skiing and the countless *free* media posts that come with it. Again just my speculation and not confirmed

Seems like the internet warriors are making positive change.
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Good that they are finally figuring it out
 
14485751:JITY said:
Lmao they call that a terrain park?
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they have tons of features more than enough it just takes them a while to put them up. I want the A-frame rail and a tube at least and a lot of their features are low enough that you barely need a lip, last year they have a couple rails up opening week, but they are in week 3 rn.
 
Yeah dude bridger has been blasting snow over at the park area and have huge mounds already there. Looks like an early season
 
7Springs’ Alley park is absolutely firing for a November opener. Was worried Vail would ruin the place, but things actually look really promising now.
 
northstar has about 20 rails up but no jumps yet (they had one for a couple days but pushed it down for some reason). hoping this big storm means they'll start building next week. get it!

**This post was edited on Dec 1st 2022 at 1:18:59pm
 
Vail is starting to understand that happy park skiers makes them buying up these resorts more peaceful. I believe that they can do some great things for skiing. That being said I don't think that everything that they will do is going to be the best, but they can do some good for the sport.
 
during the week, the majority of riders at the resort seem to be people in the park (including teams) anyway. that is a lot of passes for sure

14485837:kflobutler said:
Vail is starting to understand that happy park skiers makes them buying up these resorts more peaceful. I believe that they can do some great things for skiing. That being said I don't think that everything that they will do is going to be the best, but they can do some good for the sport.
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It’s been cold up here in maine so we have 2 parks at the loaf right now, 1 smaller hike type park and then a flowy medium park, most features we’ve ever had opening week especially considering we got 2 10-15ft jumps. Pretty happy with the support we’ve been getting

I’d just note to tag the mtns main insta instead of just the park crews when possible, usually it’s just park crew seeing that one vs higher up marketing people on the main insta
 
As for CO...

Vail Resorts I think its prolly a little better than last year at Key and Breck cause snowfall and temps have been a little better than last year. But in general Vail Resorts has killed both those park scenes compared to the past. Anybody remember early season A 51 park when it had the whole beginner lift area up top? so dope! and that was a shit snow year as well

Copper: Any Woodward affiliated resort gonna put in a solid park offering...

A-basin: does what the fuck they want, cause they are an OG run, unaffiliated resort. would be cool to see the lower park again, but the natural terrain they got is plenty enough for me.
 
Purgatory normally has a decent park or two but the lift situation for the main park sucks. One lap and then a 10 minute ride up.

The lift for the xl booters isn't much better either.
 
14485741:weatcoast said:
Apparently the management at 7 springs likes the parks because they realize it brings in a lot of people to the resort (no brainer). And they’re giving our park crew a good budget. And we’re open full time now, 9-9, 7 days a week. In past seasons you can expect 7 days a week not until Christmas, and even then, they didn’t have hours til 9 on Sunday thru Wednesday.

I hate vail but they’re definitely starting off on the right foot here.
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I hope that the management actually has that mindset, and isn't just letting the parks survive for now.

To your point, early season and late season at springs are essentially made up of a smaller, core group of season pass holders who ski a few runs to keep their streaks going, and many park skiers. Especially late in the season, I always wonder where all these park skiers come out of the woodwork from.

I am holding my breath, but it does seem like an improvement so far. 7 days a week this early is awesome.
 
14485947:Dangler_Danger said:
I hope that the management actually has that mindset, and isn't just letting the parks survive for now.

To your point, early season and late season at springs are essentially made up of a smaller, core group of season pass holders who ski a few runs to keep their streaks going, and many park skiers. Especially late in the season, I always wonder where all these park skiers come out of the woodwork from.

I am holding my breath, but it does seem like an improvement so far. 7 days a week this early is awesome.
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The seven springs mob runs deep
 
I don't have any numbers to back this up, but it does seem like a decent proportion of season pass holders, especially in the 12 to 25 age range, participate in park skiing. Large resorts like Breck, Keystone and Vail have so many casual skiers that they could thrive with or without parks.

However, for smaller resorts without insane snow/terrain like 7 springs, I think that parks could be important to maintaining a loyal base of pass holders who may eventually bring their kids to the resort. If I were managing a small resort like 7springs and looking long term, I would be intentional about satisfying the park "mob."
 
14485947:Dangler_Danger said:
I hope that the management actually has that mindset, and isn't just letting the parks survive for now.

To your point, early season and late season at springs are essentially made up of a smaller, core group of season pass holders who ski a few runs to keep their streaks going, and many park skiers. Especially late in the season, I always wonder where all these park skiers come out of the woodwork from.

I am holding my breath, but it does seem like an improvement so far. 7 days a week this early is awesome.
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Quality terrain parks was highlighted as a competitive strength of vail resorts' portfolio in their most recent annual shareholders report (pg 76 here for the 2022 proxy and form 10-K https://investors.vailresorts.com/annual-reports). I remember skimming the document to see if they had any estimates on how much money the terrain park brings in vs other styles of skiing but they didn't report that type of granularity. It's quite possible they have internal estimates, however.

Honestly I didn't think that they actually cared, but maybe they realized a once strength is now a weakness due to their mismanagement, and frankly, the impressiveness of their competitor-associated woodward program, which IMO seems to be killing it the last decade or so.

Interestingly enough they mention Keystone's A51 park by name, as well as Breck parks, but in their Park city overview completely omit the terrain park. Weird.
 
3 kings at pcmr is the best it’s been this early in the season in a while. They’re also re opening the park on canyons side after taking it out for the last few years. Stoked
 
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