Belleayre Mountain Ski Center — Hotel in Town of Shandaken

I am super-grateful for the Belleayre team's outstanding customer service, led by Captain Ron.  Their dedication is on a personal level, which is particularly rare in a large hospitality operation.  Having worked in the hospitality industry for years, this level of dedication is rare even in small restaurant settings.

Last Wednesday, after enjoying the best day of skiing in years with my 2 sons, I arrived at my car to realize that I had lost my car's key fob on the mountain!!

It was already 4:00, and the lifts had closed, so I went to Guest Services at the Mid-Mountain Lodge. Monique immediately radioed Ski Patrol to check the trail where I thought I'd lost it. They didn't find it, which meant it would be hours before my wife could get there with a spare key coming from her work in NYC.  Captain Ron came in and settled us down with a plan—he was going to return and drive us down to the Discovery Lodge where we could wait out in warmth until my wife arrived. Nancy, who took all our info for lost and found, realized all the concessions had closed and that I had 2 hungry teenage boys.  She went in the back and gave us her own food—a block of cheese and a quarter loaf of bread. In the meantime, we charged our phones at the charging station. Captain Ron came back for us, stored our skis, and got us down the mountain with the employee shuttle.  JR and Captain Ron got us set up with one of the TVs to kill the time. Captain Ron also offered us part of his dinner and sat with us until my wife arrived around 7:30.  He accompanied us with a flashlight in the snow that was falling heavily and blowing with a -10°F wind chill. My wife was a nervous wreck with the roads and visibility in a treacherous state.  We then went up the mountain to fetch our skis and get the other car, which was covered in snow. (A relief to finally get out of our ski boots!)  20 minutes later we made it down to the bottom of the mountain, where Captain Ron was waiting in his car to make sure we made it to the main road safely. We'll see if my key fob turns up later this season.  I have faith—in December 2023, I lost my wedding ring at Belleayre and I recovered it the next day after it was turned in!

I can't thank the Guest Services...

Great experience all around for my first time with my son (preschooler) and his first time snowboarding.

Chose to come here from Bergen County cause rental prices were lower than competitor resorts.

Rental process could use a little improvement. Came down from the main floor so didn't realize right away that I needed to go down to the end of the room (signage could be helpful).

Cashier was helpful. $20 rental fee is amazing. But curiously, nothing to sign (usually need to sign a waiver).

The young man handing out boots was constantly on his phone.

There was a line for getting the snowboard -- only 1 person on the side I was on so I called over an employee from the other side to ask for help. She helped us get the snowboard, but had a hard time latching the bindings onto the board (tried 3x before asking another employee for help). I asked for Goofy stance, but would have been nice if she took initiative to ask us before installing the bindings. I'm sure most preschoolers are just given a Regular stance set up, which is probably fine.

Then moved to the corner, far end, to get a helmet (wasn't immediately clear that's the area for helmets).

Good conditon Burton gear. Helmet was fine too. All easy to use.

Can walk straight out towards the beginner hill (bunny hill) - 2 minute walk. Bunny hill had two sides (not including the hill for paid lessons/classes) and 2 conveyor belts for taking you up to the top of the hill.

Decent sized bunny hill with enough space for my son to practice even though it was a packed President's Day visit with tons of people.

Bunny hill had the right amount of incline and flat parts but it did tend to veer off to one side.

Food for lunch was actually decent for a ski resort (I'm used to worse - and been to many).

Finding a table was tough but we were fortunate to catch someone leaving theirs.

The waffle outside was amazing with the chocolate drizzle. $9, I know, but it was the best it could be to live up to that price. Have had far far worse at other places.

Will definitely recommend and come here again for my son to keep learning/practicing.

Traffic back to Bergen was bad cause of a car accident. But on the way up, it was...

People new to skiing - please read!

I found the website uninformative for people who are new to skiing. We wanted to try out skiing at belleayre and decided to buy skii lift from the site as it said that the tickets will run out if you decide to wait till the last min. since we were completely new to skiing we decided to go for skii lessons on the day we arrived. The skii lessons from a private tutor along with the lift pass is extremely steep price to pay. Well upwards of 200 usd. However, only after we decided to opt out for the private tutor, did the lady at the counter say we can go for group lesson which is cheaper. Given that we are a group of 3 people this would make a whole lot of sense since we would only have one other person joining us. I just wish that the lady advised us earlier about the cost savings. The biggest problem I had with this place is that guest service personnel had a lack of empathy for our situation. We didn't know that going for skii lessons provides you with free rentals and lift pass. So we ended up wasting out lift tickets (90 usd). When we explained it to the guest service but they could only provide us with store credits. We can only use the credits for rentals in the future. Given that we are outside of the USA, the deal is almost a waste for a tourist. I feel like if their website did a good job explaining these things such as how the lessons come with free rentals and lift pass then we would not have wasted our money. The guest service personnel just didn't want to listen to our problem and said there is nothing more they can do. Im was heavily disappointed and I would not recommend this experience to tourists who are eager to learn something new as the website is confusing and does not explain what things...