5th Graders Ski Free in Colorado!

[bugzapper]

Don't know if this is known outside of Colorado. I just enrolled my third child into this program and noticed that it's not just for Colorado residents!

From the coloradoski website:

"The 5th Grade Passport provides 3 days of skiing or snowboarding at each of 21 participating Colorado resorts. That's 61 days of skiing or snowboarding! The 6th Grade Passport pass provides 4 days of skiing or snowboarding at EACH of 21 participating Colorado resorts, for a total of 84 days!! The 5th Grade Passport is FREE and the 6th Grade Passport is just $99."

Just sign up your 5th grader, provide a photo and proof of grade status. It has saved us a lot of money through the years.

Check it out! Unfortunately, Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, and Breckenridge chose not to participate this year. (They've become such party poopers! )

http://passport.coloradoski.com

 

[PigsDad]

Don't know if this is known outside of Colorado. I just enrolled my third child into this program and noticed that it's not just for Colorado residents!

From the coloradoski website:

"The 5th Grade Passport provides 3 days of skiing or snowboarding at each of 21 participating Colorado resorts. That's 61 days of skiing or snowboarding! The 6th Grade Passport pass provides 4 days of skiing or snowboarding at EACH of 21 participating Colorado resorts, for a total of 84 days!! The 5th Grade Passport is FREE and the 6th Grade Passport is just $99."

Just sign up your 5th grader, provide a photo and proof of grade status. It has saved us a lot of money through the years.

Check it out! Unfortunately, Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, and Breckenridge chose not to participate this year. (They've become such party poopers! )

Actually, the Vail group has their own program, very similiar program this year:

http://www.snow.com/passsales/5thgradeprogram.aspx

While it may be available to non-residents, in order to get a pass you must show up in person at one of the front range locations to get your pass, and they only sell it during the fall.

Kurt

 

[Floridaski]

I wish they would be more flexible

We own a condo in Keystone (just purchased in July 08) and we are trying to figure out how to get one of these passes. We meet the residency requirements, since we are homeowners and have bills to prove this! But we cannot seem to get anybody to offer any suggestions as to how we can accomplish this. We are not coming back out to Summit County until November 22, just about 12 days past the last sale date. I guess next year we will just move up our trip by a few weeks. We have kids in school, so we really have to work around this fact. Does anybody know if everybody that wants a pass needs to be present?

For example, if I flew out to Colorado to take care of some normal second home stuff - could I get this pass for my husband and kids as well as myself?

We think Vail resorts run great operations, but they sometimes are difficult and do NOT break any of the rules they set.

 

[Dave*H]

This intent of the 5th grade passport is to get kids hooked on skiing or snowboarding in the hope that they will become life long customers. The benefit to cost ratio for the resorts is much higher for local residents than out-of-state residents. Requiring your presence to get a pass is their way of limiting access to locals.

 

[bugzapper]

Well, the non-Vail group does not require your 5th grader to be in Colorado to get a pass. (I wonder if that is why the Vail group decided to do their own pass this year?) I notice that Arapahoe Basin is on both passes (it's a great ski resort, if you don't mind slow lifts).

The original coloradoski pass should work for out-of-staters as long you ski at Copper Mountain, Winter Park or any of the other non-Vail group resorts.

 

[Dave*H]

The 5th grade passport has been offered through Colorado Ski Country USA for a number of years. They are some sort of industry group that promotes Colorado skiing. For some reason that I have not seen in print, Vail Resorts decided to drop out of the group this year. My guess is someone decided it is too much expense for too little benefit for a big boy like Vail who does plenty of their own marketing anyway. I doubt it had much to do with 5th grade passport availability, but who knows. Since Vail already had a distribution channel set up for local passes, it would have made sense to just tap into that which is what they did. It may have also have also made sense to them, or just came as an added bonus, that this would allow restricting the passport to locals.