TL;DR
Boyne Resorts has announced various projects across its North American ski areas for 2025-26, but are they truly enhancing the guest experience or just keeping up with industry trends?
Boyne's Latest Upgrades: Substance or Spin?
Boyne Resorts has unveiled its planned improvements for the 2025-26 ski season across its North American portfolio. While the company touts these as major enhancements, a closer look reveals a mix of necessary maintenance, catch-up improvements, and a few genuinely innovative additions. The announcements follow industry trends of focusing on lift upgrades, snowmaking investments, and creating Instagram-worthy attractions.
Explorer Gondola Summit
At Big Sky, the new Explorer Gondola addresses a long-standing bottleneck but comes years after competitors installed similar lifts. The viewing platform atop Lone Peak feels more like a bid for social media exposure than a core skiing improvement. Meanwhile, Sunday River and Sugarloaf are primarily focusing on snowmaking upgrades - essential in the Northeast, but hardly groundbreaking.
Some of Boyne's smaller resorts are seeing more interesting developments. Alpental's replacement of the historic Chair 2 with a faster triple lift is a sensible modernisation, though purists may lament the loss of a classic. Loon Mountain's new magic carpet for beginners is a practical addition often overlooked at major resorts. expanded tubing park and Christmas-themed lodge cater to the growing non-ski revenue streams many resorts are chasing. While these may boost profits, core skiers and riders might question whether such attractions enhance or detract from the on-snow experience.
