I'll start by saying I'm practically a Hidden Valley apologist. I've been very cautious in judging the Nutting acquisition, and have been willing to be patient to see how things would go.
However, my experience there yesterday really left a bad taste in my mouth and I feel doubly bad for any poor soul who was there that had paid for a holiday lift ticket.
On what could easily be indentified ahead of time as likely a busy day (MLK Monday), they shut down one of the 3 main lifts on the front side at 2PM when it was still very busy and there were lift lines. I asked the lift attendant who was closing the line why they were closing the lift, and he boviously hadn't been given an acceptable PR answer to give, so he candidly told me the truth, which was more or less that to keep enough employees there people would be on overtime.
Compounding that issue, minutes after shutting one lift down, the main quad either had a breakdown or a serious injury unloading (from my vantage point I think an injury) and ended up shut down for 20+ minutes.
So on a holiday, when people are paying top dollar, you've got one lift running on the front side when it is still very busy. Inexcusable and if I had paid for a lift ticket I would have wanted a refund. It's either complete mismanagement of the mountain or being really cheap at the expense of the customer, neither of which is acceptable.
Sorry to hear that. It's always frustrating to have to wait...and wait...and wait when all you want to do is ski!
I've been at resorts where on busy holidays they sometimes actually had salaried people out loding folks on a lift here or there. I've also seen ski patrols helping on powder days when the staff didn't all make it.. Mostly self service though with the patrol watching the loading ready to push the button in an emergency. I guess some of them know how to re-start the lifts as well from experinence practicning evac drills and stuff like that.
Too bad. The weekend I thought went well. I was surprised when I looked on the web cam at 2:00 PM and saw on one of the triple lifts running. I can't imagine overtime would have to be paid in the middle of the day. I suggest you asked Mike Mohr what happened.
snowsmith wrote:
Too bad. The weekend I thought went well. I was surprised when I looked on the web cam at 2:00 PM and saw on one of the triple lifts running. I can't imagine overtime would have to be paid in the middle of the day. I suggest you asked Mike Mohr what happened.
I was also wondering about that. That would be more likely to happen if the work week ended on Tuesday. With Sunday or Monday typically being the beginning of the work week there should have been ample ways for the managers to schedule more staff on Monday by making Tuesday and Wednesday skeleton crews instead.
Just for clarification, I believe it was the lft attendant's way of saying that they weren't going to pay people to stay there. They had the lift open (and thus the employees there to run it) and chose to send them home in the middle of a holiday, when it was crowded, rather than continue to pay them to be there.
This is intentional.
I too was at HV this weekend and was quite upset with what I experienced.
I can tell you what I thought and what others said that I overheard. I will be going to 7Springs from now on for the few extra dollars that it costs to go there.
After all, long lift lines and lack of vert/runs - why not?
Just as 7Springs had planned.
I took someone to learn to ski there. The beginner lift was spacing people 10' apart creating a huge line. They took away much of this hill to put in what I can only say is a photo op but putting in berms for people to learn to turn. Seems counterproductive. That left a tiny sliver of the beginner hill to learn on. To learn to snowboard you must learn the falling leaf. You cannot have such a tiny area to learn.
7Springs did the same but quickly took them away and put them elsewhere on one of their other beginner hills. Along with a 'half pipe' which is nothing but a pile of snow to each side and ice down the middle. Useless. Photo op.
Score one for 7S to retain it's beginner snowboarding and skier crowd.
Next, the lift lines at HV were not managed at all. It was pure chaos to get onto a lift there. Not to say that 7S was any better this weekend as that was poorly managed too but at least they had more lifts running this weekend.
The final straw for me was when we were on the north side of HV's 'mountain'. The beginner trail had NO lights halfway through, making for a dangerous situation.
We then were stuck on a lift for 20 minutes. Calls to HV from the lift were unanswered. A truck finally showed up at the bottom to 'fix' things however the lift would only move for a bit before stopping over and over again. It was painful and we did not return to that side for the remainder of the night.
That left us with taking a beginner down their longer beginner trail which was solid ice toward the bottom.
.......and they raised ticket prices to outrageous rates, because they can.
Maybe it's the cost of electricity or healthcare for workers or something that we created as a society by allowing a large portion of our citizens to not work and receive lofty benefits, however I have to imagine that some of this is excessive with such a large jump in ticket prices. I believe HV will be a ghost town for 85% of the remainder of the season. People like me just arent going to pay to go there when the benefits of going there over 7S have been taken away.
Just as 7Springs had planned...
Oh boy, blame long lift lines on poor folks. I guess you are a "maker" Sincraft. I'm so happy you've never been a "taker". Go ahead and reward the "maker" that ruined your day. Punish the little "taker" folks that are only doing what they are told. Make HV unprofitable and Bob will still make his money. What a protest. You know there is another ski resort in western PA not owned by Seven Springs and there's even one in Maryland too. Why don't you be really effective and take your money there instaed of aiding in this conspiracy you see?
So nice to see Sincraft back to his craft here
I'm going to lay off the conspiracy theories for now but I have seen similar happen. When one major entertainment company bought out a competitor a few years ago they pushed on with the remaining big events booked by that competitor but went out of their way to make them suck some. We weren't allowed to carry in our signs that we had always brought to previous events managed by both companies. We are still allowed to bring the same type of things to the events run by the winner of that business war.
As for the HV intentionally making skiers have a bad time there there are a whole lot of other things they could also do to drive away skiers like make everyone park in the fartherst away parking spots first then give the front row spots to the idiots that arrive at 11:30 am on the holiday. Closing a popular trail in the middle of the day is another example of crap they could pull. It will be interesting to see what people that actually work there say instead of what we hear from people who over heard what they over heard second hand.
Heck, regardless of the intent or lack of intent this might work out better for HV pass holders if all the day trippers suddenly shift their holiday and weekend business to 7S going forward. Perhaps only having fewer customers isn't such a bad thing for the locals?
Hopefully, the staffing issue was a mix up and they'll get it squared away. I've always liked HV and hope it thrives.
On a positive note - they are getting a nice dump today (Web Cam Image) and not many folks there to enjoy it.
Tomorrow would be a good day to call in sick. I wish I could .......
It always amazes me how negative the Pittsburghers can get. If you watched the post game shows after the Steeler's lost to the Ravens, you would have thought that the Steeler's had an 0-16 record. The Steeler's had a great season, but lost to good team. That's the long and short of it. As for HV issues, rather than assume it is some kind of vast Nutting conspiracy to defraud PA skiers of their hard earned cash, couldn't this situation be blamed on some people issues....bad decisions, perhaps the staff didn't show up to run the lift or somebody got sick, etc, etc. As for the North Summit lift, that lift has continually had problems over the years through 3 different owners. 7S did get PA inspection permission to speed up the lift by increasing the chair spacing. And the lift runs much better and faster. I have heard there is an electrical overload issue with the lift. I'm not a lift mechanic so I do not know what it will take to fix it. But I am sure that HV would not intentionally allow this lift to operate poorly so it can piss off it's customers.
I once complained to Mike Mohr about the second triple lift not opening earlier in the day and he told me that the day before he had sent the lift operators home becuase there were too few skiers to open a second lift. So he called them back on the next day although he could not get them there earlier in the day when the unexpected crowds showed up. He apologized.
Let's give these people the benefit of the doubt untill we find out the facts.
Just to be clear. It makes absolutely no business sense to chase people from Hidden Valley to Seven Springs to make an extra $15 dollars / lift ticket on a busy weekend. Everyone who has a computer knows that Nutting owns both places and a bad experience at one resort most likely ensures a bad experience at the other. It was probably a set of unforeseen circumstances that happened simultaneously at HV that caused the problem. Hopefully its a lesson learned by management and if people voice their displeasure enough, it should never happen again. If it does, then ski elsewhere. That's the only way to send a message of discontent to Bobby. I realize that skiing elsewhere may not be feasible to local folks or people who own homes at HV.
