The good:
By and large, and by season's end, the man-made snow coverage was the best ever, with most runs remained outstanding till the end in spite of very little natural snow. Also notable were the extra resorts added to next season's Epic pass.
The questionable:
I seldom eat on the mountain and while the food is edible, I find it way overpriced, which is why I avoid eating there.
Also, please explain why the Epic Pass prices is outpacing inflation by a factor of more than two. If Vail Resorts keeps on that track, it may soon breaks the camel's back!
I also hate the most popular lifts stopping every 2 minutes because of operators told to be extra cautious.
The bad:
In my view, PCM missed a lot of the early season cold spells to make extra snow, somehow playing chicken with mother nature. Early on, its snow-making paled in comparison to Deer Valley's, its next door neighbor.
My impression is that PCM snow-making infrastructure is lacking and has to be significantly beefed up. The way lift lines are organized continue to suck. Powdr (the previous owner) did a much better job at it. I'm not the first one to point this out, but PCM doesn't seem to listen.
Employees need to step up and organize the lines to fill up the chairs, particularly on the busiest lift. Most of the time a couple of them chat together, doing nothing to organize lines at the loading station. Why?
There's also a lot to be said about slopes preparation and attention to details. Too many runs are invaded by “whippers” and other vegetation. Why not cut that down in the fall, to be ready for a dismal snow year or to simply ease into an early season thin cover?
The challenges:
In terms of community communication, PCM has to do work even harder to become “liked”. Right now, most everyone in the community prefers Deer Valley because of a rocky acquisition process of PCM by Vail Resort.
Back in France, I have a friend who sells used lift to Uzbekistan and other former Soviet Republics. These folks won't touch “fixed-grip” chairs anymore; they're past this and only buy detachable, even in their hardscrabble countries. I'm convinced that lifts like Town Lift, Pioneer, Thaynes or Jupiter should be seen an embarrassment for Vail Resorts. In the same way, it's too bad that the fixed-grip Dreamscape has too serve one of the best hill at Canyons!
Traffic-wise, the weak link in the PCM lift network remains Silverlode and the traffic jam it collects on the Park City side of the valley. Any plan to complement that overburdened connection?
I was also very disappointed by the early end-of-season closing date, that was scheduled ahead of the local schools spring break. If Vail closes on mid-April, why not Park City?
It's clear that with its 7,300 acres, PCM is already a mighty big resort. Unless Vail Resorts bit more than it could chew when it made the purchase from Powdr, it should rise to the occasion! On that subject the announced 2018/2019 capital investments are measly at best and don't seem to make much sense or reflect the points laid out in my summary. It would seem to me that one good step would be to improve, beef-up and expand snow-making.
Finally, there's the future. With climate change, I strongly feel that PCM should expand its boundaries towards Big Cottonwood Canyon's "higher ground" and connect with it... Vail Resorts should seriously target Brighton and Solitude as future expansion and a way to secure more reliable snowfields that could feed on Park City's huge lodging capacity.
Of course, this becomes more complicated as Boyne Mountain (Brighton's owner) seems to become closer to Alterra at the same time it wants to recapture control upon its entire resort network...
I'm holding my breath, waiting for the response!
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