So my first Ikon day was a little mixed. I took my 5 year old daughter to Stratton, VT for a daddy / daughter weekend. My pass worked flawlessly for lifts and resort charges and we had an awesome time skiing and hanging out. I had an unpleasant surprise with her lift ticket though.
Back when I purchased our family's passes in April, I checked with each of the resorts we planned to visit on the lift ticket price for 5 year olds to see whether it would be worthwhile purchasing an Ikon pass for my daughter also. Lift tickets at all of the resorts I checked with were either free or $10 for children her age. At those prices, it didn't make sense to purchase an Ikon pass for her, so I bought two full adult passes for myself and my wife, and took advantage of the $249 full child pass offer for my son.
When we stopped by the ticket window to pick up her lift ticket before we headed out to ski on Saturday, I was surprised to find that Stratton's policy had changed pretty significantly. In April when I checked, Stratton's published one day lift ticket price for children 6 and under was $10. Stratton's new policy has one day lift tickets for children aged 5 and up at $90. When I asked why the change, the lady at the ticket window said that she thought the policy had been updated to bring it into line with other Alterra owned resorts. Given that we've made plans to be at Stratton a lot this year, I had to buy my daughter an Ikon pass for $599 (rather than the $249 I would have paid back in April when I bought my sons' pass).
It was a bummer to spend $600 that I wasn't planning to spend. I wrote to Ikon to see if there's anything they can do to credit the difference between the discounted price and the price I paid on the weekend, given I would have purchased it back in April if I would have know that Alterra was going to change the child policy. I guess I should feel lucky that at least I found out over the weekend and not after the passes were no longer available.
Financials aside, it was an awesome weekend, and we both had a great time!