Soda Springs Mountain Resort

When I first started learning how to snowboard (about 9 yrs ago) this is where my parents took me. It’s no fancy resort, but to avoid paying outrageous amounts of money for lift tickets, we came here. And I was happy. We used to purchase the rental package, but if that’s what you had in mind, make sure you COME EARLY. Otherwise you spend almost the entire morning just checking out your gear. They literally only have 2 lifts, and super short runs, but again as a beginner I was happy. The resort is super small, but it was nice because my parents could literally sit at the café and see us coming down the slope. Great place if you’re learning, or if you have members who won’t be skiing/​boarding, as there is a place they can go tubing.

We were looking for a place for me to teach my child how to ski. Very first time out. Using the magic carpet to start seemed like the best bet. I bought lift tickets online for myself and my kid and saved some bucks so was excited until I showed up… The magic carpet is only part of the «Planet Kids» area, which is a different ticket. This is not clear at all on their website.
That was a bit of a fiasco at the ticket window, to make things worse the person who was at the window, left after five minutes of looking up my order to go to lunch. I was there and just willing to pay whatever to get going, but took another 10 – 15 minutes for them to figure it all out. Still have no idea how this will show up on my credit card.
Then come to find out I can’t use my own skis on the magic carpet hill, so it becomes me on foot doing the lessons. The next day we went to a nearby ski place with a kids teaching area, magic carpet, let the adults with skis go on and received a much better value and better overall experience.

Don’t waste your time or your money! Went before I Unilocaled and was disappointed. The other reviews are on point: disorganized, overpriced rip-​off!
$ 39 for what? The kids zone was nothing but a tube Merry-​go-​round and a sledding area.
If you want to do anything extra, like snow board or ski, you have to wait in a line that feeds into a tiny room. Easy fix: check in & pick up line!
Staff are unfriendly and you hear them yelling the don’t do this & that. If they just put up some simple signs that directs information, like: «Tickets Here» or «Tram Stops Here».
Won’t be back here, unless someone buys this dump and turns it into what it could be.

Planet Kids is great! Our whole family had a lot of fun. We had a wonderful instructor to teach my child how to ski!

Took my little princess here during New Year’s. Second time I’ve been here. This is a great place to take your kids to play snow. The place was crowded and difficult to find parking but well worth it. Lots of snow this year. The ticket ($ 39) comes with one adult and child admission. It also comes with skis for the kid. For the adult, its watch only — no lift ticket. Each additional adult is $ 10. My daughter is to young to ski but she really enjoyed the tubing. One thing though. It close at 4pm. You want to leave early otherwise you won’t be able to get out of the parking. Took me hour and a half just to get out.

Came here very exited and to my disappointment there was awful service. First, ticket lines are so long! I got here early and was in the line for longer than an hour. Prices are a little pricey compared to what you get out of the money you pay. By the time I got out of line it was lunch time (no surprise another line!). Finally made it to the tubing area to find a 30 minute wait to go up and once up another wait to slide down. The ride down was fun but then you go down to wait another 35 min to get back up. They moved the area to slide down to a lower area and added hay for safety but it only added a bump. Moving it down only made people slide down to the start line and the hay felt like I was going to fall off and a kid fell off when he hit the hay. Overall, I definitely expected better but will definitely not be coming back.
I don’t want to just complain, so some pros were food was decent, and there are nice views. Wish I could get a refund because getting to tube down twice for $ 40 was so not worth it. And I got here right at opening.

Been coming here ever since our regular snow park (Snowflower) is no longer open to non-​members. We make it an all day event with our kids tubing and rolling in the snow. Very organized. Grounds are clean & well maintained. There’s also ample parking for our suburban. Although they have hot food and drinks, it gets super crowded. So leave the park to dine at our favorite lodge and then return for more frolicking in the snow.

This is only about the kids park:
It is my second visit to Soda Springs resort. They have a nice kids area, and I thought it would be worth a second visit. My mistake.
The main problem is the huge line they have for buying tickets. First time I was there, I waited more than an hour, but the kids had fun (even though they had enough after an hour and a half). The second time I went there, I waited in line for an hour, then they told us to go to another line for the kids part, and there the computer did not work, so I waited for another 15 minutes until giving up. Even their employee said it is a mess…
No place which respects its customers abuses them so bad. Even Disney Land lines are shorter.
The kids activity are a bit overpriced, but definitely not worth the wait in line. Feels unprofessional.

Awesome resort for young families!!! We have two girls: 2,6. We loved Planet Kids. It was awesome to be able to have my husband snowboard while I taught the kids to do ski/​snowboard at PK. Rentals at PK are free! No need to bring gear or tubes. All the lifts were open. Snow was great, lots of powder. And they make their snow from recycled water! Husband enjoyed the slopes. I had a blast teaching the kids. Great price, can’t beat it!!!

Went there on a family trip. place looked good, with friendly staff manning the parking lot.
We decided to go tubing while we were there, as we went to buy our tickets, the young woman selling the ticket to us mentioned that the running speed is slower than usual because of the fresh snow fall but insisted that we would be able to go tubing. Ok, so we went ahead and bought the tickets thinking tubing would be safer with our young ones in our party. But when we got to the tubing area, the worker told us that we could not go tubing at the time because the tubes sink into the fresh snow, making tubing impossible.
We took that info and our tickets back to the booth to get a refund since there was no guarantee that we’d be able to tube. But as we find out, they don’t do refunds! We spoke with a manager stating the situation and still refused a refund. We mentioned that one worker said tubing is ok and the other said no, and still refused a refund. ANOTHER employee joined the conversation and stated that I was correct, that we were given the wrong info, and STILL refused a refund… and forced us to settle with a Damn gift card that expires at the end of the season!
Will I be going back, yes… Just to use the Damn gift card. My wife got the corporate number, so we will definitely be giving them a call and maybe THEY’LL give us a Damn refund!

Disappointed. I had low expectations given that it was a warm day. Planet Kids was presented as family fun but adults couldn’t join in the fun. The food was overpriced and not tasty. The shuttle to planet kids was insufficient requiring lengthy waits. I doubt I’ll come here again.

First off this place looked good to go snowboarding at. Good cheap prices and from what I see the slopes looks nice for beginners too.
One warning though, the lines are crazy long, waited for 2 hours to get some equipment, and waited another hour to get our lift tickets… NO BUENO! Wasted half my day in line and this place closes at 4…
Another thing is that this place is filled with kids running around everywhere! I won’t be coming back here anymore, first and last time.

We went here out of desperation. My step daughter and her friend wanted to go sledding over the holidays and everything was packed. We decided to come here because they actually had parking spaces.
The place was packed, as expected. We arrived at 1pm, 3 hours before they closed. It took an hour just to buy (full priced) tickets. When we got to the sledding area, half the runs were closed and it was a 30 min wait to sled down the hill just once, then back in line.
While I understood it was a busy and full because of the holidays, I was surprised they charged full prices for such a limited experience. The sledding hill amounted to over $ 10 a trip (only had time to go
Down three times).
Business such as this should either place limits on how many people they let in, or offer discounts when the hills have long lines due to being partially closed.

I don’t ever Unilocal but had to after the experience here. DO NOT GO!!! Even with advance purchase tickets you will wait in line to get actual tickets. Wait in line at the lifts. Wait in line to eat. Wait in line to piss. Be managed, what they call assisting, by their immature staff. Watch the parking lot guys smoking pot. And by all means DO NOT subject your children to the tubing experience. It made for a terrible first experience for my daughter whom after falling off her first tube ride was not assisted at all and when I rushed in I was scolded by staff for crossing a barrier. Thanks Soda Springs!

Purposely understaffed. Moves rentals really slow so when you get your equipment you barely have any time left to ski. This is the second time I’ve experienced this. Definitely not the right way to run a business. Never coming back to this place again.

I grew up playing on these slopes in summer and skiing down them during the winter. It has always been a podunk type of Ski «resort». The staff are always friendly but not too friendly. I remember watching Saab’s in the eighties run auto-​cross type of events in the parking lot. I like the fact that ticket prices here aren’t widely exorbitant. Hopefully this old Ski slope can survive the onslaught of global warming and the trend towards smaller annual snow levels.

*** CRAZY UPDATE***
After I posted the below review about Soda Springs I also wrote the California Attorney General. Soda Springs had been selling $ 30 selling tickets to Tube Town when it was unusable, and refusing credits or refunds once customers realized the scam. (I personally watched it happen to at least a dozen families in one day.)
The Soda Springs Director, Shaydar Edelmann, responded to the Attorney General’s office. I’ll quote it here, along with what actually happened:
Edelmann: «We provided a 30 minute window for returns based on the conditions and the customer was well in excess of the previously mentioned 30 minute window»
Truth: We bought our lift tickets, then our girls drank hot chocolate while we readied them to go sledding for the first time. It takes more than 30 minutes to get lift tickets on jackets and jackets on three excited little kids and kids to bathrooms then kids back in jackets, etc. Once we saw the actual sledding hill we IMMEDIATELY returned asking for credit for a future visit. I can assure Shaydar Edelmann that NO FUN WAS HAD by our family on that sledding hill at any point.
Edelmann: «Soda Springs staff later offered a complimentary return visit at the time which was refused by the guests.»
Truth: Both my husband and I asked for credit (they call it «Mountain Bucks»). We said if we could just have the «Mountain Bucks» for a future visit we would leave. But Jen, the sales manager, threw our tickets at us through the window and said that there was «no way» we would receive credit. Then she slammed the sales window down in our faces and shut the blinds with dramatic flourish.
Maybe Sales Manager Jen isn’t telling Shaydar what really happened? But whatever! This place is a mess!
If Soda Springs had actually offered a credit, or just written or called us later with an apology and a credit (which was never offered at any point) we could have saved all this anger and crazy letter writing.
Please save yourselves the grief and keep driving up the mountain to better snow and customer service that doesn’t involve wacky letters to the attorney general’s office.
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ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Unfortunately, Soda Springs Winter Resort deserves a terrible review.
The sales manager, Jen, sold our family five tickets for «Tube Town» today for a total of $ 150. Once we walked all the kids over to the «Tube Town» area it was immediately apparent that it should not have been operating.
The tubes couldn’t move more than 6″ at a time due to the wet snow. No one — our family and all the other kids — could move their tubes down the hill. The employees at Tube Town were extremely nice (like the guys in the parking lot, all fun guys!) and they recommended that we, and the other families with upset kids, go ask for a refund. So we went over to the ticket booth and the manager told us that a refund of our $ 150 would never happen. This manager, Jen, was wildly unpleasant.
I am sympathetic that the ski resorts have had a terrible winter so far, but I find it immoral to sell tickets to an experience that doesn’t exist and then refuse a refund (We quickly learned from other families that Soda Springs’ «Planet Kids» learning hill was just as unusable, a «debacle» in the words of one dad — which is why we requested a «Tube Town» refund instead of an exchange).
We offered to take credit for a future visit instead, so they could keep our money and we’d just come another time when Tube Town was functional, and again we were refused by Jen.
It’s one thing to sell nonrefundable lift tickets to skiers — I agree those should be nonrefundable as the resorts aren’t responsible for conditions. But to sell $ 30/​head tickets to little kids for a tubing experience that it doesn’t work is highway robbery.
Shame on the Soda Springs Winter Resort for their actions today. We saw many other families — several of them with a language barrier — receiving the same treatment. As we left, I saw them selling more tickets to the nonfunctional Tube Town. That’s just sad.

Love the fact that it’s only a little over 2 hours drive from our house. It’s great for beginners who want to see if their kids would enjoy skiing or boarding. Nice convenient conveyor that you can ride up, so the kids can literally go down the small slope over and over again and not waste so much energy climbing back up the hill. My 5-​year-​old skied down about 20 times and it wasn’t overly crowded. There are also lift passes for adults to ski down or snowboard that cost $ 30. The Planet Kids is $ 30 as well and these 2 are separate FYI. Adults can only ski with the lift passes, but if you’re there to try it out with your kids, do the Planet Kids in your regular snow boots.
We brought our own food, so I can’t provide any info on the food.

To all the pro skiers and snowboarders, this resort is not for you!!! This is only good for beginners and for families with kids. They have an area for kids who can go tubing and a mini slopes for those kids who is trying to learn how to ski or snowboard. I took my 5 years old daughter here to let her practice snowboarding. A great place to teach your toddlers =).

Came here on President’s weekend. Bad idea.
The place was packed with overly protective parents being «Gatekeepers» or doing «Helicopter parenting».
Soda Springs was extremely understaffed, either because that’s the way they always are or because some manager screwed up. Quick run down…45 minutes to buy a lift ticket. 60 minutes to rent some skis, 70 minutes to get lunch – with only 1 cashier on a freakin’ 3 day weekend!
The majority of adults, mostly parents, came off as extremely idiotic. I even saw an Asian woman wearing high heels in the snow! More shocking is that later in the day, I saw two more Asian women and an Indian woman (red dot, not feather) wearing high heels in the snow.
The vast majority of parents didn’t even speak English, at least as their primary language, so manners and orderly conduct were out the window. I can’t count how many times these people tried to cut in front of me in line and then tried to play stupid. Or perhaps there are that many stupid parents there.
This place was neat to check out and luckily we got there when they opened because the lines just to ride the tubes were over 20 minutes by 11am. That’d be a 20minute wait for a 4 second tube ride.
I probably won’t ever be going back because every single aspect of this place is an example in inefficiency.