All Access Upgrade FAQ

With our announcement that All Access upgrades will be limited for the 22/23 season, we anticipate there will be some questions. This will help you understand our intentions, as well as the decision process along the way.

What does “will limit All Access upgrades" mean?
Simply put - at some point in time, we will reach our limit of All Access upgrades for the 2022/23 season, as we needed to limit All Access (as well as Value passes) this past season.

Why are you announcing this now?
We want to be open and transparent to all who are planning their pass purchases for the 2022/23 season. We would prefer that our guests not be caught off guard in the event we need to cut off All Access or even Value Pass sales.

Why All Access and not Value passes?
The All Access pass affects the most likely predictable peak days which we’ve identified (December 26, 2022 - January 1, 2023; Saturdays and Sundays in January and February through March 5, 2023; plus MLK and Presidents Holiday Mondays). The Value pass already respects the peak time frames on these days by not providing access until 2 PM.

What about limiting day tickets on these days?
We intend to - and have been very effective at forecasting and modeling the turnout this season. Our dynamic ticketing helped move advance purchasers away from the busiest time frames, and was cut off when the available inventory was reached.

How will All Access upgrades be limited?
We expect a similar management of this season pass product as what we’ve used to manage the day lift ticket products - a combination of dynamic price increases with an eventual cut off once the limit is reached. The price for multi-year renewing as well as new pass and first-year renewing passes will most likely increase before May 31. There will still be a multi-year discount from the new pass price through May 31, but know that we fully expect the prices to increase based on the demand.

What is the limit?
We don’t have specific limits set at this time, because there are still  variables going into next season. The main factor will be the status of the pandemic - and whether COVID restrictions are still in place. We hope that isn’t the case, but we need to have a plan in place that allows us to manage All Access, peak time frame products as we did this year. Other variables include the reintegration of other kinds of Access products, such as our 5 time and 10 time passes. We will have a much better understanding of our product mix, forecast projections and visitation modeling as we get closer to next season.

Why haven’t you done this before?
The COVID restrictions on physical distancing and the potential for overflowing all of our capacities - including parking lots, indoor spaces and lift lines - required us to develop forecasting tools and modeling to more precisely predict turnout on every given day. We will continue to use these tools to manage day to day operations, with particular focus and attention on peak days. Now that we’ve learned these lessons and developed the tools, we intend to use them moving forward.
We actually started moving in this direction a few years ago with the rebranding of the “Unlimited Season Pass” and introduction of the Value Pass. We now have several seasons of user data (thanks to RFID gates and scanning) which provides PAOT (people at one time) hourly lift scans. We can now more accurately forecast and manage the day-to-day turnout and experience.

How will you manage this limit?
We will use the knowledge gained from managing dynamic lift ticket inventory, and apply it to the All Access upgrade. So as we get closer to our limit, you can expect that All Access upgrade will increase in price, as a way to encourage the purchase of the Value pass. When we reach our limit, we will cut off the All Access upgrade at that time, as we did this season. And it is likely that we will reach our limit of Value passes as well - as we did this past season when all season pass sales were suspended the first week of January.
Another change we are making for the 22/23 season is Night Passes will be valid from 3 - 9 PM on those days we offer night operations. In the past they were valid at 2 PM. We are also changing the starting time of our evening ticket to 3 PM as well, to alleviate traffic congestion during that switchover time frame.
Keep in mind, we expect our PAOT to return to  pre-COVID levels, which would allow for more season passes to be sold for next season than this season. But we may need to cut off sales if conditions change and there are more restrictions or guidance (COVID physical distancing or something else) that we need to plan for.

We expect there will be additional questions beyond what is listed and as we receive them we will update this FAQ.

Thanks you for understanding our decision making about managing our visitation in the best interest of our guests, our team and our resort.