When you go from no snow in the base area to opening in four days thanks to a burly La Niña storm that drops three feet on you, there are a lot of things that could go wrong. Fortunately, operating the scheduled three lifts and Ballroom Carpet wasn't a problem. Neither was all the grooming and snow harvesting to get the terrain open. Parks? We had three of them with over 40 features! Dining - we returned to indoor dining and the Sahale Lodge was a huge hit! Rentals and ski school clicking on all cylinders. Parking and shuttling worked like clockwork. Facilities and janitorial kept the lodges clean. So what then?
It was the grand opening celebration itself that was a little... lacking. The photo above has been Photoshopped by our designer extraordinaire, Ryan Law, to make the banner look like the way he designed it. You see, we printed this in-house on a plotter printer - that just prints from a roll of paper which curls up on the end. Start the print job, then come back when it is done. The curled-up part was the end of the banner - the printer operator uncurled the logoed end, saw the fancy "W" in Welcome Home - and put it in the box. Our Marketing Manager, Anna Holgate, pulled it out of the box, checked the logo, saw the "W" and called it good to go. Then, precisely at 8:32 AM, we took the banner out to get some photos with our first arriving guests queued up at Daisy. And to our surprise - an important part of our Welcome Home message was missing!
So we modified the shot a little and went on with opening the lift and the season.
At least the BlackStrap "first chair" buffs we handed out were a hit!
We are a learning and growing company and we will learn from this mistake, so next time, everything will go perfect! And, thanks to Ryan, we will always have a reminder of the event, as well as a goal to shoot for.
Have a great season everyone!