ORDA's Biggest Mistakes

[DomB]

I'm not going to take a position on how terrible ORDA is because I'm not really informed on the subject. But I can say that I am perpetually thankful that my home mountain is run by them and not by the parasites over at Vail.

I 100% agree with this. We do need a positive orda thread (I think we have one) because ORDA is the anti vail. Love it or leave it, but I will sure as heck criticize it. I know a fair amount of the patrollers at Belle, and the ones I don't know I thank when I see them. W/o them there is no skiing. The Gore patrollers I thanked seemed to think I was insane (but those were pro patrollers and one was from Jersey, so there is that : ) ).

 

[Harvey]

It was a mistake to give out all those free tickets. The word is all-encompassing. I will make a thread later on about all the things ORDA has done well.

What I was saying that it was worse than a mistake, and it wasn't ORDA who did it.

I can say that I am perpetually thankful that my home mountain is run by them and not by the parasites over at Vail.

+1 billion

For all the talk about changing the state constitution to allow Gore/WF/Belle to operate with a private owner, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.

 

[Deez]

Here's my Whiteface rant .........

I have kids in Whiteface ski programs - we are there literally every weekend since it opened.
Related to family friendly:

• Bears Den are is a great place to learn - a beginners area away from the main hub and all green trails. Minimal mixing of advanced skiers screaming through the trails.
• Sunday is "Community Ski Program Day" and the Bears Den is packed - literally no where to sit - Bears Den lodge should have a second story in the main room - there's enough room to add one in. I remember before they added that huge addition, I can't believe that old Bears Den was adequate - Bears Den use has greatly increased and will only get greater.
• The ski school director is a joke - it was record cold last week, didn't cancel the ski program for saturday - they never cancel because they don't want the hassle of trying to reschedule that day. They have 4 black out weekends for the ski programs (Xmas, Martin Luther King and the 2 Presidents weekends). Gore Mtn has the same program and only blacks out 2. There has been a few days in the past few years that the ski conditions were horrible and didn't cancel the program - where other mountains did. My jaded opinion is Lake Placid is geared toward getting that tourist money - Whiteface is no exception. I will not be signing up my kids for Cloudsplitter next year based on this. I am very sensitive about the whole ski program thing because it is so darn expensive.
• The ski instructors are just flat out awesome - the best ...they way they treat my children is like gold - can't say enough good things about them.
• Agree on LWF chair.
• Minor rant - there's a lot of old, dilapidated buildings floating around that mountain - tear them down or refurbish them - looks honkey tonk.
• Have no real opinion about the new chair being built to Legacy Lodge - its pretty congested there as it is with all the convergence of the trails - its slow terrain as it is - the new char will just reinforce to slow down in that area (the drop off area). I know on Sundays the Falcon Flyer is quite busy and sometimes a long line - the new chair will alleviate that.
• The Falcon Flyer with the carpet attached screws me up every time - I feel like a noob every time i step on it.
• The increase is snow making is awesome - to open the first day with no natural snow from top to bottom is amazing. For all the issues with the snow making, without all that new coverage the mountain wouldn't be in as good as shape as it is.

There is also a real dichotomy at Whiteface (probably other mountains as well). It's either really busy or its not. You either have to wait awhile in the lift line or you are making laps- doesn't seem to be much in between. I think it's hard to determine where to spend money when the pendulum swings like that.

 

[Face4Me]

I 100% agree with this. We do need a positive orda thread (I think we have one) because ORDA is the anti vail. Love it or leave it, but I will sure as heck criticize it.

I feel the same way ... Despite what you may think based on my posts, I am very pro-ORDA. Overall, I think they do a very good job, but that doesn't mean they're perfect, nor does it mean that they shouldn't be accountable for their mistakes.

I attended the World Cup ski jumping competition over the weekend ... it was awesome. I'm really hoping that they can get more events like that, now that the facilities have been upgraded to support such events.

That said, as a state agency, that is operating on our tax dollars, I'd just like to see them do a better job with how they spend our money. For example, the year before they did the Cloudspin Bar rebuild (it might have been 2 so someone correct me if I'm wrong), they had re-roofed the existing building, only to completely tear it off when they did the rebuild. That was a lot of money wasted.

 

[D.B. Cooper]

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

This is a symptom. The actual problem is that there is no planning at the program level. A program contains a number of projects, ensuring that there is synthesis and consistency in addressing the overall goals. ORDA seems to make significant CAPEX investments without thinking about how that fits into the bigger picture.

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.

I'm almost certain that ORDA got 10% of the revenue. I don't think Centerplate is the vendor. There's signage for Saratoga Eagle.

3. RFID implementation.

For this, I think there should be RFID gates everywhere. Get - and use - the data from traffic patterns, etc. to make planning decisions.

 

[Deez]

Centerplate is part of Sodexo -

Carnegie Deli Teams Up with Sodexo Live! To Bring a Taste of NYC to the Ski Slopes

After hitting the slopes at Windham Mountain last year, New York City's iconic Carnegie Deli is expanding its nostalgic bites, like their signature Pastrami Sandwich, Cheesecake, and Black & White Cookie, at five additional ski resorts – ORDA’s Whiteface Mountain, Gore Mountain, and Belleayre...

us.sodexo.com

Centerplate / Sodex is the main food purveyor for Whiteface.
Saratoga Eagle is the beverage distributor.
The Waffle Cabin looks to be an independent franchise and not part of Centerplate ?

 

[Brownski]

Get - and use - the data from traffic patterns, etc. to make planning decisions.

My own experience with data obsessed execs has turned me against almost all electronically collected data. One broken piece of equipment- or one that gets positioned in a WiFi dead spot, failure to account for variables, will throw off the whole thing. Garbage- in-garbage-out but middle managers will never admit to decision makers that the collection is flawed etc etc etc…..

 

[Milo Maltbie]

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.

In ORDA's defense, that was DEC, and they fired the guy who did it. That might be how Bell got into ORDA in the first place.

Gore:

1. Shortening the High Peaks Double. This was unnecessary, hurt connectivity between mountain areas, and eliminated redundancy in case of lift down time.

When they replaced the Summit chair with the short HP, Upper Cloud became a nice short groomer that was safe for fast skiing. NOw it's often too crowded, and it's another trail like Tannery that you have to ski too often to get to somewhere you really want to ski. The redundancy was helpful Saturday when Straightbrook broke down for the first time in the 50 years I've been skiing Gore.

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.

AFAIK the prison system is the only State agency that runs its own food service. Prison food is better than you think, so maybe they could integrate into that. I'm sure Centerplate pays rent or some share of the gross to ORDA, and I'm sure ORDA rebids the contract from time to time. I don't think unionized public employees waiting out their pension eligiblity are gonna make the best bartenders, but...

mm

 

[D.B. Cooper]

Prison food is better than you think

mm

I've never given it thought and I'm not about to ask you

 

[x10003q]

When it results in a worse ski experience, then it's a mistake. I always thought it was shortened to reduce trail crowding at the top, since they were upgrading Straightbrook to a quad and they still had the old gondola back then.

The shortening of the then named "Summit" double (now High Peaks Quad) was due to a confluence of events. In the 1990s, there was much debate about having the replacement gondola go to the summit of Gore like the Red Gondola. The top terminal of the new gondola would have been near the warming hut above the Summit Double. The top of the Summit Double ran right through the potential Gondola line and top terminal area. As we all know, the gondola top terminal is on Bear Mtn and did not go to the summit of Gore.

My memory of the year is a bit foggy, but best as I remember;

By fall of 1994, a fixed grip quad was ordered to replace the Straightbrook double the following summer, 1995. At some point just before the 1994 season opened, the Straightbrook Double broke and was unfixable. Somehow, ORDA found what was needed to get the double to operate for the season. It might have included a new motor.

The following summer (1995) the Straightbrook was replaced with the fixed grip quad. The new parts were then put into the Summit double and that, plus the possibility of needing space at the top of Gore for the new Gondola top terminal, caused the double to be shortened. It was supposed to be a short term fix. It had nothing to do with overcrowding at the summit of Gore.

Once the decision was made to take the Gondola only to Bear Mtn, ORDA should have quickly replaced the Summit Frankenstein double with a FGQ that was in the plans. But ORDA being ORDA, left that double up for 25 more years. They did change the name from Summit to High Peaks. This is one of the most obvious, bad decisions from the ORDA Board.