Colorado Lift Tickets Price Comparison | 2019-2020 Ski Season
The prices shown below for Colorado lift tickets have all been been updated for the 2019-2020 regular ski season. Keep in mind that these are REGULAR SEASON prices, which means they will be a little cheaper than after the Christmas Holiday season (Dec 20 – Jan 5ish), and they will be more expensive DURING the Christmas Holiday. In addition, prices change at most resorts by the day depending the day for lots of reasons. We have taken a sample of prices from hte weekend of Jan 24, as this is juts a normal weekend in the middle of the season. These prices are accurate as of today directly from the resorts’ websites. Prices fluctuate a little bit day-to-day by a few dollars, so don’t view these as actual price but instead a pretty tight estimate.
We say this every year, so let us say it again: buy your lift tickets online and at least a week in advance. Except for Wolf Creek, every other resort will give you a solid discount by booking your lift tickets online a week ahead of time. More important: You will never pay more for a lift ticket than you pay at the lift ticket window. It’s quite literally the highest price you can pay. Even better, book with us and get even DEEPER discounts on lift tickets. There, we said it. Let it snow.
2019-20 Discount Colorado Lift Ticket Deals and Packages
Discount Lift Tickets to Colorado Resorts
Lift tickets can be an expensive part of your trip, but more than that they just FEEL more expensive because typically you buy them in multi-day packages to save, and when you do this, you are paying ahead for an experience. We all know this makes good money sense, even if our wallets are screaming as we cut loose of this chunk of debit card. But if you want to save even more, book with us. We have deals with GetSkiTickets and if you buy through us, you will get the best deal on any Colorado lift tickets that we offer. We have deals at most of the largest and most popular resorts in Colorado. And even if we don’t have a great deal for the resort you’re eyeing or the time you have slotted, it’s smart to check here first so you can spend the least.
The 2019-20 ski season has been very tight-fisted with no discounts available to many of the most popular resorts. There have been a few little deals pop up this season from the pressure of the high costs.
Colorado Lift Tickets Valid at Multiple Resorts
There are two main areas of Colorado where you can by lift tickets for multiple mountains: Vail Resorts/Summit County and the Aspen/Snowmass area. These are also some of the most expensive lift tickets in Colorado.
Vail Resorts/Summit County: Vail Resorts owns Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, & Keystone. (They sold Arapahoe Basin in 1997, but lift ticket deals still exist between A Basin and Vail Resorts.) Here are some of the combo packages that exist currentl:
- Passes for Arapahoe Basin and Keystone
- Passes for Keystone and Breckenridge
- Vail and Beaver Creek passes are always good at each place
- Epic Pass: Vaild at Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breckenrdige, A Basin & hills in California, Utah, and Minnesota (not a misprint)
Aspen/Snowmass Area: Tickets to any of these resorts are good at all of these resorts, anytime:
- Aspen
- Snowmass
- Aspen Highlands
- Buttermilk
They are close enough together that they usually experience the same amount of snowfall, so there isn’t much gamesmanship to be done to follow the snow. However, buying one pass does give you access to nearly the exact number of skiable acres as Vail, and for less money.
Multi-Day Discount Colorado Lift Tickets
All of the large ski resorts offer discounts for skiers and snowboarders who buy multiple day lift tickets. You can see the prices for 4-day lift tickets at the top of this page. In general, the more days on the pass, the cheaper the per-day rate, but there are exceptions that you have to watch for. Even worse, the exceptions that exist right now might change and new exceptions might pop up. The types of things you will see is that at some resorts, a per-day decrease in price may not go into effect unless you are buying more than four days. Others, their per-day decrease will stop at, say, 6 days and then there is no incentive beyond that point. So if you have options for where you want to ski, make sure to check through the full price panels so you know where the savings are and where they stop.
Half-Day Colorado Lift Tickets
This is what we hate to see. You arrive at the slopes at 1130, and you think you’ll just pick up a half-day lift ticket and save. You find out that half-days go on sale at 1230p, so you decide to wait. After all, why pay full day price when you can only ski/board half a day? Well, you have a point. Kinda. Also, you are wrong. Unless you live in Colorado and can just come back and ski whenever, then you are likely only here for a few days, and you have decided to cut the 4 hours of possible skiing into 3 to save. Plus, if a day pass costs $100 then a half-day is going to be somewhere around $85, if you’re lucky. (For example, last season Eldora Mountain offered tickets at $79/day and $64 for a half day.) So you are only saving $15–or likely about 1% of the cost of your entire ski vacation–but you are sacrificing 25% of the rest of the day to ski. And I just bet you go get a beer or a coffee or shop a little during that hour, thereby nearly negating the savings and causing yourself to take an additional pee break, which means even less skiing. It’s just bad business. Unless you are A) about ten minutes from the half day passes going on sale or B) already past the deadline, then just pay the full amount and enjoy yourself. Time is limited.
Except at Keystone. Keystone has night skiing that will last sometimes until 800p. You can wait this extra time, save your money, and still get 8 hours of skiing in. Or wait a little longer and start at 200p (they have 1/4 days that start at 200p). Yes, other resorts, like Steamboat, have night skiing, but they have separate charges for that so there’s no edge here.
Half-day Mornings. They do exist, but only on very few mountains: Powerhorn, Sunlight, Crested Butte, and Telluride, last we checked. Except for Sunlight–whose morning passes just expire at noon–you pay the cost of a full day ticket up front. Then if you bring it to the ticket office by noon, they will reimburse you the difference. And if you think about it, every full day ticket is a half-day in disguise.
Other Ski Vacation Research
If you’re like us, you like to have as much information at your fingertips as possible. Especially in the cases of ski vacations these days because a) the snow is erratic, and b) it is just so expensive to ski at the big name resorts like Breck and Vail. These other bits of data may not be truly helpful, but something to look at.
First is the snow report from On The Snow. You can’t really use this information for your ski trip planning, but it starts to become helpful if you are a late planner or the week of your trip. Our advice, is if you can be flexible, and especially if you are driving, then stay someone central, like Frisco or Dillon, and give yourself the option of skiing Granby, Winter Park, Vail, Beaver Creek, Ski Cooper, Breck, Keystone, Copper, ABasin, and Loveland. Then if the snow is not great in WP, you can skip that side and ski elsewhere or vice verse. When you are here, you can check that snow report and head where it’s falling.
Second is to make sure you are aware of all the ski resorts in Colorado. Many get myopic about Breck/Vail/Keystone, but there are 26 ski resorts in Colorado. All of them better than where you are likely driving from. And all of them cheaper than Breck/Vail. We know, we know. A ski trip is more about being where the action is, and not necessarily the best skiing. But if you are true blue and really look forward to your ski days every year, then stop standing in line at popular resorts and try something else. I promise, it won’t disappoint.
Prices Haven’t Gone Up in 2020
You heard it here first. While some resorts have raised prices a little, they aren’t like the standard year to year price raises. In general, their new game this year is to reduce the amount of the walk up price from last year, but increase the online price. As an example, if a 3-day ticket last year to Vail was $610 at the window and $473 online (7 days in advance), this year they are $597 walk up and $483 in advance. This could be some acknowledgement, at least from Vail Resorts, that more of their lift tickets are being purchase in advance online. Certainly, they are the highest priced tickets in the whole of the United States, so everyone is clamboring for discounts, whereas this same behavior might not be the same at Monarch or Wolf Creek or Eldora.
What does this mean for the average ski tripper to Colorado? Probably not much. This could be the new way that resorts will show their hand at not raising prices at the window–where they are always the highest you can pay–but then continuing to raise the online/advance prices. Vail has a very serious analytics team working out of Broomfield, and you can be assured that whatever they are doing is back by some solid data forecasting. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but it does show a little of how they are thinking, at least this season.
Finally, this can also signal a potential slump in skiing activity or potential thin snowfall this year. And what THAT can mean for people shopping for lift tickets is to consider what might happen if you arrive and there isn’t much snow. There’s not much you can do if you arrive and there aren’t many people, but if this data is telling us anything, the resorts are expecting fewer people for some reason and thus they have relaxed on the ski pass prices.