Giggijochbahn Sölden — Attraction in Sölden

Modern and clean cable car station, very efficient at rush hours and takes only 10 min to reach the upper station. From there, it takes almost 40 min and a few more cable cars to reach the glacier area (Rettenbach / Tiefenbach). There's also a sports store at the upper cable car station. Sölden has a dynamic pricing system for ski passes so booking in advanced is recommended. You can easily collect your pass on a machine. Ski passes for young children are very very cheap but they require ID verification for age. Outside of peak hours, the cable car runs slightly slower and the trip is about 12 minutes. There's a big parking building of multiple floors next to the base station. The parking building has elevators on the odd-number floors and one needs to walk up or down half a floor for the even number ones. The even number floors are those closer to the mountain side. The exit bridge to the cable car station is on the 10th floor. On a windy day, the cable car may close: renting a ski depot at the upper station may be risky in such a situation. The bus ride to the other cable car station, the Gaislachkoglbahn, is...

Not great if you come with smaller children, there's no organized line before boarding the gondola, but rather a big mass of people pushing and shoving to get through. And swinging the skis and poles around without looking.

In the parking garage, the spots are so narrow that we had to unload the passengers before squeezing in (and we don't have a huge car).

Paying for things is also less trivial than you'd think. A paper ski pass can be purchased online and retrieved from a dedicated machine. If you go to the register, you get a different kind of ski pass on a plastic card with a 3€ deposit. And you can only return the card at the register, no machines for that. Further, gondola tickets that are not ski passes (e.g. a simple return ticket) cannot be purchased online or from the vending machine, but only at...

The escalator up to the lift is a disaster waiting to happen. Twice in two days there was an incidence where by the packed escalator was full of people and someone fell over on the lift. This led to utter carnage and no way to stop the lift . No emergency stop buttons at either end. I’m just surprised no one has suffered a serious injury and sued this operator yet. Beware, avoid the escalator at busy times and take the lift.

In reply to the below response. The stop button must be very small which no member of the public could possibly see in the event of an emergency. I had a good look on both occasions and could not see any obvious emergency stop buttons. No one was monitoring the escalator at the time and the escalator was only stopped after much shouting...