Julia Capron

Review of Arapahoe Basin Ski Area

I have never skied in CO and heard about all the h...

I have never skied in CO and heard about all the hype, so when my friends and I got together to hit up A-Basin we were so excited! Unfortunately we had no idea what we were in for. We got there about an hour after first chair and all the parking lots were full. We had already paid over $100 each for our non-refundable tickets so we were determined to get there anyway. We pulled into a drop-off spot and I got out to ask the parking attendant where we could park since everything was full and we didn't know the area. Her response: "I don't know, and I don't care." So instead I went to the customer service office and asked the lady in there (so much nicer than the parking attendant). She told me that we could drive into Keystone and park there and a shuttle would pick us up. However, on the way back to the car another person informed me that the Keystone parking lot was full too.

At this point we didn't know what to do so we just kept driving down the pass- then we saw about 100 cars parked on the shoulder on the road so we joined the line of cars and hitch-hiked up to the resort. While we were walking and waiting to hitch a ride, some of the shuttles passed us and I watched a shuttle driver go by while texting on his phone, and another driver got dangerously close to a family that was walking on the side of the road with small children. Definitely glad we walked instead of taking a shuttle driven by an unsafe driver.

When the gal who picked us up pulled into the drop-off lot, the parking attendant yelled at her that it was full. She told him that she was just dropping us off, to which he said "I don't care, the lot is full, find somewhere else" to which she said- "how else are they supposed to get to the resort if they can't be dropped off at the resort?" After this comment he just walked away and we FINALLY got to the lift! We were so excited to finally be on the slopes- and minus some other rude employees- we managed to have a decent day. Until we walked back to where we parked and found out that our car had been towed. We had no idea that you couldn't park there because we are not from the area, and there were literally 100 other cars there before us (most of which had also been towed). So then my friend volunteered to hitch-hike into Keystone to retrieve the car, and hours later we finally got it back. Had we been given better information and help on where to find parking, this whole ordeal could have been avoided. I understand that catering to guests at a resort on a Saturday can be stressful, but we felt so insulted by the lack of help and blunt rudeness that we will never be returning to A-Basin again.

Basically we paid hundreds of dollars to take a few runs and spend the rest of the day getting yelled at and hitch-hiking.