Vail Resorts comes to Utah

EMSC

EMSC

Well-known member
via lease on Canyons for the next 50 years (minimum - there are multiple extensions possible).

So now Canyons will be on the Epic pass as well. I wonder if/what it might do for season passes in the rest of Utah? Of course it might push day prices up to Vail levels given the $25M annual payment to Talisker...

I'm sure Admin will have a news article up soon.
 
I always love it when i click through the home page and the relevant article is not there, yet when I go back again 5 min later the time stamp is from a half hour ago... Not that it matters much. Given the time of year this is a great topic to put on the forums and discuss.

I see that passes are $160 less than last year while including the option of skiing a whole bunch of top tier resorts if you are willing to travel. I would think that would be a bit of a shock to the pass price system (or history?) in Utah, though it's hard to tell how many Utah'ns are really willing to travel for the benefits.

I wonder if Vail will really pursue the proposed gondola connection to Solitude? I'd bet they are far more interested in getting their hands on Park City and providing that connection. Far, far more bang for the buck for Vail on that option. In that regard, a very smart move by Talisker to get out of the operations and development (which they have primarily been derided for at times, not lauded for) and let a top tier industry leader do that while also bringing a partner in with fairly big muscle to try to help you wrest Park City away from Powd'r Corp. Not commenting on the ethics side of that, just the strategy.
 
The Canyons was a giant trap for ASC (probably the main reason the company went bankrupt) and obviously hasn't been that great for Talisker either. Can even Vail's marketing muscle sell lipstick on a pig? We'll see.

Perhaps my comment above was harsh, but in regional context Canyons is the 3rd best ski area in the 3rd best ski subregion in Utah. I see this as having close to zero effect upon the Utah locals, who prefer LCC/BCC and Snowbasin for the ones in Ogden.

As noted many times Park City is a very attractive destination for the resort skier (75% of visits from out-of-state I think) due to the resort town and vast amount of relatively uncrowded intermediate terrain at all 3 mountains. Nonetheless I think VR has a real uphill battle if they don't get one of the other 2 places too.

EMSC":3r0suab9 said:
I'd bet they are far more interested in getting their hands on Park City and providing that connection...... wrest Park City away from Powd'r Corp.
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This is the only scenario that makes much sense to me. But Park City is the "home resort" for Powdr Corp and the one where they don't pinch pennies like the other places, so I don't see that as very likely. Nonetheless the land litigation gives Vail/Talisker some leverage. :popcorn:
 
Tony Crocker":2parogs5 said:
The Canyons was a giant trap for ASC (probably the main reason the company went bankrupt)
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Nonsense. ASC was already highly over-leveraged by the time they got The Canyons.

Tony Crocker":2parogs5 said:
EMSC":2parogs5 said:
I'd bet they are far more interested in getting their hands on Park City and providing that connection...... wrest Park City away from Powd'r Corp.
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This is the only scenario that makes much sense to me. But Park City is the "home resort" for Powdr Corp and the one where they don't pinch pennies like the other places, so I don't see that as very likely.
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More nonsense. Should Talisker/Vail win the pending litigation they could literally evict Powdr from PCMR. The amount of money Powdr has spent there has absolutely zero bearing on the outcome of the litigation.
 
admin":yvhwj1vf said:
ASC was already highly over-leveraged by the time they got The Canyons.
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Maybe, but surely the development of the Canyons was their largest cash outlay while over-leveraged.
Did admin not read my last sentence?
Tony Crocker":yvhwj1vf said:
Nonetheless the land litigation gives Vail/Talisker some leverage.
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Tony Crocker":d24m84jd said:
Did admin not read my last sentence?
Tony Crocker":d24m84jd said:
Nonetheless the land litigation gives Vail/Talisker some leverage.
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Yes, but I also read the sentence you wrote before that one, which is incongruous with the one above:

Tony Crocker":d24m84jd said:
But Park City is the "home resort" for Powdr Corp and the one where they don't pinch pennies like the other places, so I don't see that as very likely.
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Furthermore, there's no "leverage" involved, unless it's to extract increased lease payments from Powdr. Vail/Talisker either wins the court case, in which case VR likely doesn't give a rat's hind end about greater lease payments because they would probably prefer instead to evict Powdr from PCMR and take over the resort themselves, or they lose.

As far as VR is concerned there really is no middle ground that they're likely to care about. I doubt that they'd be interested in being a middle man to sub-let the land to Powdr. That's just not their bag.
 
I got all excited when my wife sent me the announcement from Vail. This last season, it was really great for us to be able to ski Tahoe early season on our Epic Local Pass when Colorado got off to such a lousy start, and adding The Canyons would diversify the weather risk even more. But it turns out to be less than meets the eye, since when I looked at their website, it says ''Access to Canyons for Epic Local Pass will be decided at a later date.'' :-(
 
Tony Crocker":2vy6c26v said:
Maybe, but surely the development of the Canyons was their largest cash outlay while over-leveraged.
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Maybe it was moving the executives to Utah from back East that did ASC in, lol. What a joke that maneuver was. Only a few extra $MM spent for no reason at all. ASC was filled with financially inept exec's on a good day.

johnnash":2vy6c26v said:
''Access to Canyons for Epic Local Pass will be decided at a later date.''
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I'd throw out a wild guess for an add-on option for Epic Local sometime this summer or early fall. ("For only $100 more, you can upgrade now......").
 
johnnash":17dgck3s said:
I got all excited when my wife sent me the announcement from Vail. This last season, it was really great for us to be able to ski Tahoe early season on our Epic Local Pass when Colorado got off to such a lousy start, and adding The Canyons would diversify the weather risk even more.
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I wouldn't get that excited. Canyons is the least reliable snow area of the Wasatch and that chances it will be good at a time both Tahoe (Utah is 68% correlated) and Front Range Colorado (56% correlated) are bad are remote. If you want to diversify, do what tseeb did and get a Mountain Collective in addition to his Epic local pass for Tahoe. Whistler is an outstanding diversifier.

In terms of snow reliability:
AltaBird and Whistler are far above any of the Vail Resorts.
Mammoth and Kirkwood are similar, Kirkwood's higher snowfall balanced by Mammoth's superb preservation.
Vail/Beaver Creek and Jackson are similar in snowfall, though Jackson has serious snow preservation issues after mid-season.
Squaw/Alpine are similar to the above 5 areas in snowfall but much worse in preservation than 4 of them.
Aspen/Snowmass and the remaining Vail resorts get much less snow though Aspen/Snowmass, Summit County CO and the upper tier at Heavenly have good preservation.

Mountain Collective is currently sold out. They hint at a reopening; presumably that will be with a price increase.

From my perspective the Mountain Collective has qualitatively better ski areas anyway. For someone in johnnash's situation I think it's an attractive pre-season purchase, then wait and see where the snow is. It would take a 1977-level drought to skunk all of those places in the same season. The caveat is that johnnash's wife and son are on the lower side of intermediate and the Mountain Collective resorts are mostly expert weighted. Mammoth and Aspen/Snowmass are the ones with the best terrain fit for them.

After browsing around about the details of the PCMR/Talisker lawsuit I'm inclined to agree with admin. It is an avenue for VR to control both resorts. But it's high risk; if they fail VR is stuck with just Canyons for 50 years.
 
I really feel that regardless of the PCMR lawsuit that Vail corp will do fine with the Canyons. Assuming they run a tight ship and do a great job of promoting the resort within it current pass holders and other high end users. High end users seem to be the demo that the Canyons attract anyhow, it also IMHO has the best "Party" appeal of all Utah resorts, most of my out of town guests always bug me to go there for the drinking/women/concerts. Vail will only make this better. Canyons does a good job with family/kids and has great sidecountry access which attracts many visitors. I think alot of CO pass holders will start making the Trex out and do a few extra days at LCC/BCC. But they will be staying in PC, which is good for the local economy.
 
TRam":28byiu4r said:
I really feel that regardless of the PCMR lawsuit that Vail corp will do fine with the Canyons. Assuming they run a tight ship and do a great job of promoting the resort within it current pass holders and other high end users. High end users seem to be the demo that the Canyons attract anyhow, it also IMHO has the best "Party" appeal of all Utah resorts, most of my out of town guests always bug me to go there for the drinking/women/concerts. Vail will only make this better. Canyons does a good job with family/kids and has great sidecountry access which attracts many visitors. I think alot of CO pass holders will start making the Trex out and do a few extra days at LCC/BCC. But they will be staying in PC, which is good for the local economy.
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I think the out come of Vail will be great.. Let's just wait and see what it got,I am sure it will be good as before or more.. \:D/
 
Tony Crocker":1bm4m6ak said:
TRam":1bm4m6ak said:
High end users seem to be the demo that the Canyons attract anyhow
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With Deer Valley in the same neighborhood?
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You bet. Recall that DV doesn't allow snowboards. There are many houses at The Canyons* that are larger and more opulent than many of the $$$$$ houses at DV.

*: I refuse to buy in to the most idiotic renaming in the ski industry in the past 3 decades.
 
The Canyons fills a nice niche for me, a Midwesterner who tries to ski about 20 days a year on an Epic Local Pass. It adds the option of flying direct from Detroit to SLC for a long weekend. My primary option now would be to fly into DEN and hit Breck or Keystone, but SLC cuts out a lot of driving. SLC is typically a more expensive flight than DEN (more competition on the DEN route), but if it's not going to cost me anything to ski, that makes it a much more viable option. I think there are other Local Pass skiers that will fit this demo for them, and therefore it's one more useful piece for their puzzle.
 
I wonder if Vail will really pursue the proposed gondola connection to Solitude?

If that so, that will become the biggest skiable area in the US! :-D But that would cost a lot of $MM!! :^o
 
Evren":2vpdqiur said:
Turns out, Canyons is included in an Epic Pass purchase.
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Yes, but we need to be careful with the wording. Canyons is on the full Epic Pass, but not on the Epic Local, Summit, or Tahoe related passes last I saw. The question for johnnash is whether he needs to upgrade to the full epic pass or if some deal to add in the Canyons for epic local pass-holders will be announced (the epic local is basically Colorado + Tahoe currently, albeit with restrictions and max # of days at some of the resorts). You would think Vail would want to keep folks "in the family" even if they change their mind at a later date... even if only for getting semi-discounted ticket prices at the reosrts not covered under the Local or Summit or etc... passes.
 
EMSC":dblpi0pc said:
Evren":dblpi0pc said:
Turns out, Canyons is included in an Epic Pass purchase.
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Yes, but we need to be careful with the wording. Canyons is on the full Epic Pass, but not on the Epic Local, Summit, or Tahoe related passes last I saw. The question for johnnash is whether he needs to upgrade to the full epic pass or if some deal to add in the Canyons for epic local pass-holders will be announced (the epic local is basically Colorado + Tahoe currently, albeit with restrictions and max # of days at some of the resorts). You would think Vail would want to keep folks "in the family" even if they change their mind at a later date... even if only for getting semi-discounted ticket prices at the reosrts not covered under the Local or Summit or etc... passes.
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Hey, guess what? I don't need to make that decision after all! Just got an email from Epic, and Canyons is included in Epic Local after all. \:D/ It's got the same holiday restrictions as Vail, BC, Heavenly, etc., but that's OK. So I guess they decided to keep us ''in the family'' as you say.
 
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