Well, other than sporadic complaints that things are different, so far the Snowbird parking reservations and the Alta first-come, first-served approaches are both working well enough. Recently stayed at Snowbird (timeshare condo at Iron Blosam) but was taking the UTA bus (free) to ski Alta for five midweek days (Mon-Fri).
On powder days, Alta parking is filling up by 10:00, sometimes full shortly after 9:30. Warnings are given on social media starting the evening before and then about once an hour starting around 7:30am. To get into the Wildcat lot, people have had to get there by 8:30 or so. Lifts start at 9:15. The Supreme lift just opened on Dec. 19. Lines got pretty long first thing in the morning the week before with only 4 lifts running. During the holiday weeks, Alta is running all 6 lifts, including the old Albion double that can help move people from the Albion base up to Supreme and Sugarloaf. That might be normal. Never paid attention to Alta in December before.
What I heard from someone who has worked at Alta for 20 years is that they consider 6000 the usual max. Goal is to keep under 4000 people on the slopes at once for 2020-21. Alta has had RFID since 2008 for all lifts, so has plenty of historical data of lift usage.
Could see people monitoring entry to Snowbird as we took the bus up to Alta. I think new spots open up as Week Of reservations on Mondays. Supposedly spots also open up for the afternoon as people leave. Weekends, Fridays, and holidays are all booked up for advanced reservations. Don't have a sense of how many additional spots are released for Week Of. Terrain was still pretty limited as of last week. Need a few more storm systems to really cover up the rocks off-piste.
