Szczyrk Mountain Resort — Attraction in Szczyrk

I was in Szczyrk 3 days from 15.02-17.02 and was highly disappointed. I chose working days to avoid crowds, but it was worse than on weekend. Slopes are poorly prepared (ice, bumps) and only half of them were open. The most interesting courses for advanced riders (red/black) weren't prepared at all, except FIS-graded course #23. I had a big hope to ride it, but it didnt happen. 15.02 - I parked my car at COS, and only on the top of the Skrzyczne mountain I knew that course #23 FIS COS (black slope) closed for competition. Day before it wasnt announced and I called to resort, they told me there's no competition on Monday and competition will start on Tuesday. So I went to main Szczyrk through long flat track section along the edge of the ridge. Time of waiting to the boarding on the gondola lift was around 30-35 min. At the end of the day I couldn't board to the lift going to Male Skrzyczne, because of huge queue. Lift stopped at 15:30, so I can't return to my car at COS. Instead, I walked 2 km along the main street in Sczyrk. You can ask maybe why not ride on a skibus? There's no sense to use bus, because I walked faster than cars due to huge traffic jam in the center of the town. 16.02 - I arrived to Szcyrk gondola parking at 7:30. Free parking was full at 7:50. If you want parking space close to lifts, prepare to get up early and rrive no later than 7:40. It was very strong wind that day, and resort adminstration announced that gondola lift can be stopped due to safety reasons. They recommended all crowd to move to Solisko slopes, where lifts are more wind-proof. In Solisko were the worst queues, as you can see on the photos. Probably worst skiing experience. On the positive side - good bars on the slopes, where you can stay warm, and have some "grzanec" (hot spicy wine, or hot beer), grilled sausages or cheese . Also personnel of these bars is very nice. 17.02 - I arrived at Solisko at 7:50 to the upper parking (which is in the middle of slope), and there's no queues! because there's no lift there. You just go down straight through slope #10 to Solisko lift. On Wednesday there was much less crowd, and finally I enjoyed positive side of skiiing. Second star is for decent ride on Wednesday. But generally, disappointed experience. Stay away of Szczyrk, unless you are off-season and bought skipass with...

Ok place to ski. Traks are marked, that's why it was easy to use resort. Higher culture level of skiers comparing to Bialka Tatranska - it is more pleasant to stay in line before ski lift; less pushing and stepping on other equipment.

But a lot of minuses: -Buy ski pass in advance, not on the same day/day before. The sooner you buy, the cheaper they are. -As I was traveling with a group of beginners, they were very disapointed, as blue tracks have some steep sections. And they were not so "beginner friendly". -After tracks finish, there is tiny space given for stopping. Unpleasant way to finish tracks. If you are not able to stop, you will hurt someone. -Quality of tracks and snow. There were icy parts as well as a lot of icy snow parts. Also not quite sure they are preparing all the tracks during the night, as in the morning the end of track 3 looked very used. And tracks get ruined very fast even on workdays, even after one hour. -A lot of people, you need to stop a lot, because there are a lot of people in front of you and no place to ski. Also a lot of learners, who are using width of the whole track or deciding to learn on the red track. -Ski service. Resort home page is advertising ski services for specific prices. Only they refer to certain places, not all service places on resort. They have their own prices. I wanted to sharpen and wax skis before last ride to ski faster, chose place at the bottom of track 11, 10 and 8. I dont know what they did, but afterwards it was dangerous to ski as it was not possible to make turns, skis could go only straigh and not sliding on turns/made sharp stops almost throwing me off. -internet informs that there should be 700 free parking spaces, but there were not. Resort's parking costs 30 zlots, private parking plots next to people houses cost 20-30 zlots. There is a free gopass bus available, without map, only with bus stop names. Not clear how to figure out bus stop names as they were not on Google Map. -Closed tracks. Especially important one 3a which is needed to get back to Hala Skrzyczenska, there you need to walk...

On Dec 27 only 3 slopes were open and you had to spent 40 minutes exactly in the queue for the only available lift up to ski down in 6 minutes. Which means that you have to have a fast pass to ski here instead of standing in the queues - but here's a twist, with the fast pass the price of a day pass is quite literally more than in the most expensive ski resort in Austria (€81 vs €79). Make with that what you want.

Snow quality was meh, but I guess considering the temperatures and the amount of people they weren't that bad. Definitely not Alpine though, as much as it's advertised as such!

Also, there are no russian speaking ski instructors at the ski school, or at least there weren't any available same day (perhaps if you book in advance?) for an 11 year old. The one they will tell you does speak russian actually does not, he's Polish and over 50, so all the russian he knows are three words.

The lifts were stopped frequently which definitely didn't help the queues, and the B4 lift doesn't have a separate entrance for the fast pass, so you'll have to either wait or take off your skis and attempt to make it through the crowd without pissing anyone off (good luck!)

To ski down the highest piste (3A from Skrzyczne) you need to hike up with your skis in hand from the lift :) Can't believe you pay that much and still need to hike. The whole point of skiing in the resorts is so that you don't do that 😂

Anyway, on the positives - the biggest upside was the incredible sunset in the end of the day! And lady at the cashier was very nice and was able to return the full price of the unused ski passes + pay for the fast pass for the exciting and already used ski pass without additional charges, so the final price was the same as if I would've bought the ski pass with fast pass together originally.

To summarise: do not go here during any holidays, school or otherwise, or weekends, pay in advance for the ski pass to get a better price, lower your expectations and make the most of it if you are set on...