Deer Valley’s guiding principle is remarkably simple: Your family ski vacation shouldn’t be a lot of work. That’s the unswerving focus of the place. Get yourself to our mountain, and we’ll take it from there. Darn right, readers respond, pushing the resort to the head of the line for the third year in a row. “I like being treated like a VIP,” says one reader. Not surprisingly, the heart of the Deer Valley experience is service, provided by a friendly army of green-jacketed staff who presciently seem to know what you need before you know you need it. “There are lifties when you get off the lift?” an incredulous reader asks. “I think they probably will fall for you if you ask them to,” another comments. The resort has its detractors, certainly. It’s “not for the budget skier,” for sure. And some sniff that it’s a “country club on snow.” But Deer Valley knows its customers, and those customers deal the resort a winning hand of five aces: No. 1s in Grooming, On-Mountain Food, Lodging, Dining and Service. True to form, Deer Valley goes so far as to limit daily lift-ticket sales to 6,500, not to ensure cruising room on its well-manicured slopes, but to avoid overtaxing lunchtime seating. Try floating that policy in the boardroom of another resort. (Tip: Prepurchase your tickets if you’re visiting during any of the major holiday slots.)
You learn soon after a cheery valet unloads your skis from your car—or dispenses directions, answers questions, lugs your gear, digs out a ski—that Deer Valley’s particular insight isn’t to take care of the details, it’s that everything is a detail. “Nicest bathrooms in a resort anywhere,” a reader observes. Savvy to both its strengths and its weaknesses, the resort has countered its critics by opening up loads of legitimate expert slopes in the past several seasons, as a day tooling around the “hidden secrets” of Empire Canyon or lapping the Lady Morgan Express will reveal. Some readers single out the “sleepy nightlife” as a deal-breaker. But with the din of downtown Park City a mile away via constant shuttle service, that takes care of that. And therein might lie the key to Deer Valley’s success. “There is very little risk in coming here,” a reader says. “Our vacations are always good, and usually wonderful.”
/ What’s New / The midmountain St. Regis Deer Crest opens its doors with all the attendant luxuries you’d expect, including its own funicular to the Snow Park base, new heated deck on the Silver Lake Lodge, four new snowcats and upgrades to the snowmaking system.
/ Don’t Miss / Dinner at The Mariposa. If the restaurant were in downtown Park City instead of in the Silver Lake Lodge, you’d need two weeks to get a prime reservation.
/ Mandatory Run / Just about anything off the Lady Morgan Express. Take Magnet off the lift and work your way over to Argus, then catch the double-black Centennial Glades. If you take a tumble in Centennial, the guy who stops to give you a hand very well might be resort president Bob Wheaton.
Photo by Dan Campbell
