Heavenly season pass becomes interactive device
Vail Resorts is offering a way for skiers to stay connected without pulling out their smart phone on a chairlift.
EpicMix, dubbed a first-of-its-kind online and mobile application, debuts this season. It allows riders at Heavenly, Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone to use technology to digitally capture their ski and ride experience and share it with friends and family.
EpicMix is a digital application guests access online, at their computer or via a free mobile application that can be downloaded for the iPhone, Android or other smart phone. EpicMix automatically captures the activity of guests throughout each of its resorts through radio frequency scanners at each lifts. An RF-enabled chip embedded in Vail Resorts’ season passes and PEAKS lift tickets will automatically track guests’ lift rides, calculating vertical feet skied and days on the mountain and will recognize special achievements and accomplishments by granting guests commemorative, collectible digital pins.
EpicMix will allow guests to share their statistics and accomplishments through updates on Twitter and Facebook. Skiers and snowboarder can create special EpicMix leader boards with their Facebook friends. The EpicMix mobile application will alert guests when any of their Facebook friends are skiing and where they are on the mountain. The application will also allow guests to send messages to their private groups of Facebook friends on the mountain.
The mobile application will also provide trail and grooming information, snow and weather reports, as well as resort news and traffic updates.
EpicMix will also have a special website for kids under the age 14..
There is nothing to buy.
The company says no information collected through EpicMix will be shared unless a guest “opts in” and specifically chooses to share their information. All information collected through EpicMix is subject to the strict privacy policies of Vail Resorts. Guests can choose to disable the RF chip in their pass to prevent any scanning.
For more information and to watch a demo video of EpicMix, click here.
Love this idea, hope it works smoothly :)
It means nothing!Another Vail HYPE that any high school kid could do with a computer.
Give me a pass with a id to to enter, you don’t need to indulge in my privacy and where I go on the mountain.
This seems like an incredibly dumb idea. The lawyers are going to have a field day with this one.
Live, interactive tracking of customers on the slopes?
What happens when someone gets into the tracking system and targets a kid on the slopes? The system will have a great idea where that kid is. Heavenly/Vail have neither the resources nor the expertise to prevent unauthorized system access nor the ability to track who did access the system.
What happens when someone spends a few hours charging their bar tab to their resort account, and then goes and hits the slopes and hurts someone. How long before the lawyers come after Vail as Vail will have all of the information on how much was drunk and where the person went afterwards.
Will data be used to try to show that someone who caused harm was skiing too fast? Afterall – the scan times are known, and the lift ride times are known. If you don’t take long enough to come back down a lift, do you open yourself to some type of liability?
There are dozens of scenarios that open Vail and it’s customers to major liabilities with this type of tracking.
Any type of tracking like this should be strictly opt-in only – with lots of assurances that guests aren’t being tracked without their permission.