(some posts came in while I was typing this...
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One thing we've seen this year is some extra extensions such as MJ going until the 7th. Aspen was open last weekend. I think competition is high enough that resorts need to be thinking about their incentives and I get the sense that more are willing to do so, with the caveat of very limited terrain and presumably therefore low staff and other costs for keeping open that terrain.
A-Basin did deploy patrol to monitor slow zones last Sunday - there were that many people on the mountain - as well as spinning up Norway to disperse the crowds some. Both tactics were effective, but they are at, and really over, capacity until the bitter end.
Loveland is interesting because it has a very low capacity from a parking perspective to begin with - that resort just doesn't operate on high volume at any point. So when they have a decent amount of terrain open, which is reasonable given chairs 1, 4, 8, and Ptarmigan all have low risk terrain that has good end of season skiing value (long runs, good grooming potential for the warm stuff where groomers are finally better almost all of the time), and don't require exceptional access to maintain (like having to climb a cat back out of a steep bowl pitch), then I think that lot would be as full in May and June as it is in January. Or more so.
Loveland's ski team play also doesn't have any impact - they just take out the side of the wide acreage under Ptarmigan for racing and there would be virtually nothing lost to the public. And Loveland isn't a destination resort, it's a bunch of people with I Ski [heart]Land stickers.
A-Basin probably nailed it by taking a small fee for each skier day on the Epic Pass. Loveland could conceptually do the same, but they literally have nowhere to overflow the traffic whereas A-Basin already has a lot more parking and is also linked to Keystone and can shuttle people from Keystone parking lots. Loveland would have to shuttle people from like Morrison.
It may forever be a big place with few skiers, especially since it doesn't offer huge terrain diversity...that being something that also probably keeps plenty of people from biting on a pass (you buy a 4 pack and go 4 times). A-Basin on the other hand has ridiculous terrain for being under 1K acres and that terrain disperses skiers very well, although paradoxically it's that very feature that limits A-Basin so much in the last month of so of operation.
