***3 1/2 stars***
This was my first time ziplining outside of a random high school gym class and I could tell it's something I'd love doing in the future. The problem is that the Mountain Creek setup is less than ideal and in my opinion not the best bang for your buck or time. The Millennial Chum and I attended the 10:30am session yesterday just after Mountain Creek opened. Would definitely recommend going at that time - parking in this area is a chaotic nightmare, which we experienced on our way out around 1pm, but thankfully avoided the drama coming in. If you're not familiar with the resort and the parking situation, try to allocate some additional time; there's multiple parking lots, some of them aren't open at the same times and they're not monitored particularly well by the staff so people go rogue and create a third row in the lots that there really isn't room for. I literally broke a sweat backing out of here.
The staff at Zip Tours is fantastic and by far by the biggest selling point here. We had Cooper and Meg (I think?) as our guides, both of whom were super professional and personable. Cooper was blasting some Good Charlotte about halfway through on his mini speaker so now the Millennial Chum and I are officially back into turn-of-the-century pop punk. I am absolutely derp level when it comes to straps (airplane seat belts, bras, you name it), and everyone was very patient with me and basically just did all of the buckling and strapping while I just stood there like Ed from the Lion King. The instructions for the actual ziplining and positioning the body for landing at the other end were easy to understand and it didn't take long for everyone in the group to be acclimated, regardless of experience/background.
The session/class was two hours long, and involved four ziplines. The first is the short training line down at the bottom of the ski lift. After that, you go up the ski lift to the top of the mountain and do the other three, which are basically crisscrossing one of the lakes at the top of Vernon Peak. After completing the four lines, you navigate across a narrow suspension bridge to an ATV/trailer/truck - I'm sure there's an obvious, much better term for it - that takes you back to the ski lift to wrap up the adventure.
My favorite was the second line, which is the longest and offers the best views. I hike up mountains on a pretty regular basis so heights aren't much of a concern, but I DO get queasy on aggressive rollercoasters so that was a mild caveat in the back of my mind. This wasn't an issue at all; there's no significant dropdowns and the speed isn't that fast. I will say though that the landing can be a little abrupt/hard at the end, which they mitigate as much as they can with this cushioning spring system. Probably given the height/distance, the second line had the most intense landing, but it wasn't egregious. Would have hated to be one of the metaphorical test dummies when they were figuring that system out though.
Here's the main problem - it's two hours for four ziplines, one of which is a very short training line that takes about five seconds if I had to guess. The actual ziplining is minimal (and maybe that's just the nature of the beast - it doesn't take long to zip down a line) and a huge chunk of that two hours is you just standing around waiting for other people to go down the line. Probably the best way to fix that is to either slash the class size in half (which I'm guessing they don't want to do because they'd be leaving a sizeable chunk of money on the table) or investing in adding another one or two lines at each stop to speed up the process. I have no idea how feasible that is from a financial or logistics perspective but it did look like there was room to do so if it came to it.
Another issue (and I think this is more on the company overall and not the guides) is that they allowed three people who were late to join us, and they caused delays as well. The rules on the website clearly say that if you're late you're going to get slotted into the next available session, but they made an accommodation for them. It honestly wouldn't have been a big deal, but these guys were pretty disruptive and self-centered. One of them had a loud Go Pro that he kept turning on and off and he even asked one of the guides to confirm it was recording. It might be too extreme to ban those devices especially given the type of activity you're doing, but it was a definite distraction. The other two were intermittently making out and filming the rest of us; that latter part I think arguably should have been shot down by the guides or cited in the rules. You want to film yourself or the scenery? Fine, but I think it's pretty douchey to film the rest of us without permission. Your mileage may vary.
I don't regret doing it, but I'd like to try this at a different venue with longer ziplines and less wait times. read more