Ace wrote:
On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:48:36 -0800 (PST), "
wrote:


The "Grand Massif" has been really cleverly arranged. Of course blues
will be crowded at some hours, but if you choose your pists correctly,
and your lifts, you won't be stuck in a huge queue.
For those who go to Flaine/Morillon/Les carroz, avoid the "Les
molliets" lift, especially when it's 4pm or 4pm30.


Even there, and at busy periods, it rarely gets worse than a five
minute queue. Compared with the sorts of delays you get in some other
areas it's nothing at all.

Which raises an interesting point: Which is the worst resort for
queues? My first thought says the three valleys, notably trying to
return late in the day to Val Thorens via Meribel/Mottaret.

Anyone got any worse ideas?


I went to Flaine on the 6 January 2007 and found fairly long queues – at
least 10 minutes for each of the telecabin most of the day and this on
one of the quietest weeks of the year. I know that this was a period of
particularly bad snow and that the Flaine bowl was attracting everyone
from the lower resorts in the Grande Massive, but I had been in Les Arcs
over the Christmas and part of the New Year weeks (almost peak season)
barely a week before and the queues there were much less.

Any way the winner of the resort with the worst lift queues is:

St. Anton, by a long way

I did once queue for over an hour in Borovets for the main telecabin out
of the resort but since this was in the early 1990s and the only foreign
visitors were British (all stoic queuers) the queue was well behaved and
pleasant (you could even leave for a coffee and come back to your
place). After that queue there wasn’t even a 30 second queue for the
rest of the day.

Whistler at Easter was also bad, but I suspect this was largely due to a
combination of poor snow, some sort of festival and the spring break of
US universities.

However, for shear consistency, St. Anton must take the prize.

The general well behaved queues of Borovets and Whistler leads me to
wonder why in notorious bottlenecks a delicatessen ticket system could
not be invented. You arrive at the lift, collect your ticket and then
you are free to get a coffee (or lunch in some places) then come back
when your number is up and get on the lift. Effectively you get a
reserved seat when you arrive at the bottom of the lift. Perhaps the
cafes could even sponsor it. With modern “hands free” lift passes this
could be very easily implemented.

John