Aerie's Alpine Coaster — Attraction in Grafton

I feel bad giving two stars. But whew was our experience a tricky one. I just want to give other families a head up. I realize we probably chose to come at peak time (a saturday on a lovely fall day), but if i had one word to describe today it would be waiting. We innocently bought an alpine slide 3 ride pass and didnt even take the third ride because you have to wait in the 40 minute line each time. By the time we got done with 2 rides it was almost dark and we had been there 21/2 hours which i was bummed about because i wanted to walk around. The slide itself was fun hence two stars instead of one. Constructively, maybe the person selling tickets could give people a heads up how long the line will take so they know what they are getting into. After 2+ hours my 4 young kiddos were starving and we were tempted to ride down the chair lift and go find food on our way back to st louis, but they were so hungry we decided to eat at the restaurant. Wow. We waited over an hour for the food and the waitress was really sweet and kind and kept trying to push my order because we had four hungry young kids. But yikes. Ok finally it came and the food was decent. Frustrated because Another 2 hours went by of waiting. Now it is late my kids are tired and we still have to ride the ski lift down. We hop on just wanting to get going to drive home and it STOPS working while we are at the highest point in pitch dark. My poor boys were on one together (10&8) and i was with my 3 year old trying to calm her and keep her still so she doesnt fall off. My boys are crying and im crying because i cant be there for them. It was really scary. No one came and asked how we were and gave us comfort or a timeline for how long we would be there. Some random people (customers, not workers) started walking down the hill and yelled “its broken. they are working on getting you”. What does that mean? Actually physically come up here and rescue us. Or fix the problem? I tried calling 4 different lines of there phone number…..no one answered. We were probably up there 15 min but with no idea how long we wiuld be and scared crying children it felt like an eternity. After some prayers it finally started moving and by the end we ran to our car and my oldest who is already nervous of heights but handled the ride fine before the delay) started crying so hard he had s hard time breathing and was shaking. Did i mention it got pretty cold sitting up there. So there you have it. Obviously that was a freak accident, i get it, but really we needed reassurance up there and didnt get it. . So we paid over $250 to have probably one of the most terrifying experience of my kids life and to wait...

The real rating would be 3.5 stars, but that's not allowed and I'm feeling generous. (TL;dr - you have to ride the skylift to the top before you can ride the coaster and it will cost you.) To begin, I did my research on their website. I knew what to expect from the Alpine Coaster and read all the weight restrictions and safety information. I thought we were ready...however, there's not much on the website that explicitly tells you that during the summer you have to start at the skylift. It's on the website, but not really (last sentence of the first paragraph, but no mention of actual costs). When we arrived on 7/26/25 at approximately 11 a.m., we tried to drive up to the website address, which you can't do, so we went back down the hill where I politely asked for directions to where we could get to the coaster and the world's worst customer service agent treated me like I was the stupidest person for even asking the question and then proceeded to tell me it would be an additional $48 for our party of 4 to get to the top of the hill to ride the Alpine Coaster. Could you walk to the top of the hill? Probably. Were we going to do that in scorching hot weather? No. Though in hindsight, it probably would have been quicker. After I asked my significant other to please talk to the atrocious person at the ticket counter so that my better angels would prevail and I wouldn't say what I wanted to, we bought overpriced tickets to ride up the hill. We weren't the only ones who asked the question and unsurprisingly the ticket agent was rude to them, too. Once we got up to the Alpine Coaster, we had a truly marvelous experience! The attendants were kind, helpful, funny, and truly engaged in creating a positive experience for everyone. The lead attendant who was releasing everyone was GREAT!!! She was very understanding and accommodating to my children. We really enjoyed the coaster experience. After we got done, we went over to the restaurant and enjoyed the food. Their pita bread and spinach/artichoke dip is a solid selection! Our waitress, Chen, did a fantastic job. The manager was walking around checking on tables and asking questions. All in all, we would go back, but I'd encourage Aerie to consider packaging the pricing of the lift with the coaster or something and making it way more explicit on what to expect,...

Very disappointed. We are staying in St. Louis for a long weekend. We decided to detour to Alton, IL to the bird sanctuary for my fourth grade animal-enthusiast prior to heading into St. Louis. Since this was the last warm day of the weekend I decided to head to Grafton first so our thrill-seeking teenager could ride the coaster making the weekend a little more exciting for her. We looked up the costs on the website and directions on Google maps. This was a good thirty plus minutes out of our way because of our route. We arrived and followed Google maps to a locked gate with no way through. We called the resort and couldn't get a live person on the phone. We finally chose the number for reservations. The employee who answered said we had to bring the skytour ride up. When we got to the skytour the employee at the ticket booth was less than welcoming. No friendly greeting. No energy. She really didn't want to be there. We discovered that in addition to the $51 for the coaster ride for four of us, it was going to cost us $40 to ride the skytour up. This was not anywhere on the website. I went and rechecked to see if this was my mistake. I nicely told the employee that they really need to add this to their website. She barely even responded. I definitely would not stay at this resort after the lack of customer service in the phone call, from the ticket booth employee, and the inaccuracy of their website. We wasted gas and time on a beautiful day and it just left us all disappointed. For the resort management's information: we were not the only automobile driving up that road, arriving at the gate, pausing, and then turning...