The skiing industry is somewhat bizarre in its pricing structure. The most absurd pricing practice is setting extremely high premium prices only to then offer deep discounts. Often times, discounts can be found for more than half of the walk up rate. Two customers at the same ticket window on the same day are often paying vastly different rates. The only difference between those two customers is that one customer did their homework and the other did not.
My benchmark for cheap skiing is $40.00 per day (excluding season passes which lock you into a specific mountain but allow for a substantially lower average daily cost). With a little work, a seasonal average of $40 per day or better is easily attainable, especially when you factor in early and late season reduced pricing. Many great deals fall into this $40 price point. Here are my favorite discount offerings that any skier or rider could take advantage of if they so choose:
Mad Card: At $139 (non-shareholders), the Mad Card provides three unrestricted lift tickets to Mad River Glen. This is a great option for weekend and holiday skiers (the normal rates are $65 and $69 respectively) but not a good value for mid-week skiers when rates are only $39. Plan accordingly to use your Mad Card(s) on the weekends and take advantage of one of the cheapest mid-week rates around on weekdays. Both Wildcat and Magic Mountain offer similar Card deals in which you prepay for three tickets on the cheap prior to the season beginning. I only purchase the Mad Card, though.
Ride & Ski Card: At only $30.50 shipped, this discount card pays for itself before even using the discounts due to two free lift tickets included with the card. Discounted lift ticket prices for selected mountains are generally slightly higher than my benchmark of $40. However, the $30.50 price for the card covers two lift tickets not even counting the discounts. This card pays for itself and then some just with the free tickets. The Ride & Ski web page indicates that some Canadian area discounts will be offered this coming season.
Ski Vermont Cards: These intentionally unmarketed cards through Vermont’s ski association are the best deal going. The cards average out to approximately $40 per ticket. Holiday restrictions apply, no more than 2 three packs and 1 five pack per person (11 tickets total), and you need to be smart in your usage throughout the season.
Mid-week non-public “Holidays”: Many ski areas typically offer stellar deals on non-public holidays that workers do not receive time off for such as Halloween, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and April Fool’s Day. These days are sure bets for a vacation day request if you appreciate cheap skiing. You will need to research which areas are offering discounts. Sometimes you are required to do something at the ticket window to earn your discount. Since the discount is date specific, you could get skunked with bad weather if you requested a vacation day in advanced.
Anniversary Dates: Many ski areas celebrate their anniversaries with lift ticket deals equating to the price of a lift ticket during their first year of operation (e.g. Mad River Glen and Sugarbush). These discounts are substantial. But similar to the non-public holiday offerings, are date specific and mid-week requiring using a vacation day and being at the mercy of weather and conditions.
Mid-week Skiing: Mid-week ticket prices are generally less than weekend pricing (except at some top tier resorts). Certain ski areas offer incredible mid-week savings with substantially reduced pricing compared to the competition including Mad River Glen ($39), Magic Mountain ($39 on Mondays, Fridays, or Powder Days), and Saddleback ($35).
Liftopia: Liftopia is a great resource in a pinch. Selection of mountains and dates are limited. Deals can range from a few dollars off to substantial savings of half off or more for certain dates. Tickets must be printed at home so advanced purchase is required but you can make the commitment as late as the evening prior.
Ski Clubs: Ski clubs receive significant discounts for tickets purchased during the summer or fall. Many mountains offer discount days for ski club members. The Connecticut Ski Council is perhaps the most well known ski club association in the northeast. Ski clubs charge a very minimal yearly membership fee and are great options for those that do not mind the risk of prepaying and ski a lot of days at various mountains.
As the season approaches, I will be releasing a spreadsheet that has compiled specific date, day of the week, and specific area deals. This will not be a comprehensive list but rather the list will favor Northern New England destination oriented ski areas with discounts that any one can use (i.e. no “state” days, no resident deals, no older person deals, no gender deals, etc.).
10 thoughts on “Skiing on the Cheap: 2010-2011 Edition”
The Jay Peak “passport” card is a good deal if you are a JP regular but don’t ski quite enough to warrant a season pass. The $25 purchase price is paid for by the first day of use and with the free day it all works out to $43 a day, if I have done my math correctly.
Good call on the Jay Peak Passport, SBR. I was planning to use that deal last year but NoVT never got the goods so I never bothered. But it was originally in the cards. Above I only listed discounts that I have actually taken advantage of. The Passport Card only works if you can get the free days, otherwise there are cheaper ways to ski Jay. I think your sixth day is free on the passport, otherwise if you don’t hit the sixth day it is not the best deal.
Exactly right. The sixth day is free, which makes the whole deal worthwhile. If you anticipate skiing more than six days but not the 12 or so needed to justify a season pass, your second passport card is free in the same season.
Being a seeker of ski deals since my college days, this subject is near and dear to me. I’m always trolling for deals, and do a lot of collecting myself. I like the AZ thread on deals, because it simply consolidates them. No organization, but if it’s out there in New England/Northeast, it’s probably on the list. Your sheet will add organization to this and I applaud you.
Is your spreadsheet going to follow all the deals that arise during the season or just the “static” deals that are usually posted at opening day? The former will be a lot of work. It will be interesting to see how much work it is for you.
Taking it to a calendar level in future years could be interesting if it could be automated (read: work). Calendars, like those in Yahoogroups allow me to manage my club events quite handily. They issue automatic reminders of upcoming events to our members on the dis list. Anyways, I digress.
Bill-
Thanks for your comment. I closely follow the AZ thread. But as you noted, it is grossly unorganized. Lots of different deals are included and some items posted are not even deals such as notifications about season passes and what not. Plus that thread has everything in the east. I tried to pull together the deals I use the most and deals that I think would benefit any and every skier rather than be completely comprehensive which would be an exhaustive task and not read well in blog format.
The first spreadsheet will be static in compiling regular weekly deals that always happen at certain areas on certain days of the week. So you could filter the spreadsheet for Monday and find all areas that offer a Monday special. The second spreadsheet I am compiling will be updated throughout the year for specific days. So when Sunday River announces canned good day or Stowe announces Woodchuck day, those days would be added. Again, this is strictly a focus on northern New England areas, generally destinations, and for the most part only places that I would consider skiing. No attempt will be made to be comprehensive. But I will get any area where discounts really matter due to the highest prices.
Steve,
I may mess around with this one too. Your objective is time-oriented, which is good for the time when we only have certain days to play.
I’m thinking about a resort-oriented one.
It would be a matrix that has a row for each resort, and a column for each ticket venue (liftopia, ski and ride, club bulk, ski vt card, resort-affinity card, etc.)
The cells would either be a yes or no (with an occasional comment), with no other detail. That way, let’s say I know I want to go to Wildcat, I’ll see what deals exists, then I’ll have to examine the t’s and c’s for each. This assumes schedule and purchase flexibility on my end.
I’ve already got a head-start on the matrix by using my holiday pricing sheet. It will keep me entertained till the snow flies.
Being entertained and saving money, I love it!
I like the idea of incorporating both spreadsheets into one and using comments to list the exact deals. For my purposes, two different sheets work best. It all depends what the objective is, the purpose for needing the deal. I like searching by date instead of by area. I don’t normally think about skiing a certain area and then looking for a discount. I normally start from the perspective of needing to find a discount for a specific date for a general area.
Example. It is a powder day on a specific date, where do I go? It may depend on who has the deals. Or it may depend upon who gets the snow. Several areas in a given region may be options. This is a date sensitive deal need but I can’t figure out how to best sort by Date and Day of the Week. Perhaps a filter option would work well. Example: First filter for day f the week (your yes/no) and then filter for certain date if available. Or just filter for specific date first and if no deals, then filter for day of week.
Lots of different ways to do it.
I like it, I’ll probably use your list. My strategy as you surmised, is slightly different. Suppose a powder day and I think I’ve a pretty good idea who’s gonna get hit – you know how it goes in New England, some get it some miss. So I’ve narrowed down to a cluster of areas. Then I’ll think about factors like crowds, winds, my temperament for the day. that pretty much narrows down where I’m going. I have been known to pay window rate on a powder day to hopefully get the “best” snow.
Interesting, isn’t it that most powder days in New England are during the week? Which means, even if I must pay a window price, it’s not sticker shock.
I’m going to start to track which resorts use Liftopia too – your date method will be slightly handicapped on the spreadsheet since oftentimes they are not loaded until a few days ahead. Then again, I’m sure you methodology involves checking Liftopia anyways.
Your best snow focus and my deal focus are where we differ. If I don’t have a deal, there are not many places nor many powder days in which I am ready to pay full walk up window rate. Especially at the bigger name and more expensive places. And while most powder days must by default statistically be mid-week, as your ticket analysis has shown, the bigger resorts have largely moved to a single price point and have eliminated mid-week pricing excepting deals.
AlpineZone has a really good Liftopia aggregator which breaks out the deals by location instead of day:
http://gear.alpinezone.com/lift/shop/D-19/New_England.html
I used Liftopia twice last year. Its nice to see more and more areas using Liftopia. It all just makes me scratch my head though. Is one in the hand really worth two in the bush when you run the risk of giving away your product for less than market value? Perhaps ski areas are counting on Liftopia attracting low price deal hunters like you and me… that they know that we won’t ski their mountain at all without a deal. Perhaps they are counting on that. I just don’t know how it works financially for ski areas. I work in retail and price points are important. But you never discount your most important product. Well, perhaps that is why F&B is never discounted?
Argh, submit, validation, back button lost my wordy comment… I guess you’ll never know my 2 cents 🙂