Vertical Earth “ State of the Union “

That sucks!!

Thanks for all your hard work Dan. The Blue races were some of my favorite from last season.

Dan, thanks for everything you did, Blue was really a great place to ride and I was looking forward to another season.

F-U-C-K the management at Blue Mountain and their goddamn waterpark.

Damn !!!! That Sucks Dan.

I'll ring you Monday morning.

Thanks for all the work.. very disappointing, it was nice to have another option for great lift-assisted reasonably close. hope to have it back soon.

a water park really? Do we need another one? Hopefully it will draw water rats away from Diablo

Dan, thanks for all the hard work on the awesome trails!
its a total bummer. living so close was a great benefit.

I'll speak on behalf of Team TvB. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

My day has been ruined and my season has just become more complicated. Dan, thanks for a solid season of shredding, hopefully the mountain can get things together for the 2012 season.

bummer, i had a great time riding Blue...and I was driving 3 hrs from Syracuse, NY.. great job on the trails/riding in the time we had..hope it makes a comeback.

it has to be hard to make money on biking alone at these mountains. i look around sometimes in the parking lot and how many people are there compared to all the people that are working there, what it costs to run a lift, and all that and i would think that the mountains are breaking even at best. i don't even know why they do it. we're really lucky we have what we have. it seems that they could do both at blue mt though like mountain creek does. the waterparkers seem to like watching the bikes there too. it makes parking a nightmare though!

quickneonrt said:

Hopefully it will take the waterpark away from Diablo

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fixed

What a bummer, was very impressed with the place last season and really looking forward to getting back this year.

Thanks Dan for the great series last season and all of your work. Blue definetly offered some of the best vibes anywhere and I'll certainly miss the convience of having a home track.
I would hope with the addition of a water park that MTB will return in a effort to further increase revenue. If the plan is to make a summer resort excluding a summer sport would only cut their own throat. They are creating a family environment now that could allow racers to bring family more often.
Let us know what we can do to advocate this cause.

I'm really sorry to hear this. Dan and everyone involved with the MTB park has done a great job over the last two years. I'm really sad to see it go. I was there almost every weekend that I wasn't injured.

Does anyone know how Blue Mountain will be handling the season pass refunds? Do we have to contact them or will they contact us?

This Totally ruined my day. I really enjoyed that place. People were great , trails were fun, and there was a whole lot of potential. They also had the cleanest mens room of any mountain. My summer plans have to make a big change.

Thanks For everything Dan. I guess there is no way to make them reconsider?

Wow....that sure changes a few things.Dan thank you for all your hard work with everything you and your entire crew did,it was great to only have to drive an hour and a half to race you guy's had that mt shaping up.Hopefully 2012!!
Donny.

Tedman said:

Thanks Dan for the great series last season and all of your work. Blue definetly offered some of the best vibes anywhere and I'll certainly miss the convience of having a home track.
I would hope with the addition of a water park that MTB will return in a effort to further increase revenue. If the plan is to make a summer resort excluding a summer sport would only cut their own throat. They are creating a family environment now that could allow racers to bring family more often.
Let us know what we can do to advocate this cause.

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Although my true feelings on this closely reflect what Amish Matt wrote...
Tedman brings up some valid points.
It seems that each aspect would help to feed the other. Instead of me slipping away (from the family) for the day to do a little DH, I'd be BRINGING the family with me. Would probably get me to the mountain a couple of more times per season actually.
Thanks Dan for all of the hard work.

You've done nothing less than spectacular work at that mountain. Alll of the blue races will be missed.

Dan, very sorry to hear about this and I'm sure you were not looking forward to making this announcement in the least bit but hopefully the management will see that MTB can bring in revenue at a relatively low operating cost, comparatively speaking. Blue was well on its way to establishing itself and its customer base. It takes at least 3 seasons for a resort to get momentum so this is a shame.

Blue is ideally placed in the North East to serve riders in PA, NJ, DE, VA, DC, and MD so it wouldn't make sense to pull the plug after so much effort. One season of downtime wouldn't effect consumer demand significantly among MTB riders and places like Diablo/Mt. Creek have been successfully operating side by side for many years with great success.

Let's get this thing rolling again in 2012!

a water park huh? i guess they are trying to steal some of that Dorney Park business


why are some bringing up possible 2012 mtb operations?

IH8Rice said:

why are some bringing up possible 2012 mtb operations?

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Vertical Earth said:

hopefully when the waterpark is complete we may see the mountain bring it back.

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The possibility of having mtbing along side the waterpark in 2012?

Dude, that is a total drag. Thanks, Dan, for all your work. Obviously, the management has no soul. May they drown in their water park.

extremely bummed. got my fingers crossed that this winds up only being a hiccup for them in the big scheme of things.

It says they want to dedicate all the resources to the waterpark... If biking was making a profit (assuming it was) Isnt that a good resource to fund a waterpark, 1 more year of biking and an additional X dollars can be an additional X waterslides.

I really wish I had been able to get out to blue more than just once last season. The people there were great and the existing trails were fun, with a ton of potential still available.

Hopefully they can bring bike operations back after the waterpark is established. I would imagine that a place like Mountain Creek which appears to have a robust waterpark business in the summer can afford to eat a loss on Diablo on some days. Some of the people that work there have told me that running the lift is very expensive so it's possible that they take a loss on Diablo more days than most people think. Granted, Diablo's lift is high speed and probably eats more electricity, but it's also probably the park in the Northeast with the most volume. Maybe the addition of a waterpark is, in the long run, a good thing since it can offset the risk of running a bike park. A strong ski business during the winter months combined with a strong waterpark business during the summer can hopefully provide a level of financial stability that will make a smaller venture like a bike park seem much safer.

Maybe someone with direct experience running one of these places can chime in, but I'd guess that between lift operating costs, staff wages, and insurance, very few of these parks are economically viable.

Remember, mountain bikers are a tiny portion of the general population, and we (DHers) are a tiny portion of mountain bikers.

^ while i dont know anything about how bikeparks work, i would assume (seasonally) that if _______ did not turn a profit, __________ would not be a business, If you owned _____ and you lost money yearly, you wouldnt be open... I know i wouldnt pay X thousand dollars to let people ride every year, no profit, no bikepark... right? The mountains cant possibly be paying to run the lifts. I dont believe that mtn creek pays diablo, i am pretty sure diablo pays diablo.

demo 9 said:

^ while i dont know anything about how bikeparks work, i would assume (seasonally) that if _______ did not turn a profit, __________ would not be a business, If you owned _____ and you lost money yearly, you wouldnt be open... I know i wouldnt pay X thousand dollars to let people ride every year, no profit, no bikepark... right? The mountains cant possibly be paying to run the lifts. I dont believe that mtn creek pays diablo, i am pretty sure diablo pays diablo.

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the mountain runs other activities there which require the lift - disc golf. and i wanna say they do sky rides too. Not sure how their business was set up, whether it was owned by the mountain, or if they just rented lift access from the mountain like diablo does.

This is really disappointing news as my wife and I just started going to Blue Mt last Sept. We made it back a couple more times and I participated in my first Super D there. I was planning on being at Blue every weekend since I purchased a season pass for 2011.
I was looking forward to many more great memories of riding there. Hopefully they'll bring it back for 2012 along side the waterpark...whatever it is they build for that.

Dan and his crew did a great job with the trails and races and those will sorely be missed this year.

demo 9 said:

^ while i dont know anything about how bikeparks work, i would assume (seasonally) that if _______ did not turn a profit, __________ would not be a business, If you owned _____ and you lost money yearly, you wouldnt be open... I know i wouldnt pay X thousand dollars to let people ride every year, no profit, no bikepark... right? The mountains cant possibly be paying to run the lifts. I dont believe that mtn creek pays diablo, i am pretty sure diablo pays diablo.

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That's probably a valid way to think about businesses in general, but it doesn't always work out that way. If what I've read is correct, the WNBA has NEVER turned a profit, but David Stern (commissioner of the NBA) keeps the league around. So sometimes profit isn't the only reason to keep something going. Might be something having to do with relationships or public perception.

Other people have mentioned in this thread that a waterpark might encourage them to bring their whole family to the resort so that Dad can race DH while the fam hits the waterslides. In that case, Blue mountain brings in 1 race fee and THREE waterpark tickets as opposed to just the race fee if there was no waterpark (or no money from that family at all if there's a waterpark and no bike park). In that scenario they may be losing money on the small side operation (the bike park) but the side operation might be helping boost profits for the main cash cow (the waterpark).
I'm not saying that that's necessarily how it WILL work, but it's one scenario in which you might keep something around even if it's not making a profit.

Has the management at Blue Mountain not noticed that Dorney Park/Wildwater Kingdom is about 30 minutes away, and Camelback is just 45 minutes away? How do they expect to entice people to pass up established water parks and drive to the boonies for an unproven park? Yes, I've been to Vertical Earth, looked at the parking lot and wondered how they could afford to run the lift, but I don't think a water park is going to be the goose that lays their golden eggs. I guess time will tell...

I guess they have to take away disc golf too. Honestly, some of the business owners in PA are the scummiest around. Dan, you had a great project going and it turned out great. It was only a half hr drive from my house.

Hesh To Steel said:

Other people have mentioned in this thread that a waterpark might encourage them to bring their whole family to the resort so that Dad can race DH while the fam hits the waterslides. In that case, Blue mountain brings in 1 race fee and THREE waterpark tickets as opposed to just the race fee if there was no waterpark (or no money from that family at all if there's a waterpark and no bike park). In that scenario they may be losing money on the small side operation (the bike park) but the side operation might be helping boost profits for the main cash cow (the waterpark).
I'm not saying that that's necessarily how it WILL work, but it's one scenario in which you might keep something around even if it's not making a profit.

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It's called a Loss Leader and they are prevelant in almost every business scenario. Wendy's for example doesn't make a cent on their 99 cent Junior Bacon Cheeseburger but they are hoping when you order 5 of them at 2am you'll also get a coke which has 96% markup.