Up early this morning to try and maximize our time on the slopes. We typically try to be some of the first up the lift but then call it a day around lunch time. Since we have a few hours driving ahead of us to get home we’ll probably only have about three hours of skiing / snowboarding.
But first – breakfast! We decided to head over to the Sunset grill restaurant which despite the name is one of the few early-opening restaurants in the village.
The hot chocolates impressed the kids and the rest of the meal was fine. Pretty standard diner-style food. Service was initially slow but improved once we’d placed our orders.
Then back to the room to pack up, check out and load up the car so we could maximize our time on the slopes. No further compensation or apologies offered after yesterday’s check-in fiasco with just a shrug from management.
We will certainly not be staying here again but there are plenty of other accommodations in the area so trying to keep an open mind we set off for some skiing. Except the children who are snowboarders (probably so that their parents can’t offer “helpful” tips and advice).
As an aside – someone needs to create a word that encompasses both skiing and snowboarding but saying we’re off to do alpine sports really doesn’t have the right ring to it.
Blue Mountain is roughly divided into zones serviced by the major lifts. North Side is where my wife spent much of her childhood skiing but a number of runs were closed – and a few others had moguls – so we decided to start off in the Village section and move towards South and Orchard as the central area got busy.
Not a huge amount of snow but the runs were nicely groomed and quiet at open.
The first hour or so was great, but by 10:30 the lift lines had started growing and by 11:00ish we decided we’d had enough and it was time to start heading back towards Village. This was complicated by the enormous number of students who’d suddenly flooded the hill making it challenging to navigate around them on the narrow connecting trails between areas. We also hadn’t realized this was Spring Break for Ontario universities which made this Tuesday substantially busier than we’d expected.
It would certainly have helped if the lift line attendants had actually attempted to merge the lines to fill the chairlifts. After waiting 20 minutes to go up the Southern Comfort Express it was annoying to see the 6 person lift routinely going up with only 1 or 2 people on it. If they had been short staffed it might have been understandable – however, there was a staff member standing in the middle of the merge point who not once tried to combine groups despite the crowds reaching far beyond the queuing fencing.
We finally made it back to the village centre a bit before noon. We enjoyed the outdoor fireplaces while debating where to go for our final lunch. Adventurous eaters we are not and we returned to the Irish pub.
This time we all had sandwiches or burgers which were considerably better than the fish and chips.
Then we headed back to the car, stripped off all our outer gear and got ready for the drive home. Blue skies and clear roads meant that we made in back in record time.
So – would we do a trip to Blue Mountain again?
Nope. Absolutely not. There are far better ski hills accessible to the GTA with lovely accommodations and engaged staff.
Should we have known better than to visit during the university Spring Break?
Probably. But that didn’t explain the over-selling of the Play All Day passes, lack of interest in managing their lift lines and the abysmal Grand Georgian hotel. Truly the only thing the hotel had going for it was it didn’t have bedbugs (and you can be sure we checked).
And there you have it – our first ever negative review of a vacation.