Vail Resorts Announces 2022-23 Epic Passes, Maintains Cheaper Price Structure than Ikon
On Monday, Vail Resorts announced its suite of Epic Pass products for the 2022-23 winter season. Most notably, Epic will continue to offer cheaper prices and more generous access terms than its main competitor, the Ikon Pass suite.
The top-of-the-line Epic Pass, which offers unlimited access with no blackouts to all resorts owned by Vail, will start at just $841—an increase of 7%, but still more than 10% lower than the pre-2021 Epic Pass, and over $200 lower than the competing full Ikon Pass. The lower-level 2021-22 Epic Local Pass, which contains holiday blackouts and limited access at some resorts, starts at only $626. Regional Epic products, such as the Northeast Value Pass and Tahoe Local Passes, remain available for a lower price.
After splitting it into two access tiers last season, Vail Resorts is once again reformatting their Epic Day Pass product. The upper “All Resorts” tier essentially remains the same product as last year’s, starting at $93 for a 1-day non-holiday pass. But now there are two lower tier passes—the “32 Resorts” tier, which excludes high-caliber destinations such as Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Park City, and Whistler, and the “22 Resorts” tier, which completely excludes all mountains outside New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and the Midwest. The “32 Resorts” tier starts at $72 for a 1-day non-holiday pass, while the “22 Resorts” tier starts at just $44.
Most pass access terms will remain the same as last year. However, all Sun Valley and Snowbasin access is gone for 2022-23, with both mountains moving to the Ikon and Mountain Collective passes for the upcoming winter. Additionally, Seven Springs Mountain Resort, Hidden Valley Resort and Laurel Mountain Ski Area—three small hills in Pennsylvania that Vail bought late last year—join the Epic and Northeast pass lines.
Epic has also revamped their payment plan for 2022-23 pass products, following in Ikon’s footsteps by partnering with a financial institution to offer installment loans on pass purchases. Pending creditworthiness, pass purchasers will be able to lock in a 6-month installment plan, with payments starting in September, at no interest cost. The payment plan is not available to Iowa and West Virginia residents.
Most 2022-23 Epic Pass products are on sale now on the Epic website.
Our Take
With this announcement, it seems that Vail Resorts is staying firm with the affordable-price approach it introduced last year. Epic’s pass products will continue to substantially undercut Ikon price-wise for the upcoming season, and some Ikon customers eligible for renewal discounts will still pay less if they switch to an equivalent Epic product. Epic’s regional season pass products, such as the Tahoe Local Pass, Summit Value Pass, and Northeast Value Pass, continue to offer access to competitive resorts at prices that would have been otherwise unthinkable as recently as two years ago. And the “22 Resorts” Epic Day Pass, which chiefly targets small, local hills, finally provides an advance-purchase price that makes sense for Vail’s Midwest, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire resorts. On paper, these products offer deals that seem hard to pass up.
However, 2021-22 passholders will know that several Vail-owned resorts experienced an onslaught of problems this season, including staffing shortages, slow terrain and dining openings, and increased crowding. Vail Resorts looks on track to address the former two with a commitment to increased wages for next winter, but with only slight price increases and no considerable new access restrictions across its products (all Vail-owned resorts will continue to be unlimited on the full Epic Pass, while most will stay unlimited—some without holiday blackouts—on the Epic Local), it’s hard to imagine that the crowds at Epic mountains will subside in any considerable manner.
The crowding problems have certainly been worse at some mountains than others—certain regional resorts, such as Okemo and Northstar, seem to have been hit especially bad this winter, while others, such as Kirkwood and Beaver Creek, have rarely experienced notable lift lines. But ultimately, passholders who ended up stuck in amusement-park-level lines on weekends and holidays this winter may find it worth the extra couple hundred dollars to switch to Ikon next year. We plan to return to major Epic mountains next season to re-evaluate crowd logistics.
Epic is also continuing to lose ground in certain destination regions compared to Ikon. Epic has not been able to attract the same level of pass partners as Ikon has (in North America, only Telluride and the Canadian RCR resorts on the full pass are not owned by Vail), and by losing Sun Valley and Snowbasin, Epic now only has one offering in Utah—Park City—and is completely shut out from the U.S. Northern Rockies region. Ikon Pass products now offer access to at least four resorts in each region—including Sun Valley and Snowbasin themselves.
It seems that Epic and Ikon are diverging somewhat in strategy this season, with Epic doubling down on unlimited access to Vail-owned resorts at competitive prices, and Ikon maintaining higher prices, only providing unlimited access to select mountains, and adding access restrictions at certain resorts—but offering more compelling resorts in certain regions. We’re excited to see how these developments impact the ski resort landscape for the upcoming winter.
For more information on resorts on the Epic Pass, see our Epic Pass mountain reviews as well as our Colorado, Tahoe, Utah, Vermont, and Washington rankings.
