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At Least The Marketing Department Can Laugh: New SquAlpine App Available

We’ll admit it. We have done a bit, or maybe a lot, of grumbling about the mobile app for SquAlpine over the last year. We weren’t the only people feeling that way either. It went far beyond complaints posted here, Facebook and Twitter – comments posted at the Apple App Store were uncomplimentary at best. What’s awesome is that the Squaw Valley | Alpine Meadows marketing team paid attention to the feedback, had some good laughs, and then dealt with most of the issues. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the release video:

Right on cue, later that day, the update appeared on my iPhone, ready to install. So far, from the first looks, the app is vastly improved. In general, it takes far fewer clicks to get anywhere, the interface is far more intuitive and the look is just cleaner. The app does just about everything: lift status and wait times, trail status, weather, maps, resort information, access to webcams and more. You can also track your progress through the day and track your friends on the mountain. There’s also access to the store to reload lift tickets via the app. I am pretty sure the old app also did much of the same…but since I downloaded the new one, well, I can’t look at the old one anymore to make real comparisons. That said, everything looks easier.

Navigation Simplicity

On the old version of the app, many things were just not that easy to find. As several reviewers pointed out, it took several clicks to get anywhere. It was even worse if you were looking for Alpine Meadows specific information. The new app makes it much easier, with a clean interface.

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We noted this morning that the 8.01 version of the app even removed that ugly and irritating “Purchase Lift Tickets” button that cluttered up the screen. The links on the main screen take you where you want to go easily with a minimal number of clicks. As an example, all of the main webcams, from both Squaw and Alpine, are available on one screen. For lift status, it’s simple to click back and forth between the two mountains.

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The new app will purportedly also list wait times next to those statuses as well. If that’s true, it may serve to better balance crowds out around the mountain. But the counter to that is that the days of hiding out at some uncrowded lift on the mountain while the corral is full at Summit may be over. Ultimately the usefulness of this part of the app will only be as good as the system that is in place that keep it up to date. Over the last season, updates to the app were not always timely.

It’s unclear how notifications will fit into the picture either. Although there is a reference to notifications in the settings, there is not any visible place where notifications might appear. Over the last season, the latest updates on wind holds and lift ops were unpredictable at best. Rarely, they would appear in the app. Sometimes they would appear in the Twitter feed from SquAlpine and sometimes from Mountain Ops feed. Sometimes it was best to just go look at the electronic board near the breezeway. The new app does keep telling me that it has detected my Apple watch, making me wonder if it just plans to direct notifications there. Many of these questions will not be answered until the season gets underway.

Tracking you and your friends on the mountain

Overall, the new system of tracking yourself and your fiends on the mountain presents us with a much cleaner interface than the old app. I immediately noticed the easy to reach screen that kept daily and seasonal totals and that immediately piqued my interest in using the system. As always there’s question about the ability of our technology to keep up with battery life versus GPS use, talk time, music playing and other phone needs. There’s also the much larger philosophical question about whether any of that technology should even be a part of our ski days.

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One of the more interesting features of the app is the ability to easily send quick messages to your group. While using Siri to send text messages is certainly an improvement over the days of using Motorola Walkabouts, I know I have confused my ski partners with messages that end up saying things like “broccoli free in a bunch”. The new app offers simple buttons to tell a group things like “Waiting for you #here”. One would assume that “#here” will cause your location to show on a map, rather than knowing some of the more arcane location names around SquAlpine.

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One irritation of the new app, and all similar apps, are the constant nags to give complete and unfettered access to my location to the app at all times. If only there were a setting that says that it’s fine to track my location only within a certain geofenced area that includes Alpine Meadows or Squaw Valley. I’m not sure that I want anyone to always know exactly where I am at all times. When I go out to breakfast in Reno, I really don’t need anyone else wondering whether I went to Big Ed’s Alley Inn, or to Fantasy Girls, located across 4th Street. Just to make it clear, Big Ed’s does offer a great chicken fried steak!

Shopping: Still An Unknown

The store function is not yet available on the new app, so it’s tough to know how useful it will be. Gone are the simple days of walking up to the many kiosk windows at ski areas and quickly buying a day ticket.

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As more resorts move toward electronic ticketing systems, nobody has come up with a great system just yet. The process of buying a day ticket online has been equally frustrating at SquAlpine, Mount Rose and Boreal.

Here’s the vision I would propose, assuming one already has a reloadable ticket in hand.

  1. You should be able to simply scan a bar code or capture a number using your phone’s camera (similar to how you can redeem an iTunes or Starbucks card).
  2. Then select the number of days to add to the ticket.
  3. Then simply use a thumbprint to pay with Apple Pay.

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Kudos To The Marketing Department

We give kudos to the marketing department for listening to customer feedback, then actively making changes to improve the product. We hope the same level of care goes into keeping all of the information presented this season accurate and timely. We look forward to Mother Nature changing to a more winter-line pattern soon so we can do some real time testing soon…

19 thoughts on “At Least The Marketing Department Can Laugh: New SquAlpine App Available”

  1. About the location tracking part, it’s all or nothing and that’s really just up to Apple (nothing Squawlpine could do to change it).

    1. Like it really enhances the skiing nowadays kooks all over the place with their heads stuck in their phone
      Turn off your device get on the chair n ski….lol

      oh and i’d really appreciate you wearing earbuds again so i dont have to hear your lame a$$ music either…..jeebus

  2. All for nothing unless lift information is accurately portrayed. The projected opening times last year was a joke, and the least reliable source of information you could get!!!

    1. That’s what I liked about it. All the tech geeks would think they were on it, then stand around all agitated and confused, while I would sleep in, get to the mountain right when the lifts got going, and crush all the sweet lines that everyone traverses past on the way to something that requires more work for less turns because they followed everyone else there. Silly tech geeks!

  3. So…at 9am, when KT still hasn’t opened because of spacing issues, or when headwall hasn’t opened on a powder day because of icing, will it tell you the real wait times for those lifts? 4 hours? 2.5 hours? Go home now?

    Just curious…

  4. I remember when there used to be a big sign at the bottom of Squaw that would tell you all the information you needed to know (and was helpful for those of us who don’t use smartphones, yes we exist). Then Squaw tore down the sign and replaced it with an almost identical but considerably more useless one that requires a team of yellow jackets to explain to confused people exactly what they are looking at. In fact they too are equally confused and will tell you just to check the app. Yeah, other than that great job.

  5. Leave it to squaw to produce a marketing video that attempts to glamorize their crap app, and of course make themselves the victims of the “mean tweets”. What’s mean is charging a bundle for an overmarketed mountain and then not even being willing to put good groomers up for the intermediate skiers they marketed to, let alone other things. Come on up to the worlds only ski in starf*cks, it’s closed! Reminds me of last year when Andy went to the protest and handed out hot cocos, any attention is good attention apparently. It also shows the little world some of them live in.

    1. For the record, I was one of the demonstrators that Andy brought hot chocolate for. It was a super cold morning and I truly appreciated the gesture, it hit the spot. Also it reminded me of the Beverly Hills Cop scene where Eddie Murphy sends the undercover cops staking him out room service (and stick bananas in the tail pipe.)

      1. I am sincerely glad you enjoyed your hot coco, but we’re going to have to agree to disagree about Andy’s intentions, and the appropriateness of his behavior. Attempting to be the “good guy” and get people to shrug off their concerns? Attention-getting and passive aggressiveness? Attempting to flatter and impress people by gracing them with his presence? There are multiple potential reasons, and none of them positive I can think of especially when I consider his previous behavior. It’s not like he was trying to foster a healthy debate in the community by being out there. He invested a lot to stop incorporation, he lies about how many meetings have been held with the community. This is somebody who often lies, distorts or makes up facts to suit his purposes. He treats people with respect as long as he thinks there’s something in it for him and if there isn’t he can be downright rude. It’s something a person with a problematic ego and self-centered political agenda would do, someone who cared about the community and their opinions wouldn’t be in that position in the first place.

        1. I don’t doubt his intentions one bit, I just appreciated the hot chocolate and gesture on a cold morning.

          BTW, I was an IOV board member and had the opportunity to see first hand his investments in stopping our attempt to incorporate.

    2. Did anyone watch the live stream of the public comment from the salaried KSL folks during the planning commission in August? They were playing the victim card the whole time then as well.

      If I told them I was a way better skier than they were, they’d probably cry about that as well.

  6. Wouldn’t it be nice if the same people could also get a clue about the ridiculousness of the entire Village proposal, be able to make some snarky video about it and then actually listen to people’s feedback and make real changes to the proposal.

  7. Squally wont make a big deal of opening day on gold coast this fri…

    Btw as far as late openings last season going to be nothing compared to what is in store for us this year at squaw and alpine. New liability mgr and patrol directors at both….make squaw great…a lame village will do that cause squaw only mtn in N.A. that wont/can’t open their lifts on time….yeah real world class….

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