Whistler Fitzsimmons 8: A Lesson in Unintended Consequences from Overengineering

Whistler Blackcomb’s first eight-pack lift adds a ton of theoretical capacity to a strange part of the resort.

For the 2023-24 season, British Columbia’s Whistler Blackcomb performed a major upgrade to one of its out-of-base lifts. This Canadian resort replaced its Fitzsimmons Express quad, which dated back to 1999, with a brand-new high-speed eight-pack, bringing a 25% capacity increase. The Fitzsimmons 8 is Whistler Blackcomb’s first eight-pack lift; it remains the only chairlift option out of the Whistler Village base (the Whistler Village Gondola and Excalibur Gondola provide the other uphill egress).

The story behind how Whistler Blackcomb got this lift earmarked for Fitzsimmons in the first place is pretty wild. The lift was originally intended to be installed as Park City’s new Silverlode chair for the 2022-23 season, and all the parts were even shipped there—but the project was cancelled due to local issues at the last minute, and Vail Resorts decided to ship the entire thing up to Whistler instead.

So does the Fitzsimmons eight-pack, which wasn’t even designed for its current use case, actually make sense as a part of Whistler’s lift network? Let’s take a look.

An inset of the Whistler Blackcomb trail map, with the Fitzsimmons 8 lift highlighted in red.

Experience Changes

As the main base area for the largest ski resort in North America, Whistler Blackcomb’s Whistler Village base has always been incredibly busy, especially on weekend and holiday mornings. But while this base area could theoretically use all the capacity it could get, the new Fitzsimmons eight-pack is a far-from-perfect solution.

On the plus side, the new Fitzsimmons 8 provides a more comfortable ride than the old Fitzsimmons high-speed quad. The new eight-pack is better engineered for NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) than the old lift, with contoured and more well-padded seats as well. In addition, the doubled capacity on each physical chair makes it easier for larger groups to ride up together.

The new Fitzsimmons 8 features more comfortable and better-padded seats than its quad predecessor.

However, the lift’s new setup presents a number of issues. As with several competing mountains that have recently installed eight-pack chairlifts, Whistler hasn’t figured out how to efficiently load the new Fitzsimmons lift—and as a result, very few chairs are loaded to capacity during peak times. This results in a scenario where the resort has been failing to realize the “on-paper” capacity benefits from such a massive lift, and few folks have noticed a substantial decrease in waits.

In addition, even if the new Fitzsimmons lift were loaded to its full capacity, any notable throughput benefits have been diminished by the need to take the Garbanzo Express four-seater chairlift to get any higher on the mountain. This high-speed quad only has the same capacity as the old Fitzsimmons quad, and it’s not designed to handle the extra traffic that Fitzsimmons has been sending its way (even with the poor queue management, the new lift still shuffles guests up the mountain faster than the old quad). Since nobody is lapping the lower third of Whistler’s footprint, the Fitzsimmons 8 has effectively shifted the crowding chokepoint up to the Garbanzo queue, rather than solved the issue of waits to get up the mountain from Whistler Village in the morning.

The wait time saved from the upgraded Fitzsimmons lift has essentially just been shifted to the Garbanzo Express quad, which nearly everyone takes to get to Whistler’s mid-mountain after departing Fitzsimmons.

Finally, the Fitzsimmons 8 is still the least attractive option to leave the Whistler Village base each day. The chair lacks bubbles, making it a tough sell versus the two gondolas, which provide isolation from Whistler’s often wet and uncomfortable lower-elevation climate. This is an especially notable omission given that nearly every eight-pack lift installed in North America so far has had some sort of bubble installation paired with the chair.

Final Thoughts

So while Whistler Blackcomb’s new Fitzsimmons 8 may look shiny, it not only fails to attract guests away from the resort’s more popular out-of-base Whistler Village gondolas, but it barely provides a capacity increase in and of itself due to queue management issues. It’s clear that this lift was designed with the primary purpose of serving the summer-only mountain bike park (where the Fitzsimmons lift plays a much more critical role in shuffling guests and their bikes up the mountain), but as for winter operations, there’s very little benefit. Ultimately, Fitzsimmons riders will likely experience slightly shorter waits on busy days, but that time will just be translated to waiting in the Garbanzo Express line instead.

Considering a ski trip to Whistler Blackcomb this year? Check out our full Western Canada rankings, as well as our comprehensive Whistler Blackcomb review. You can also check out our Whistler Blackcomb review in video form below.