KillingtonZone.com

At Stowe, they scan tickets through the gates at the upper Spruce quad. And yes, even though it is quite desolate, they set up lift queues that you have to go around every darn time you board the lift. It's almost like they set things up like they expect they'll do 10x their regular volume.

This post is a waste of time.

mlkrgr wrote:At Stowe, they scan tickets through the gates at the upper Spruce quad. And yes, even though it is quite desolate, they set up lift queues that you have to go around every darn time you board the lift. It's almost like they set things up like they expect they'll do 10x their regular volume.

Upper Spruce quad? You mean the Sensation quad. I wouldn't exactly call that an upper mountain lift. You can walk to the base of the lift from the parking lot without much effort. I agree it's not the busiest lift on the mountain but what are you talking about going around? You mean you can't ski right onto the lift without stopping. Geeze. Maybe they could set up the RFID scanner so you could ski straight into it doing 50mph. I betcha it will still open but you might feel a little soreness in the groin area.

steamboat1 wrote:Maybe they could set up the RFID scanner so you could ski straight into it doing 50mph.

Like High Speed Easy Pass with a gate

This post got me to register to share my thoughts...

One issue that no one has brought up here is the actual cost of the RFID scanning equipment. I was at an NSAA show within the past year and I made idle chitchat with a few of the folks who sell these systems. They cost about $25k a lane, and while you could probably get away with just 4 lanes at a fixed grip quad, you would probably want at least 8 at a detach (and preferable at least 8 at a fixed grip as well). At the cost of $100K/fixed grip, $200K/detach, and increased ticket/pass prices (for the blank tickets/passes) it seems like it would have a very long payback period.

With that said there are some very nifty advantages of the system including lower labor costs, a likely reduction in fraud (ticket checker would only be dealing with issues and monitoring images, not doing these 2 things and trying to scan tickets as well), and all sorts of marketing/tracking potential.

It's too bad for Killington that they have so many access points and that this would take major capital to implement.

-Lurker

Lurker wrote:This post got me to register to share my thoughts...

One issue that no one has brought up here is the actual cost of the RFID scanning equipment. I was at an NSAA show within the past year and I made idle chitchat with a few of the folks who sell these systems. They cost about $25k a lane, and while you could probably get away with just 4 lanes at a fixed grip quad, you would probably want at least 8 at a detach (and preferable at least 8 at a fixed grip as well). At the cost of $100K/fixed grip, $200K/detach, and increased ticket/pass prices (for the blank tickets/passes) it seems like it would have a very long payback period.

With that said there are some very nifty advantages of the system including lower labor costs, a likely reduction in fraud (ticket checker would only be dealing with issues and monitoring images, not doing these 2 things and trying to scan tickets as well), and all sorts of marketing/tracking potential.

It's too bad for Killington that they have so many access points and that this would take major capital to implement.

-Lurker

This one somehow slipped through the moderation queue. My apologies for that. We try to keep up and approve the legitimate posts in a timely fashion. We have to do this for new members to keep the spammers and trolls at bay.