advanced park : a waste of time?

[Papasteeze]

The CMS school and the pipe went hand in hand. Billy Van Gilder of USASA fame is headquartered out of there so I doubt that pipe would go any where. BTW after reviewing this thread - regardless of the quality of the features in Rhodo - the park pass program to the advanced features is the best move any mountain can make.

[Schif]

The Pipe will never go anywhere.

 

Question: What is the number one part of snowboarding/freestyle skiing that the public? Halfpipe

Who does CB cater to? People that see stuff on TV and then want to try to do it.

 

Johnny Twelveyearold will have no idea what it takes to ride a pipe, but after the X-games are on TV he's sure as hell gonna want to try to and the family will make a trip.

[DHarrisburg]

The CMS school and the pipe went hand in hand. Billy Van Gilder of USASA fame is headquartered out of there so I doubt that pipe would go any where. BTW after reviewing this thread - regardless of the quality of the features in Rhodo - the park pass program to the advanced features is the best move any mountain can make.

 

That's great that there's maybe twenty kids who ride pipe because it is the most "competitive" part of snowboarding. Let's compare the amount of money CB makes on the CMS school vs. the amount they would make with 200 more season passes sold and an influx of daily ticket buyers. Like I said I can't imagine any of my ideas would really go over too well with CB management but sometimes you need to make drastic changes if you really want things to change. CB easily has some of the worst terrain parks in NEPA (when compared to Blue, Bear Creek, and Big Boulder) and diverting thousands upon thousands of dollars towards features that nine out of ten people prefer would be a major change that would benefit the parks.

 

USASA also holds slopestyle events. What better way to train CMS than to offer a decent slopestyle course? Why not offer slopestyle events (ones that are much more popular with the target audience, I might add) at CB?

 

Also, as Method said, properly built rails will last a long time. If CB scrapped the halfpipe for one season and spent even half the saving on new rails they could start advertising it all over the place (saying you have $25,000 worth of new rails is one hell of an advertisement) and be able to keep those resources for at least five years. Once park riders start moving back to CB they could reimplement the pipe.

 

One other question: how long is the CB pipe usually open for? I know out here most pipes don't open until the end of December into January, is it the same for CB? If so does that mean that CB is paying upwards of $10,000 a month to keep a feature that nobody rides?

 

Does Boulder have a pipe?

 

 

The Pipe will never go anywhere.

 

Question: What is the number one part of snowboarding/freestyle skiing that the public? Halfpipe

Who does CB cater to? People that see stuff on TV and then want to try to do it.

 

Johnny Twelveyearold will have no idea what it takes to ride a pipe, but after the X-games are on TV he's sure as hell gonna want to try to and the family will make a trip.

 

I think the new traffic that would come for the rails and jumps would far outweigh any traffic lost from not having a pipe. CB makes most of it's money from NY because it's the closest mountain, not because of it's terrain or it's halfpipe.

 

Big Boulder's move to a dedicated park has reinforced one thing: word of mouth works. Boulder took terrain not much different from what CB has and turned it into one of the best parks in the entire East Coast. High Cascade is holding their TransAm at Boulder this year partly because employees who live in upstate New York suggested it after driving south to ride at Boulder (rather than drive to the closer Massachusetts/Vermont mountains). All CB needs to do is make a big push with the right people in place to completely turn around their reputation but that push requires money and radical change, both being things I find it hard for CB to actually commit. It's been shown time and time again that CB could care less about loyal customers and would rather make money off NY traffic because it's easy. What they don't realize is that the amount of effort it would take to turn their parks around is negligible when you compare it to the amount of money they would be poised to make.

[ski911]

All I can say, cause it sounds like you have some good ideas, is you should write something up and try to present it to CB. The new owner is very progressive and very open minded to good ideas (if presented right). Good luck

[DHarrisburg]

How did Boulder have their first season as a terrain park-only resort finish as one of the best seasons? By hiring a firm to design and construct their park who can ride the things they build and has a strong idea of what other snowboarders want in a park. Boulder didn't order prefabricated and expensive rails out of a catalogue, they built them and showed the progress on their website. Boulder didn't spend an excessive amount of money on advertising, they let messageboards and word of mouth cover that part. Boulder didn't have to offer special deals or discounted lift tickets to have people come to their parks, the riders came and didn't feel bad about the prices because they understood that they would actually get what they were paying for, something that can't be said about the majority of east coast mountains.

 

One other comment on the half-pipe issue; imagine if the only thing CB sold in their lodge to eat was meatloaf and it cost $10. Sure, a lot of people like meatloaf but it isn't exactly the ideal food that the traffic coming through a cafeteria would want to eat. Imagine if every time somebody complained to a employee about the choice of food the employee would tell them "Oh but the meatloaf is very good, the cooks work on perfecting it all day! We have a small group of employees who love the meatloaf and eat it every day because they like it so much. " Does this change the fact that you don't want to eat $10 meatloaf for lunch? No. If the cafeteria would simply divert their resources into cheeseburgers that cost $5 they would more than double their customer base and see a much higher satisfaction and returning customer rating than they did with the meatloaf but it might upset the small contingency of people who prefer meatloaf over a cheeseburger, we can't do that now, can we?

[ski911]

I'm not sure, but, I'm hungry for meatloaf now.

[DHarrisburg]

I'm not sure, but, I'm hungry for meatloaf now.

 

CB employees don't get much more loyal than you, do they?

[ski911]

I'm in a good place right now. I've been in all the "other" places too, but, it's pretty good now.

[Ski]

911: I'm not sure, but, I'm hungry for meatloaf now.

 

DH: CB employees don't get much more loyal than you, do they?

 

911: I'm in a good place right now. I've been in all the "other" places too, but, it's pretty good now.

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, you guys shared a beautiful moment.

[toast21602]

i like DH's comments.

[method9455]

$500 an hour for SETUP, not maintenance. Maintenance is what $30 hour with 3 guys making $10 each? But for setup you have 2 cats running, burning fuel at $3 a gallon. You have two cat drivers who make a lot more than $10 each, and a bunch of guys helping out to setup stuff with hand tools.

[Papasteeze]

This is a great thread and worthy of a bump...

 

DH - send your proposal to Art, he seems to be a great guy and I bet he would at least listen and think about your proposal objectively.