European Ski Resorts Turn to Petting Zoos to Appease Families

I know many of us thought last year’s skiing was bad, but it never looked like this:

That’s an image from Leysin, a resort in the Swiss Alps, that is part of an accompanying Bloomberg article on how bad skiing is in Europe right now. It’s gotten so bad that french resort, Chamonix, has opened a petting zoo for children to keep them entertained.

It’s an interesting article that provides insight into how Europeans view skiing:

• Resorts are raising prices, even with less snow, to limit the number of people that will come to the resorts. Think Vail would do that?
• Even with no snow, Austrian resorts are still at 80%-90% and France’s largest resort, La Plagne, is at 97% capacity. Aren’t Park City hotels at around 57% capacity right now?
• I loved this quote about how Europeans ski even when there’s no snow and it’s more dangerous: “Normally, you break a leg and you fall, maybe you slide a bit further and hit the snow but that’s it,” he said. “Now, when you fall you slide and hit a rock, or a tree, break another bone, get a bruise, that’s where the multiple injuries come from.”

So, it appears we should count ourselves lucky. While lift lines at Park City may have been backed up beyond what was expected, at least we had some snow… and we were not relying on petting zoos.