snoloco
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2021
I talk about ORDA a lot on this site, because it's an interesting state agency and ski resort operator. A lot of this is because they aren't perfect. Far from it in fact. They have a tumultuous history, and to this day are still trying to figure it out.
I'm creating this thread to round up some of their biggest mistakes over the years, both resort-specific and chain-wide.
We'll start with resort-specific. Note that I'm leaving out anything that's encompassed in the chain-wide mistakes. I will include Belleayre from the DEC days though.
Belleayre:
1. Giving away too many free and cheap tickets. This caused a lot of unnecessary conflict with nearby resorts. It also meant that people would only go to Belleayre when it was free, and had no loyalty or otherwise.
Gore:
1. Shortening the High Peaks Double. This was unnecessary, hurt connectivity between mountain areas, and eliminated redundancy in case of lift down time.
2. Leaving Burnt Ridge with only 2 trails for 14 years. It took that long to get a proper connection to the ski bowl, and it will be even longer to get a proper connection to the main base. The area still feels unfinished and underutilized.
3. Paid parking implementation. Announced long after the pass deadline and at the beginning of a huge recession, this was done in a way that just pissed everyone off.
Whiteface:
1. Not replacing LWF chair when they had the chance. Despite a major refurbishment in 2011, this is still one of the least reliable lifts out there, and they rarely if ever run the Mountain Run side anymore. Both should have been replaced back then, but after the refurbishment, they are reluctant to do it.
2. Efforts to be "family friendly". For as long as I can remember, Whiteface has been trying to reinvent itself as a family mountain. The "Olympic Mountain" name didn't last long. As soon as money became tight, they started to go after the demographic with the deepest pockets, that being parents bringing their kids to the mountain. While this might sound good from a short-sighted, financial perspective, they ended up trying to be something they're not and appealing to nobody. They're not going to be Okemo better than Okemo. Whiteface has the most vertical in the east, is stacked with advanced terrain, but has only a handful of novice and intermediate trails. They are a mountain that mostly appeals to adults who are accomplished skiers, and this demographic does spend less at the mountain than families typically do. Normally, I'd say they needed to try a lot harder to make the transition, but they can't change the terrain that mother nature gave them, so there's really no good answer here. They're not going to become a go-to mountain for families, so it's probably best to accept this and work around it the best they can.
3. Misguided, poorly implemented, and overly harsh "safety initiatives". This relates to policies such as severely limiting uphill access, banning outside food at mid station, or being overly cautious about opening terrain. With uphill access, and outside food at mid, the old policies (free-for-all) were not sustainable, but only minor changes were needed. Instead, they went for the most dramatic and punitive option. Also, if you're going to be cautious about opening terrain, then don't be surprised when people duck ropes, and don't pull their passes unless you want to be seen as an overzealous big brother nanny state.
Now for the chain-wide mistakes:
1. Getting the wrong lifts. On multiple occasions, ORDA has installed the wrong lift for a particular location, and then had to replace it after not too long, make other expensive upgrades to work around it, or try to get by with a lift that's inadequate for the location. For example, the Falcon lift at Whiteface should have been a detachable if they wanted more capacity out of that base. Now they are going to spend 16 million on another lift to mid instead of just getting a better lift at the start. At Gore, the Topridge lift was supposed to be a high speed quad, not a used triple. And at Belleayre, the Superchief lift had to be replaced in just 7 years with a detachable, and the Lightning Quad should have been one also.
2. Contracting food and beverage to Centerplate. ORDA has 3 ski areas that are open 120-140 days a year. That's more than enough scale to efficiently run their own food and beverage, which is highly profitable with a captive audience. Instead, they contracted it to Centerplate for many years, and kissed this revenue goodbye. I think they finally ran them out and started doing it themselves.
3. RFID implementation. While I generally think RFID gates like ORDA has are a good thing, their implementation was really bad. The first year, it caused long delays in people getting their passes. They also placed the gates way too close to the lifts, which severely impacted lift throughput. To this day, the only lift where this was fixed was the Lightning Quad at Belleayre. There are also many ticket types that can still only be purchased from a ticket window (like passholder bring a friend), so the ticket window lines are still slow and frustrating.
4. Not upgrading snowmaking to coincide with trail expansions, trail widening, or additional snowmaking commitments for large events. If you don't upgrade snowmaking capacity when building an expansion or signing up for a large event, then it's going to severely impact your ability to open existing terrain, or result in new terrain being only open sporadically. ORDA should know this, yet they continue to make this mistake over and over again.
I'm creating this thread to round up some of their biggest mistakes over the years, both resort-specific and chain-wide.
We'll start with resort-specific. Note that I'm leaving out anything that's encompassed in the chain-wide mistakes. I will include Belleayre from the DEC days though.
Belleayre:
1. Giving away too many free and cheap tickets. This caused a lot of unnecessary conflict with nearby resorts. It also meant that people would only go to Belleayre when it was free, and had no loyalty or otherwise.
Gore:
1. Shortening the High Peaks Double. This was unnecessary, hurt connectivity between mountain areas, and eliminated redundancy in case of lift down time.
2. Leaving Burnt Ridge with only 2 trails for 14 years. It took that long to get a proper connection to the ski bowl, and it will be even longer to get a proper connection to the main base. The area still feels unfinished and underutilized.
3. Paid parking implementation. Announced long after the pass deadline and at the beginning of a huge recession, this was done in a way that just pissed everyone off.
Whiteface:
1. Not replacing LWF chair when they had the chance. Despite a major refurbishment in 2011, this is still one of the least reliable lifts out there, and they rarely if ever run the Mountain Run side anymore. Both should have been replaced back then, but after the refurbishment, they are reluctant to do it.
2. Efforts to be "family friendly". For as long as I can remember, Whiteface has been trying to reinvent itself as a family mountain. The "Olympic Mountain" name didn't last long. As soon as money became tight, they started to go after the demographic with the deepest pockets, that being parents bringing their kids to the mountain. While this might sound good from a short-sighted, financial perspective, they ended up trying to be something they're not and appealing to nobody. They're not going to be Okemo better than Okemo. Whiteface has the most vertical in the east, is stacked with advanced terrain, but has only a handful of novice and intermediate trails. They are a mountain that mostly appeals to adults who are accomplished skiers, and this demographic does spend less at the mountain than families typically do. Normally, I'd say they needed to try a lot harder to make the transition, but they can't change the terrain that mother nature gave them, so there's really no good answer here. They're not going to become a go-to mountain for families, so it's probably best to accept this and work around it the best they can.
3. Misguided, poorly implemented, and overly harsh "safety initiatives". This relates to policies such as severely limiting uphill access, banning outside food at mid station, or being overly cautious about opening terrain. With uphill access, and outside food at mid, the old policies (free-for-all) were not sustainable, but only minor changes were needed. Instead, they went for the most dramatic and punitive option. Also, if you're going to be cautious about opening terrain, then don't be surprised when people duck ropes, and don't pull their passes unless you want to be seen as an overzealous big brother nanny state.
Now for the chain-wide mistakes:
1. Getting the wrong lifts. On multiple occasions, ORDA has installed the wrong lift for a particular location, and then had to replace it after not too long, make other expensive upgrades to work around it, or try to get by with a lift that's inadequate for the location. For example, the Falcon lift at Whiteface should have been a detachable if they wanted more capacity out of that base. Now they are going to spend 16 million on another lift to mid instead of just getting a better lift at the start. At Gore, the Topridge lift was supposed to be a high speed quad, not a used triple. And at Belleayre, the Superchief lift had to be replaced in just 7 years with a detachable, and the Lightning Quad should have been one also.
2. Contracting food and beverage to Centerplate. ORDA has 3 ski areas that are open 120-140 days a year. That's more than enough scale to efficiently run their own food and beverage, which is highly profitable with a captive audience. Instead, they contracted it to Centerplate for many years, and kissed this revenue goodbye. I think they finally ran them out and started doing it themselves.
3. RFID implementation. While I generally think RFID gates like ORDA has are a good thing, their implementation was really bad. The first year, it caused long delays in people getting their passes. They also placed the gates way too close to the lifts, which severely impacted lift throughput. To this day, the only lift where this was fixed was the Lightning Quad at Belleayre. There are also many ticket types that can still only be purchased from a ticket window (like passholder bring a friend), so the ticket window lines are still slow and frustrating.
4. Not upgrading snowmaking to coincide with trail expansions, trail widening, or additional snowmaking commitments for large events. If you don't upgrade snowmaking capacity when building an expansion or signing up for a large event, then it's going to severely impact your ability to open existing terrain, or result in new terrain being only open sporadically. ORDA should know this, yet they continue to make this mistake over and over again.
