NY Taxpayer Ski Free Day?

It's still BYO Tee Pee and No Pee-ing in the Woods !

Tax the blogs!

Coach Z wrote

WF and Gore both pretty much don't compete with other NY ski areas.  They are competing with Tremblant in the Montreal market and Vt areas in the NY metro market.  Belleryre is another matter entirely which is why I didn't like the mission expansion of Orda into the Cats market.

I always saw the ORDA acquisition of Belleayre as an opportunity to use it as a feeder hill to Gore and WF.  Aggressively promote the Ski3 pass and try and get visitors from the NY market to visit Gore/WF instead of Vermont.

Intrawest did this with Mountain Creek.  MC was totally out of their normal business plan (day trip destination from NYC vs premier 4 season destination resort), but they bought it anyway so they'd have a ski area close to NYC that they could use as a pipeline to Stratton, Tremblant, and their western resorts.  This ultimately failed when they attempted to homogenize it with their other properties by building a village and tons lodging at a place that never needed it.

IW like ASC before it are primarily real estate companies

Epic /Vail are smarter in that they just sell the real estate to other companies to develop into lodging or condos and they just get a cut of sales.  Epic is more of a ski company than a real estate company.

Interesting discussion on the mixed use of base/mid lodge facilities.  Here's my take, fwiw.  Skiing is a winter sport, performed (mostly) in the cold, where participants generally require a break from said cold at some point.  Base and mid lodges are really multi-use facilities which every lift-ticket-paying customer is entitled to use.  By extension, to support those ticket sales even non-lift-ticket-paying "customers" are allowed to use them (i.e. the mom sitting in the lodge reading a book, etc.). So, as a service to their customers a ski area has to provide an indoor space where they can sit, and be able to do so without an added cost, because use of a day lodge is included in the price of admission.

That said, with the ski areas providing some indoor space for their paying customers to use for whatever purposes, those customers shouldn't expect that they can do whatever they want, wherever they want.

So, I think the way most mountains work is exactly as it should be.  Base and mid lodges that provide customers a respite from the cold at no cost, even if they want to pack a lunch, along with facilities within those lodges that are nicer (read: cost more to provide) that don't allow you to sit there and eat your bag lunch without at least buying something.

Sometimes I pack sammies for lunch, although I generally prefer something warm to eat.  That said, I'm always buying the beer at the hill.  Every once in a while you might find my brother and I scoffing down a ham and cheese whilst enjoying our Ubu and Bloodys at the Cloudspin, and they haven't kicked us out for it yet.  Wrong to do that?  Maybe....but their profit margin on the booze is probably higher than if I ordered a burger and drank water.  At least that's how I justify MY particular whatever I want, wherever I want!