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  2.5 of 5, "Downward spiral" 14/11/2008 @ 16:14:08 |
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| 1 member has given this review a rating of 4 of 5 |
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| Price Paid |
| Various |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Inghams, Crystal |
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| Times Visited |
| 2-5 Times |
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| Review Detail |
On the Buses with a load of Brits.
Loads of UK tour operators will take you to Banff, and Banff is ready and waiting to take your money. It was clear the last time I went that Banff has woken up to the fact that Brits are easy to rip off. It's cheap to get to, but once you're there you're pretty much stuck.
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| Strengths |
Cheap package deals.
One pass covers all three mountains. |
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| Hot Spots |
| Out of bounds from the top of the WAWA quad at Sunshine. |
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| Weaknesses |
Don't under any circumstances stay at Lake Louise - there's nothing else there apart from the Lake, the Chateux and the Resort.
Expect to pay Brit prices, not Canadian prices.
You get buses to every mountain from Banff taking anything from 20 - 50 minutes and your board WILL get damaged in the belly of the bus.
You'll probably meet no locals - they all go to Nakiska from Calgary, or COP is they're into Park.
Mt. Norquay - you'll need a morning to ride it all.
Pushy reps (Ingahms) |
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 4 of 5, "Banff - March 2007" 25/03/2007 @ 20:40:43 |
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| 2 members have given this review an average rating of 4 of 5 |
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| Price Paid |
| £820 (flights, car hire, accommodation and lift pass) |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| DIY |
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| Times Visited |
| Just Once |
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| Review Detail |
Due to the layout of Banff, I'll do this review in 4 parts, one for each ski area (Mount Norquay, Lake Louise and Sunshine Village) and this one for the town itself/transport.
Flights
We flew on Monarch (booked via Canadian Affair), and the plane was fine (no seat-back tellies in normal class though). The legroom wasn't as good as when we flew on a CA Thomas Cook plane, but wasn't too bad. Couple of annoying, but relatively minor complaints:
- CA charged us a £5pp "Late Booking Fee" because we'd only booked the tickets a week before the departure date and we would have to collect them from Gatwick. A) Surely this would be cheaper for them than sending them to me in the post and B) They sent them to me in the post anyway! I'll be phoning them tomorrow to discuss this!
- They cocked up the daylight savings change, which meant that we were an hour late on each arrival. This didn't cause us too much of a problem, but if we had booked a bus transfer we could've been in trouble.
- When we were checking in at Calgary for the homeward flight, I asked the clerk for 3 pairs of seats so that each couple could sit next to each other. She faffed about for a bit, showed me the screen so that we could pick the seats, told me to hurry up after 5seconds and then the last batch of seats had gone so we had to be split up around the cabin.
Transport
There were six of us so we hired a mini-van (Dodge Grand Caravan) through National. I was a bit worried about fitting everything (6 adults, 5 fairly large cases and 2 BIG snowboard bags) in, but in the end it was fine. We had the two board bags down the middle and the cases in the boot behind the third row of seats. When going from Banff to the resorts, we had the two longest boards (161cm and 155cm) down the middle and the boots, 3 boards and a pair of skis in the boot). (N.B. I'm only including this in case anyone else is in the same position, because I had no end of trouble trying to work out whether we would fit everything in)
Accommodation
We rented a house through VRBO.com, but 1 big difference between Banff and Whistler (to pick an example of a place I know well!) is that there is much less choice of places in Banff than in Whistler. However, we found a nice place (http://www.vrbo.com/10761) on Beaver St, just behind the Mount Royal hotel/Tony Romas. It was a 4bed/2bath house, with 2 sitting rooms and a nice kitchen. We had a BBQ on 1 night, and cooked on another night, but we decided that we wanted to go out more than stay in! This didn't always pay off...
Restaurants/Bars
Tony Roma's - Got there and were told that it would be a 45min wait, but we could have a drink in the lounge, which was fine. I ordered a Bloody Mary (or Ceasar as the Canadians call them!) and it came with a stick of celery which was brown at one end! Also, the Bellinis were made with rum rather than prosecco and came out of a ice cream van-style mixer. After waiting for an hour, I popped back to the restaurant greeter and asked about our table. She said that it should be ready in another 10mins, or we could eat in the lounge. We decided to eat in the lounge, I ordered a full slab of original ribs, with garlic mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables (carrots, beans etc.). The ribs were gorgeous, just the right amount for a greedy bugger like me and really soft and tender. However, the seasonal veg were overcooked and the garlic mash had clearly been cooked much earlier and (poorly) heated up. One of our party had the rib sampler and 1 batch were OK but the others were cold! When he raised this with the waitress, she said that they weren't cold when they were brought out (5mins earlier!). At first she said that she wouldn't be able to do anything, then said that she could take 20% off of that meal!
Giorgio's - This was an Italian restaurant, which was OK, but one of our party had mashed potatoes with a strange aftertaste of bleach! Another meal (monkfish wrapped in pancetta) was bland and mine (buffalo parpadelle) had too much pepper, which meant that I couldn't taste much else!
St James' Gate - OK pub, but our waitress was VERY moody
and now for the good..
Saltlik - Beautiful restaurant, we got a nice table in a large booth with curtains, almost like a private dining room. We had an amazing waitress who really knew the entire menu and the wine list, which is surprisingly/depressingly rare. Great steak, and then we headed downstairs to their bar and watched a great elderly blues/jazz trio.
Brunos - This is opposite Tony Roma's and was a really nice place! We had burgers there 1 night and had breakfast on the last day. Its a low-key place with a nice relaxed atmosphere, e.g. Trivial Pursuit questions in mugs on tables and 1 night had an open mic night where anyone could get up and play guitar/drums or sing. It was never too busy and the staff (especially a big guy with long hair and a decent size goatee) were really friendly.
The Devil's Gap - This is billed as Banff's only rock/heavy metal bar, and is above Brunos on Caribou St. We went there on a Monday night and it was very quiet, apart from a mad geeky guy in his 40s/50s who came over and demanded that we play him at pool. We declined, he tried to make us play, so we sat down and drank whilst he played himself! Again, quite a chilled out place, although it was rammed on the Friday night.
Rose & Crown, Magpie & Stump, Wild Bills - Nice pubs, but only had a couple of drinks at each so can't really comment. Rose & Crown is Ye Olde Englishe, Magpie & Stump is Tex-Mex and Wild Bills is a fairly typical US pub.
The Town
Banff is definitely more of a "proper" town than somewhere like Whistler, although this means that it doesn't look quite as "nice", it does have a very homely feel. Neither's really better, just different. |
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| Strengths |
Saltlik - Everything
Brunos - Food, ambience and service
Tony Roma's - Ribs |
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| Weaknesses |
| Tony Roma's - Everything else |
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| Similar Resorts Visited |
| Whistler, Lake Tahoe, Les Arcs, Kaprun, Flachau, Filzmoos, Les Deux Alpes, Morzine |
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| Reviews: 1 |
| South Glamorgan |
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 4.5 of 5, "Banff March 2006" 09/04/2006 @ 12:27:35 |
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| 2 members have given this review an average rating of 4.5 of 5 |
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| Revision #1 (Last edited: 21/04/2006 @ 01:57:22) |
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| Price Paid |
| 400 |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Teletext, booked it, packed it, f**ked off |
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| Times Visited |
| Just Once |
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| Review Detail |
Well, what can I say....Awesome holiday! It was getting towards the end of the season and me and my bloke were dying to get on the slopes before the close so we decided on Canada or the States. 400 4*RO for 10 nights was a bargain so we jumped at it.
Banff is a pretty cool town. Went somewhere different every night but went back to Tony Roma's a couple of times ("famous for Ribs") and the AMAZING SaltLik on Bear street. It can be a bit pricey but they serve the best steaks in town. They also have one of the nicest bars in town and, like everywhere else in Banff, the service is excellent. If you want to eat a bit cheaper then the Magpie & Stump do decent mexican food. The Rose and Crown is another good place which serves decent pub food at a reasonable price. For drinking, good places are the Rose and Crown, they have good live music most nights and a decent atmosphere. SaltLik is a bit more relaxed. Pump and Tap in the Sundance Mall has a HUGE TV, though most places will just have ice hockey on all night long! The Irish Bar is also a top place to drink with a big selection on tap. It's a good idea to carry I.D on you for a night out - if you look young you may get I.D'd, we both got I.D'd and we are 25 and 26! Melissa's is good on Thursday nights, usually full of boarding instructors on a Thurs nite tho as thats when they get paid! It's also a great place to get breakfast to soak up the drink from the night before! The only place we thought was overrated was Bumpers Beef House, not as nice as some of the other eating places in Banff.
As for the slopes, we started at Norquay as it was the closest (15min bus ride). Snow was good up here and had a few inches before we arrived. No lift queues all day long. We had the best instructor ever. Top guy, Andy from Leeds. It was so quiet there that we ended up with private tuition for the price of group! There's a good lodge at the bottom of the hill which has a good atmosphere on Friday nights when the night boarding is on, usually has a live band then. The only downside to Norquay is that its a bit small and the slopes are pretty steep, so not too good for beginners.
Sunshine was the second place we tried (15mins on the bus then 15mins on gondola). LOADS of good snow here. Wide open runs. Get there nice and early to avoid the rush tho. The views from the top of Standish and Lookout are amazing.
Lake Louise (40mins on bus) was having a bad time with the snow when we went there. Only had one day up there and it was either slushy or icy! But we'll give it another go at the end of the year when we're out there for a month!
Other things to see on your day off are the Ice fields, lake louise, bow lake, sulphur mountain, and the hot springs. |
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| Strengths |
Canadians - Very chilled out people
Honey Brown Lager!
Good snow
Not Europe
Steaks & seafood |
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| Weaknesses |
| Lift passes are a bit pricey. And season passes cost little more than 2 week pass. Surely they must be making a killing?!? |
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 5 of 5, "Banff Feb 06" 08/03/2006 @ 23:08:28 |
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| Price Paid |
| £650 |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Inghams |
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| Times Visited |
| Just Once |
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| Review Detail |
We Went for 2 weeks and stayed in Irwins Mountain Inn. The rooms there had everything you need for a holiday and they were nice and clean. The staff were very friendly. So friendly infact that we went out most nights with them.
The Tri Area Lift pass is great value for money. It gets you free buses to sunshine village, lake louise and mount norquay. The buses went from virtually outside the hotel which was a bonus as we were usually running late so didnt have to far to go.
I'd have to say that Lake Louise was my favourite Mountain. The backbowls there were great fun. Most of the runs are not as wide and open as the ones at Sunshine Village but i prefered that especially when we were doing runs through the trees and fresh powder on our second week. Don't get me wrong, Sunshine was a great place to go too but it just didnt quite have the appeal that Lake Louise did.
We went to Norquay once, to be honest it just didnt do it for me at all. They do have a great snow park there but the runs on the mountain just didnt seem that great. It probably didnt help that it hadnt snowed there for over 2 weeks so the conditions werent great. There was lots of ice on most of the runs.
There are so many places to eat out in Banff, you are spoilt for choice. We ate at the elk & oarsmen a couple of times. the food there was good and if you go there on a tuesday night you can get a steak sandwich (steak on toasted bread) for $8 which is a bargain. If you like your steak and are willing to pay the money for it go to the Saltlik, the steak there is soooo good. The silver dragon does a good chinese. If you're in town at lunchtime i would suggest checking out either Tommys or Wild Bills both places do good food. I dont think we went to one place that served bad food.
If you're not just going to banff for the boarding/skiing then i would suggest checking out some of the tours on offer. We went on the White & Wild snowmobile tour which is done in Golden, it was awesome. It takes about 2 hours to get there from Banff. They split us off from the main group as we were going much faster than some of the older people and took us on every run they had. We did 5hrs for $240 which included lunch. Well worth the money.
If you prefer something slightly slower and more relaxing try one of the dog sledding tours. I went on one of these and it was great fun.
All in all it was the best holiday i've been on so far. |
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| Strengths |
Good snow conditions
Friendly locals
loads of places to eat
if you can't be bothered to eat out get the food delivered to your hotel room
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| Hot Spots |
Melissa's
HooDoo Lounge
Aardvarks pizza |
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| Weaknesses |
| None that I can think of |
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| Similar Resorts Visited |
| Haven't been anywhere quite like Banff.....Yet! |
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| Reviews: 1 |
| Buckinghamshire |
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| 4 of 5 14/07/2005 @ 16:47:28 |
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| 1 member has given this review a rating of 5 of 5 |
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| Price Paid |
| £400 for two weeks |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Inghams |
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| Times Visited |
| Just Once |
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| Review Detail |
For a first snowboarding holiday, I was pleased that we ended up in Banff. We went over as a group of 14 and it kept our costs way down. £400 for flight and lodging for two weeks was pretty fabulous in my opinion.
We stayed at Irwin's Mountain Inn, which sounds rather pokey, but it turned out to be a REALLY nice place that was clean, spacious and had hairdriers, microwaves, fridges and big TV's in every room. (Plus, if you get a room at the back of the place, you have a gorgeous mountain view!
The town itself is lovely, all nestled into the mountains with plenty of great restaurants like, Joe's Diner (pancakes to die for) Wild Bill's (if you order the nacho appetiser, prepare to spend the night there.) and The Keg. (Kind of pricy, but the Teriyaki steak is worth it.) Good clubs and plenty of bars too.
Coming from the UK, you'll get the super-exchange rate bonus, so buying gear in town to take home is TOTALLY worth it.
We went in January, before the peak season and the slopes were great for the first 2 days and then the whole area experienced a freak heat wave which left all of the hills full of slush and ice which was NOT ideal for beginners like us. Some of the higher runs had powder, but any gentle, low down stuff was a complete mess, so just keep timing in mind if you're a newbie when planning a trip there. I'm sure during peak season, you can count on many inches of powder.
The bus system was great with plenty of extra buses being deployed at busy times of the day. The Tri-Area lift pass was pretty good value for money since it also covered your travel to and from the slopes.
Lake Louise was probably our favorite area in terms of atmosphere. You'll want to stash your digital camera in your coat, because chances are you'll be stopping on the way down to admire the scenery no matter WHAT skill level you are. We found Sunshine was slightly more conducive to learning, but was, in general, more prone to iciness.
We would DEFINITELY go back, should we ever again find ourselves with two whole free weeks in January. |
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| Strengths |
-Friendly Canadians!
-Beautiful slopes and scenery
-Great food
-Good transport
-Good lodging |
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| Hot Spots |
| The Rose and Crown and Wild Bill's both have great live music even during the week. |
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| Weaknesses |
| Unpredictable off season weather, but I suppose that can happen just about anywhere! |
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| Featured Websites |
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| More Mountain : Luxury Chalets in Morzine, France. |
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