Reserve Now!

Today is the day. The gateway for making paid parking reservations at Alpine Meadows and Palisades Tahoe for the ’23-’24 ski season is now live at parkpalisadestahoe.com.  I think I have made it clear that I am not a fan of reserved or paid parking at our favorite ski area. I also have little faith that it will do much to resolve traffic issues in Tahoe during the upcoming season. Some pundits are even in agreement that it’s just going to add a new round of traffic around the noon hour as people attempt to catch the reservation free afternoon session.

But, in doing my due diligence, I did go through the process of making a paid reservation this morning. Yes, I paid money to reserve a space for Christmas Day at Alpine Meadows. Yeah, nice Christmas gift, getting to pay for parking! Thanks Santa! But my family does have some traditions, one of the biggest being that we have gone skiing on Christmas Day for about the last 25 years. During most of those years, we have enjoyed skiing with family and friends, while also handing out candy and other small tokens of appreciation to liftees and other employees. I believe we have only missed one year when the mountain did not open due to weather and avalanche concerns.

Going through the process of setting up an account and making a paid reservation, I learned a few things this morning. Some of those things fall into the realm of “good”, others into the realm of “bad”, and often I was just left scratching my noggin with more unanswered questions. Here’s the highlights:

• I could find no reservation dates at either Alpine Meadows or Palisades where the price for “reserved ahead” parking exceeded $30. This goes into the category of “good”, as the previous indications from PTAM was that those reservations were “starting at $30”. That gave many of us the thought that general weekend would be $30, but some dates might cost more. My Christmas reservation at Alpine Meadows was indeed $30.  I did a quick scan of three day weekends and the World Cup weekend and found no dates that are currently being sold at a higher price.

• The reservation process is not as simple as you may believe, as there are a ton of moving pieces that all have to work. Your reservation quest starts at the ParkPalisadesTahoe.com domain. Clicking the “Reserve Now” button leads to another domain: reservenski.parkpalisadestahoe-alpine.com.  (Thank you for including Alpine Meadows as a separate entity) This site simply serves as a “picker” to select your ski area and date. Once you have done that, you are whisked away to yet another site: parking.honkmobile.com. That’s where you then register for an account, enter a license plate and enter your credit card information. Sadly Apple Pay is not an option here, and that is what I use for 90% of my web transactions due to it’s better than average security.

• You are allowed to register up to 5 different license plates/vehicles on your Honk account. Once I set two vehicles up, it was fairly easy to shift my Christmas reservation from one to the other. That said, once I left the system, there is no obvious way to return to existing reservations.

• For those keeping track, the management of parking is not being done strictly by Palisades or Alpine Meadows. Previously, all indications were that parking management would be done by Interstate Parking out of Breckenridge, CO. Interstate handles just about all of the parking at any ski area that does reserved and paid parking. So this new integration with Honk Mobile is a new twist and I am not sure how that all fits together. And what became of ParkWhiz, the outfit that handled paid reservations during the July 4th weekend session? At least they used Apple Pay…

• Yes there is an app for that. Honk Mobile does have a parking app. I’m curious that PTAM makes zero mention of this, although I can make a guess. The current version of the app is targeted at either immediate “day of” parking or long term parking, such as at a university. It’s not setup for preselecting a date in the future and reserving parking for that date. That would explain that intermediate site I mentioned above that lets you pick your mountain and date from a “date picker”, the highly technical term for those calendar gizmos. Certainly it would be much slicker if PTAM built all of this into the current app. As it stands now, it is a giant sized kludge. That said, once I had a reservation made, I could log into the Honk Mobile app and see that reservation and modify that reservation.

Update: After goofing around with the Honk Mobile app for an hour, I cracked the code on making a future reservation. It is possible but far from an ideal way to make it happen. The low ratings below are well deserved.  It’s far easier to use the alternative front end date picker on the web. Also duly noted, this all looks much better on a mobile device than on my laptop. My suggestion would to open the reservenski.parkpalisadestahoe-alpine.com website on your phone, then use the “sharing” icon to add it to “Add to home screen”.  This will create an app icon with the ugly eagle logo and a title of “Welcome | Honk”. (That’s the process for iPhones…I guess Android phones offer a similar thing) This should allow you to bypass the Honk app completely except you may have to log in each time.

• In case you have missed this point before, you can only hold a maximum of 10 paid parking reservations. If you want to reserve more dates, you cannot until you have used some of them. I am throwing out a guess that they are really targeting those families that are booking the Christmas week and want a guarantee.

• There is an option to use a “parking code”. I am making a guess here but it would make sense that these parking codes could be distributed to those that feel like they should have some right to a guaranteed parking space. We have mentioned these things before: People reserving a day lesson; people staying in the Palisades Tahoe village; VIP guests; maybe even team parents. I am not saying that ANY of that is certain, just that they have something in mind. Maybe instead of making me an unofficial employee, they will just send me a slew of parking codes I can use to make sure that we can continue to write ski reports from our favorite mountain.

• It’s not clear exactly how this works for the free reservations, as you cannot make any of those reservations until November 28th. Will those free reservations also be handled by Honk Mobile, or will they be handled by Interstate Parking? And those violations, indications are that violations hare handled by Interstate, but does that include paid reservations that are made via Honk Mobile? What is the penalty if I paid $30 for a reservation but then fail to show up or cancel?

• How will any of this be enforced is still a huge question that leaves a hundred unanswered questions. Will there be a plate reader at parking lot entrances? Will plates be manually scanned by a moving vehicle or employees on foot? What if I arrive late? What if I arrive early and then leave after one run because conditions suck? What if I back into a parking place and don’t have a front license plate? What if snow or mud is obscuring my plate? What if there is a traffic accident, or just traffic, and I arrive at the resort a few hours late? How many parking spots are being set aside for paid reservations and other commitments versus how many are available for free? The list goes on and on.

• Lastly, a portion of the Subway part of the lot has been designated as the “Employee Lot”. As of now, it’s only the portion that is from the Ski Patrol building down to the wider portion of the lot. This area has alway been typical mostly employees, but has never been designated as “employees only”. There is no mention on this map of the “up close” carpool parking.

I’m not sure if I will keep the Christmas Day reservation or not. I’ve personally spent a ton of money in my lifetime at Alpine Meadows between day tickets, season passes, teams, lessons, school field trips, seasonal lockers, food and beverage, emergency goggles or extra layers from Estelle Sports and hundreds of dollars just for logo wear. I’m not all that keen on creating a whole new category of spending for parking reservations. Odds are almost certain that any money spent on parking will come directly out of my food and beverage budget for Alpine Meadows. (Don’t worry Melanie, that does not apply to you. My budget at Viva Treats is unlimited).

I look forward to skiing sometime soon. It looks like just about everyone has done some productive snowmaking during this cold snap. In the near term, there is a tail end of a storm that may brush by this weekend. As of now it brings the possibility of light rain with snow levels near 9000 feet. That is not helpful. Next week looks colder again at the minute. I am starting to flush ice cubes and wear my lucky underwear!