Castleford Xscape - they need to get their admin act together but two instructors were great!

A snowHead

We had a mini-meet today of a few of us who went away together in March. On having seen that they now are on the list of things you can do with Tesco vouchers one of our number rang and booked the session in advance and was charged for a £32 session which was 2hrs plus a lunch. The rest of us went for the 10-12 session without lunch, costing £22. Lunches were around £4-5 which was discounted 20% if you showed a lift pass, so it's a bit of a cheek really them charging £32 worth of Tesco vouchers for the same thing. (Yes I know you get 4x face value, so it was £8 of original tokens, but everywhere else you use them your ticket price is the same as if you paid to get in, not more).

We all arrived in good time at 9.15 - the website suggests allowing 40 mins or so for getting tickets and equipment - and were surprised to find both ticket desks in darkness as the slope's advertised as opening at 9am. The equipment hire area was open but could not give out kit without tickets. Apparently (I don't know if it is true - it's according to one chap on the equipment hire) the ticket sales admin is run by Xscape not by Snozone and they've decided they can't afford to open the admin side of it before 10am in the summer, so the slope can't open till then - this later opening isn't advertised anywhere except a typed notice on the ticket desk - if you download the prices/times leaflet from the website it still says 9am. Incidentally I got an email saying summer lessons were on offer for £15 - but the only mention of these on the web says "at selected times" and no amount of searching potential bookings came up with such a time of course.

By 9.30 there was a large queue at the desk waiting for it to open and we could see the staff in the back office occasionally looking at us. An instructor, fed up with his 1st lesson of the day being made late, took his lesson group off to get their kit regardless of not having tickets and suggested people complain. When they finally opened at about 9.50, it took them ages to get their computer tills booted up and we eventually got our tickets - on complaining that our session was to start at 10 and we still had to get kit hire, they amended our tickets by hand to give us 15mins extra at the end. We finally got on the slope at 10.30. rolling eyes

Anyway, now for the positive.

Jim was the duty instructor and he worked his socks off identifying skiers who he could see needed a bit of encouragement, including a group of teenaged lads trying their skills at a couple of jumps. He'd previously told them to take more care and "cool it" but then went and gave them lesson on it which they seemed to love. I was rather wooden (1st time on skis for a couple of months plus my usual lack of confidence) so was skiing from the half way point, and he came along and said how about skiing from the top - he came up too and skied down twice with me, offering relaxation tips such as imagining I was skiing 60s style, ie with a spliff in hand! He had spotted a girl who was inexperienced skiing too fast & out of control on the bottom and had told her to take it slowly - she then appeared at the top - another instructor Alan had come up as he had no lesson and he tailed her and gave her some tips. In fact Alan then spent the next hour instructing too even though he was simply off duty. The pair of them were real gentlemen.

Help!!

Castleford Xscape - they need to get their admin act together but two instructors were great!

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