I just put together a quick spreadsheet looking at my costs for next season for my family. We live in Westchester NY (about 3 hours to Stratton, 4 hours to Killington, 5 hours to Sugarbush). Our family consists of me, my wife, my son (who'll be 8 next season) and my daughter (6 next season).
In looking at the window rates, my daughter at age 6 will ski free nearly everywhere we'll likely visit, with the exception of Stratton where her lift ticket will be $10 (at this year's prices) so while I'd pay $1 for an MCP for her, I don't think there's any point in buying an IKON pass for her. We'll likely be skiing MLK and Presidents day weekends, or at least one of them, so unfortunately the IKON Base pass won't work for us.
We skied at Stratton and Mt Snow in Southern VT this year. The window ticket prices are similar, and I've assumed we'd just ski at Stratton next for our So VT skiing.
So, if our season looked like:
6 days at Stratton
3 days Killington
4 days at Big Sky and 4 days at Jackson (trip already tentatively planned)
5 days at Alta/Bird (just me for a boys trip)
4 days at Aspen (just me and my wife)
2 days at Sugarbush (just me and my son)
Our lift ticket costs for the season would be:
IKON pass - $1,997
Mountain Collective pass - $4,274
No pass (assume an average 20% discount on lift tickets by buying in advance online) - $6,724
No pass (assume just walking up to the ticket window each day - which I would never do) - $8,390
The cost difference between the MCP and the IKON pass for us would all be in the Killington and Stratton skiing. I personally would be just as happy to drive the extra couple of hours to ski those days a Sugarbush for the quality of the skiing, but practically, I'm going to get to ski more often doing weekends at Stratton that just wouldn't happen if the only option with which I presented my wife was a 5 hour drive to Sugarbush.
Anyway, hopefully the above is useful for people in a similar position to me.