Canyons Lessons Learned

*** Neither child was injured in this video!

We decided to check out the historic district of Park City this week and walked the same tracks that over 500 thousand people from around the world visited during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. It is a really fun, touristy downtown with a chairlift hovering above and boarders and skiers walking around in their boots. At one point we spotted sign that read $20 lift tickets...we had heard about discount ticket kiosks and figured we'd check it out.  We quickly realized that the tickets came with a 90 minutes tour of the "soon to be sold out" condos at the Canyons Resort. We bought season passes in Montana/Colorado but floated our ski commitments in Utah since there are so many choices - so this was very appealing. This super saver deal would save us $86/ticket and was definitely worth 1 1/2 hr. of our time.  Promising each other to keep questions to a minimum and get out of the sales pitch on time, we entered into the pitch and were cheerfully greeted by our sales agent Kevin, who smelled of Jack & Coke and a healthy dose of cologne.  No question it was a remarkable resort, but we made it clear to him upfront that we would not be purchasing a condo to which he replied, "No problem, we'll just show you around and have some fun. We never pressure anyone." Three salesmen and 2 1/2 hours later, we were still sitting at the table definitely not having fun. They couldn't understand why we wouldn't want to spend $149,000 for 1 week a year at this fabulous resort?  So they sweetened the deal. "Well, if you decide today, we could offer it to you for just $62,000 - I mean, you do take your family on vacation don't you? Okay, how about $39,500...No? Then how about just $2,500 to come back and kick the tires in the next couple of years...but the offer is only for good today, well, maybe tomorrow...but hurry, it would be a real tragedy if the inventory ran out."  Ugh...  We wearily left our seats and were finally directed  to the ticket office for our $20 vouchers. SUCCESS!?!  I'm sure skiing The Canyons would make it all worth it...oh, and I did bring the kids back to the indoor/outdoor pool later in an effort to justify my time. Although we weren't "officially" invited to use the pool,  I decided it was fair to re-coup the 1 hour overage for the torture tour.
Well...as it ends up, The Canyons is Vegas of Utah.  To ski, we had to walk through dozens of corporate tents selling everything from Paul Mitchell to Vitamin Water.  Once we finally got on the mountain we had to work hard to avoid getting killed by the beginners that rained down in droves. Most impressive, there were more fur coats than ski jackets and they were mostly on the men.  Hank summed it up best when he gave the day a 4...and not out of 5. Personally, I thought a 4 was a stretch but WOW what a savings!! Lesson learned...Can't wait to get back to Alta.