News

Crazy Gondola Opens at Wynn Palace Cotai

Peter Landsman2 Comments

It seems the lift companies can build just about anything these days, even a gondola that turns six times at the request of a casino magnate.  Steve Wynn opened his $4.2 billion Wynn Palace yesterday in Macau, China along with one of the most complex gondola lifts ever built.  The casino’s SkyCab is monocable detachable that turns six times.  Doppelmayr designed the lift to run slowly enough that cabins can round four different bullwheels at line speed while only detaching at two loading and unloading stations, one of which has a ~110-degree angle on the roof of the main lobby.  An upcoming rail station will be integrated with the second station.  The entire system relies on the same principles Doppelmayr used to build a gondola at a zoo in Sweden that also makes six angle changes.

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Look closely, there are two bullwheels, four towers and a terminal in this photo.
Cabins reach nearly 100 feet over Performance Lake, where fountains perform to music every 15 minutes.  “A fanciful dragon lifts you into the sky, affording a spectacular view of our iconic Performance Lake, before gently setting you down in a garden, where a member of our talented Reception team welcomes you,” notes the Palace website. “Our SkyCabs have quickly emerged as one of the most talked-about attractions at Wynn Palace.”

CWA adapted standard 8-passenger Omega cabins into 6-passenger VIP versions with custom audio-visual systems and air conditioning.  Doppelmayr Cable Car will manage operations and maintenance for the system under a long-term contract.  If you are looking to make a career move and like the sound of dragon bullwheels, they are hiring.

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Sunday River to Build New Lift on Spruce Peak

Peter Landsman7 Comments

Sunday River announced this morning a $2.1 million Doppelmayr fixed-grip triple will replace the Spruce Peak triple, where a terminal literally fell over last month.   Willis MountainGuard and Boyne Resorts deemed the lift a loss after suspected grout failure sent the top station sliding from the bedrock it was anchored to the weekend of July 9th.  The 1986 Borvig triple was Sunday River’s second oldest lift and the new version will re-use its new Chairkit loading conveyor.  Doppelmayr will also replace the top terminal of Sunday River’s other Borvig triple on Locke Mountain.

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Exactly when the new lift will open is unclear.  Doppelmayr already has a packed summer building 17 lifts across the US and Canada.  In the meantime, most of Spruce Peak can be accessed from the Chondola and Aurora lifts.

This is far from the first (and won’t be the last) late-season lift replacement after unexpected disaster.  On June 11, 2012, a wildfire burned through Ski Apache in New Mexico, damaging two chairlifts and a gondola.  The Native American tribe that owns the mountain announced a $15 million deal with Doppelmayr on September 5th and three new lifts were completed by January.

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News Roundup: Commonwealth

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News Roundup: South America

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This is an open thread.  Feel free to leave a comment on anything lift-related.

Vail Resorts to Buy Whistler Blackcomb in $1 Billion Deal

Peter Landsman9 Comments

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The largest ski resort company in the world, Vail Resorts, announced a deal this morning to buy North America’s biggest ski mountain for just over USD$1 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition of Whistler Blackcomb brings Vail Resorts’ portfolio to a dozen mountain resorts including the most-visited in the United States, Canada and Australia.  Vail Resorts, Inc. will also own six of the top ten mountains by skier visits in North America. The company has been looking to grow internationally since acquiring Australia’s Perisher Resort in 2015.

Whistler Blackcomb Holdings currently trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange. CEO Dave Brownie says the company’s board has been “monitoring the unique challenges facing the broader ski industry due to the unpredictability of year-to-year regional weather patterns.”  As a result, the Whistler Blackcomb board accepted a takeover offer from Vail that places a 43 percent premium over Friday’s stock price, valuing W-B Holdings at CDN$1.39 billion.

The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.  On the season pass front, Whistler Blackcomb will quit the Liftopia-powered Mountain Collective pass after this season and join Vail’s Epic Pass.  Epic pass-holders will have access to 253 lifts at Vail’s 12 resorts in three countries.

Whistler Blackcomb announced a $345 million capital improvement plan called Renaissance earlier this year that will include new lifts on both mountains over the next 20 years and Vail intends to continue investing in this initiative.

News Roundup: New Manufacturer?

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Medellín Pairs Urban Gondolas with Subways

Peter Landsman3 Comments

https://www.instagram.com/p/BILLC7aA6FZ/?tagged=metrocable

South American cities are world leaders in urban cable transport, with 24 urban gondolas either opened or planned in Bogotá, Caracas, Guayaquil, La Paz, Lima, Medellín and Rio de Janeiro.  I’ve written extensively about La Paz, Bolivia’s capital that went all in on cable transport with eleven gondolas either operating, under construction or planned.  But a full decade before the creation of Mi Teleférico in La Paz, Metro de Medellín opened the first of three Metrocable gondola lines in Colombia’s third largest city.  Metrocable Line K was the first urban gondola to seamlessly link with a subway anywhere in the world, providing under-served and poor neighborhoods access to the city’s transport network. Metrocable’s J, K and L lines, with ten stations over 5.8 miles, now compose a quarter of the Metro de Medellín network.  All three Metrocable lines are 8-passenger monocable gondolas built by Poma.

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Line K debuted in 2004 with a shockingly low construction cost of $26 million.  Its four stations branch off from the Acevedo Metro station over a length of 6,798 feet, giving three neighborhoods access to the core subway Line A that opened in 1996.  This gondola rises 1,309 feet with a rope speed of 5 m/s.  Metrocable Line J opened in 2008 at a cost of $47.5 million, serving four more stations from the terminus of the shorter subway Line B. Line J is longer than the original K at just under 9,000 feet.  A ride with seamless transfers between buses, two Metro subway lines and two Metrocable lines costs less than a dollar.

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Medellín’s Metro system features two subway lines and three Metrocable lines with two more under construction.

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News Roundup: For Sale

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News Roundup: Villages

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Mi Teleférico to Build 11th Gondola Line in La Paz

Peter Landsman3 Comments

The urban ropeway revolution will continue in Bolivia’s capital city of La Paz, where President Evo Morales announced Friday an 11th gondola line, Linea Celeste (Sky Blue Line) will join the Mi Teleférico gondola network.  La Paz and the neighboring city of El Alto announced the Red, Yellow and Green gondola lines in 2012 and the world’s largest urban gondola system opened throughout 2014.  President Morales unveiled plans for phase two with six more lines in 2015 with another added to the mix last February.  All 11 lines will be 10-passenger monocable detachable gondolas built by Doppelmayr. This latest investment of $110 million comes on top of $234 million for phase one and $450 million for the first six lines of phase two.

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The Sky Blue branch will stretch nearly 9,000 linear feet with four stations, 27 towers and 159 CWA 10-passenger cabins. It is expected to be the busiest line in the system, serving the heart of the city and up to 4,000 passengers per hour at six meters per second.  The three existing lines operate at up to 5 m/s.  A trip from end to end on Linea Cileste will take 11.8 minutes.  A line previously dubbed Sky Blue will now be known as the Gold Line.  At the current rate, Mi Teleférico is going to run out of colors soon!

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