Reasons for a good park

feihlination

feihlination

Active member
hey everyone, its been a while, but lets start (its kinda a lot, but please get through it, its very important)

ever since i can imagine, our park was fvkcing bad. not many kickers, not many rails and those were badly set-up. a local was the park manager (can you imagine, one single person half-time is the only responsible for the park).

so it was the bomb to see how our park became one of the best in the eastern alps last year. a new park manager (klaus marko, he is pretty much the best in europe) came and built a triple corner line, double wallrides, two 60 ft/40 ft tables followed by a corner higher than i could ever imagine and so on (ok, some more rails would have been great, but the park was still one of the best around).

so now there is the decision if klaus will be here next year. in general, the mountain company wants him. but he wants to make the park area to his "playground" (including higher costs for setup and shaping and even costs for earth preparations in summer, BUT THIS COMPANY IS ONE OF THE WEALTHIEST SKI RESORT COMPANIES AROUND, klaus told me that the costs are easily in the budget). if he does not get this freedom in setting up the park, he will go somewhere else and our bad park is back...

one problem is, that our pro line was kinda empty this year. some pros (check out next years rage film) where shooting on it but not many other people (excluding us) hit it. so the mountain company is like, hey, there arent any people here in the park, so why spent money on it. but i mean, a good park takes some time to get known, right? two or three years at last.

on friday, 10 o'clock GMT+1, there will be a meeting of the mountain managers. klaus invited me to it. i should give my point of view as a local skier. so i am like looking for things to say. please help me.

one problem is, that newschoolers (in general) arent very wealthy, so they dont spend much money in the town while staying here and theyre not staying in the expensive hotels. maybe they are bringing theyre parents, i dont know.

maybe you know what i mean, maybe you saw your park develop over the past years and so you can describe, how the benefits/costs-relation is like. describe the usual newschooler, and how our resort can benefit of him.

ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
 
It's my understanding that parks in Europe aren't as great as the ones in North America. There aren't THAT many great parks there right? The only ones I can really think of are Laax and La clusaz. Having a great park could encourage more and more filmers to come and bigger competitions to come there. Think of another European Open to come to your mountain. Huge compeitions basically give free advertising to the mountain. People hear about the comps and want to go there. Laax is one of the first places I want to go in Europe. Maybe if your park manager stays, I will be saying your mountain instead.

But your park crew created an awesome park in a year, and you got Rage to come in one year. That is pretty big. Imagine how much exposure there will be in 2 or 3 years. More and more people will hear about it and more will come. Your mountain should also think about advertising a great park, that would make better skiers come since not many other mountains have parks that good.

As for newschool skiers not having much money. I know plenty of rich newschool skiers that will spend tons of money. Even if they arent great at park, they will still want to go to the best park. hope this helped.
 
you should create/get someone to create some sort of advertising and see if you can get it on here to create a buzz, plus local advertising. and if your mountain is that cheap, start a "create my park" contest on here where kids make designs for some free stuff you get from sponsors, or stuff thats purchased by your mountain. then run all the ideas by the guys in charge and select a winner who has a sick park and fits the budget. you dont need that park designer guy that bad
 
also, if the mountain is concerned about cost, get some company to sponsor it. I know you wouldn't want to have mcdonalds sponsor it, but its an example, you could have it be the mcdonalds park and have a mcdonalds in it. seriously, that would be so sick. Stomp a switch cork 5 and ski into the drive through and get some mcnuggets. shit man, I think that could only happen in heaven.

Also, maybe suggest the mountain to build a cafeteria, lodge, just a place to eat near the park so the rich people would eat and sit and watch all "the crazy youngins go backwards of the ramps and do helicopters."
 
^some good points, lots of jokes...

but the sponsor idea is a really good idea. Call it nature valley park. You have tons of nature valley signs all around the park, and you'll get money for it. Suggestion
 
--Try to do something innovative... the "design you own park idea" is a good one. You could also to host some doubles competition (with jumps and features large enough so two or more people can jump at the same time kinda like at the JOI). You could also ... make some kind of art contests like "paint your jibs" ... I know it's not very good but I'm just throwing some stuff.

--The direction of the mountain may fear the costs of tourists getting injured in the park, so you could make a park pass to keep the gapers away and it would bring $$$ into the investors pocket so you could have a dope park and keep your ill park designer.
 
I dont have much to add, but I know 7 springs in Pennsylvania has gone through a similar change and recently put the park on steroids and hired some great designers.  You could contact them to get more statistics or quotes on how its afffected them.  
 
The simple fact is that if a good park is properly marketed, it brings more than just newschoolers. It also brings their parents, and they are the ones with the money. If you can convince the kids that your park is dope, their parents will be more likely to go there, because they can go ski together, and their kid can sesh the park all day. Look at a resort like breckenridge or keystone, a large number of kids ride the park while thier parents buy a pass, and possibly real estate, hell thats what my family did.
 
our mountains park has been pretty week for as long as i can remember (which is easy as we only got it about 4 years ago)

but this last season we got some guy from france to focus on it and the jumps started to get smooth and big. it helps alot to have that but our park still has little creativity and flow. what uve got is great and ur hills lucky to have someone who is as dedicated as he sounds. it makes a huge difference and you should stress how lucky the hill is to have him. No doubt this commitee is older orientated as seats of power are usually, speak for the youth and where our interests lay
 
The trick is you have to bring more kids into your park, one thing my home mountain did is we hosted a 3 on 3 intramural contest, basically skiers, snowboarders, free heelers, girls boys, doesn't matter who is on your team. you form a team of three, you pick out the three sickest features that day and everyone gets three hits at it (depending on how many people enter obviously) you add the best score from each person on each feature and the team with the highest points that night wins. you can also give out best trick prizes for each feature. then you make the intramural comps a series like we did where we have 4-5 a year, you carry points over, and kids come back to your park at least 4-5 times. the team that gets the most points over the whole series each member gets a seasons pass. it increased our night ticket sales on the night of the comp from 50 on that night to around 250-300, then as more kids realized our park was fun, they continued coming even when there wasn't comps and now our local crew grew from 10 or 12 good riders to 30 or 40 ontop of tons more groms. basically any event you can create at your resort will bring people, get a dope local shop to sponsor the event and you don't even have to supply prizes just a venue and a park crew to maintain the features.
 
I am glad this was posted. The park at my mountain has never been that great. It has never really had a legit park crew. It has never been managed as a park. Just a trail with some jumps and rails. I have some kids in mind that I think would make a great park crew. And if I can propose some of these ideas to my mountain, maybe they will be more up to the challenge.
 
i always hear insurance is the reason that there are no big rails or jumps, but screw that because if people arent good enough to hit the bigger features then they should stay off them, i hate how our legal system works with that stuff.
 
well if they have a 60 footer thats big enough for an insurance problem, so it cant have to do with that, but the best thing to do is have people talk to and write letters to the manager of the mountain and maybe he will realize that you need a good park to make money, just use mammoth as an example or somthing bc it wasnt popular at first until it got exposure in magazines and shit
 
so the meeting was today, i couldnt participate since i had to work (my boss told me the evening before). but klaus called me after the meeting and it seems like the other "fighter for freeskiers & snowboarders" as well as klaus himself managed it to come out of the meeting with an positive overall impression.

earthworks wont be done, but he'll get more (and earlier in the season) snow cannons and stuff so he can realize his ideas even without them.

so it looks like were getting (like last year)

3x3 beginner line with small/big/rail-combos

two 20ftrs just before the beginner park

2x2 pro table combo with two 60 and two 40 ftrs followed by a 60 ft long double corner

triple corner line with 40 ft single-corners

wallride combos

chill-out area

3 step-ups (maybe including a 90 ft gap for shootings)

the new stuff is totally awesome, the first part of the way from the lift station to the beginning of the park was really long, so were getting:

3x3 combo line (some kind of step-up tables, small and big/rail)

followed by another huge corner

lots and lots of rails & boxes

so i just can hope that this winter we'll have enough snow, so klaus can setup one of the best parks in the alps (and hopefully the commitee remembers their promises in december).

thanks to all of you, i gave your ideas to klaus and the other one representing us freeskiers and boarders, so you contributed a piece to our park, as well as our video from this winter, i'll try to upload it somewhere in the the next time.

see you

 
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