Belleayre Bar Code Scanner

Ok, so the season started off slowly, then snow happened and everything is wide open in the Catskills the day after Xmas. We got our season passes and the new curiosity at Belleayre is the bar code scanner at the lift.

I appreciate ORDA investing in tech, but this was the wrong investment. The lifties can't keep up with the lines and having a dude run around scanning some people but not everybody was hilarious. On a sunny day, you had to face a certain direction to get scanned properly. Half of the time, nobody even glanced at my pass.

Out west the wired resorts already have RFID scanners. The dude just points a scanner in your direction and even if your pass is buried in a pocket, the scanner picks it up. Stratton has it wired so you just go to the lift, and it charges your credit card for a day pass on your first ride up.

I hate to see a tech investment that will be shortly scrapped, and this is a prime example. Unless they can figure out a self scan line entry or some other way to take the grunt work out of scanning 1000 riders every hour, this will remain a failure.

The good part about the system is that as a season pass holder, I never have to queue up to get a lift ticket for the day.

1000000000%

This is old news at Gore and Whiteface. ORDA hasn't learned after how many years so far? In fact, even though Gore and Whiteface passes are interchangeable the two mountains use different technology. I have not yet gone to Face this year, but in the past they lacked the ability to scan Gore passes and just waved us by!

A saving grace could be that the old tech was cheap.....but I'm sure the state paid a premium for it.      

We been using the scanners at out mtn for about 6 yrs.   The employees are not asked to scan everybody.   They are simply motivated to scan people on the prospect of getting over a months pay as a reward for finding a cheat.    So they don't waste their time scanning people they know are legitimate.     Works for me.