I think I may attend this on Saturday, Nov 10 at the Dulles Expo Center off Rt. 28 near the airport.
Let me know if anyone wants to try to rendezvous, perhaps at the entrance to the Warren Miller film five minutes before the noon showing?
Remember, $10 Expo entrance fee may snag you two lift tickets, and with military ID you get half off the entrance fee.

I'm out of town at the w/e. May or not have time to drop in for Friday evening fun. Enjoy!

Wish it was one week later and i would be able to hit it up over my thanksgiving break. i have not been for two years now and really miss the free lift ticket and atmosphere of the place

Yeah. Interestingly enough, VAHPERD is on this weekend as well: http://www.vahperd.org/Convention/conventioninformation.htm

apparently ski liberty will exhibit there.

Philly show is on the 17th.

I just picked up a new pair of skis at the Ski Center swap so my real reason for going is gone. The expo was borderline horrid last year as a few threads here at the time alluded to. I'll be waiting till Sunday to hear how things were before heading over. It has really gone downhill the last few years.

Does anyone know how the free lift tickets are handed out? First 500 people each day?

And is it 1 free ticket per household or 1 per paid admission? Kids 12 & under are free. Do they qualify for the free tickets?

I may head over on Saturday am.

I was thinking of going, but does anyone know if they are going to release a list of vendors/exhibitors ever? Do a lot of first party companies send rep's or is it just 3rd party retailers? Who runs this "mega ski sale" and are the prices competitive? Do you think they'll have experienced boot fitters or just random sales people?

I'm not going to pile on as I made my feelings known in a long thread last year and they can be looked up. But there are almost no first party ski companies - and maybe none. There were no ski resorts represented from out West or any "destination" resort places you might want to hear about outside the immediate area. Last year they had a cooking demonstration, a pots and pans company, a company selling hot tubs, a company selling 6 wheeled atvs - etc. I cant recommend strongly enough not going on Friday. When I went Friday evening last year no one was set up, most of the booths werent open, some had not even been assigned yet, the swap was barren. All around, bad times.

I believe it was the son of the person who ran the expo came on here for a few posts to get feedback but never replied with any useful information.

Basically if you want to go and pay your $10 you can be assured of getting a magazine subscription and a free lift pass or two. I'm not saying you cant get $10 worth of stuff out of it - it just wasnt worth it to me last year.

I hear you dcmidnight. will moderate expectations and try to post some feedback if I attend.
Also, general FYI:
At the nearby Ski Chalet store of Chantilly there will be a ski swap of used eqmt Sat. & Sun., November 10th-11th
Run by Canaan Valley Ski Patrol

Can't wait for the feedback. I can't go Friday (cross country meet) or Saturday (soccer and cross country party), but will go Sunday. Keep us posted!

yeahhhh me yup b-thr-b-sqr sat. late afternoon with drink in me, doggie cloud skiing stuff loaded up, andyesiwillseethemovie 'cause they shuh-ow 7 minutes of my old stompin' ground so i can get all teary-eye-d reminissen bout the place i reckon.


.... errrr ok - did that make any sense ?!

.. oh wait this one was written only a little while ago like 1 month ago another interesting metric-point ....
." ... and for my sweet ten minutes i stand by the water in my jeans and watch a ketch luff her sails in the wind, watch seagulls and ducks listless on land and in the water and see big intakes and outflows of water cycle thru the powerplant 5 stacks with wrinkly air-parts above each one. a rocky-ridge coal pile razer-back blocks out halfthesky. shiny-worn rust-tracks bifurcate warning DERAIL one just one branch. another goes into the innards of a hotbellied big big bolt - so big you're just 1/1,000th of its weight. little next to a big powerplant. little shells in a little ridge along a little ripple in the water. the water next to my workplace. ... eGm"

well, i think you just invented a caucasian form of ebonics here.

Jim and Group

How 'bout wearing our DCSki pins?

I'm planning to go Saturday, too. Meeting up before the noon showing of the Warren Miller movie sounds fine to me.

See you there!

Woody

I'll probably show up Sat and Sun morning. Wouldn't mind 2 free early season tickets to snowtime, a free wisp and free canaan one. That and about 8 saved up comp. tickets at Wintergreen should get me through December, then for the rest of the season it's off to USC for me, where their ski team has a house at Mammoth and I just got my season pass

Last year they said 2000 tickets, but I think that was for the whole weekend. I think this year it will be the first 500 people each day.

I don't know if the kids that get in free get lift tickets. I'm guessing no.

The lift tickets are per admission. We figured that out last year. They will allow you to purchase as many admissions as you want. My group of friends and I are planning a trip to WISP later in the season and are counting on the discounted tickets (the magazine subs are nice too).

Anyway, we plan on being there at opening so BACK OFF!

Some other information about the expo I can remember from last year:

* You can get new 2007/2008 maps for all the local resorts which are kinda nice
* Liberty is handed out their snowblast cards last year (not that the deals were that good last year)
* The ski swap seemed to have a good amount of stuff. I don't think that there was much in the way of service like boot fitters, etc.
* There were a lot of vendors there that didn't really have much to do with skiing, you find this at any type of conventions and conferences though.
*

Hey guys,
I've asked a lot of questions so now I figure I can at least contribute something. Straight from "Fred" at nationalskiexpo this is the list of vendors for this weekend:

COMPANY
Ameritech Construction Corp.
Appalachian Wildwaters
Blue Knob Ski Area
BlueGreen Corp.
Bryce Resort
Canadian Mountain Holidays
Crested Butte Mountain Resort
Elk Mountain Ski Resort, Inc.
Innovative Spas
Jackson Hole Ski Corporation
Jay Peak, Inc.
Massanutten Resort
Northeast PA CVB
SCWDC
Seven Springs Mountain Resort
Shenandoah Crossing Resort
Ski Liberty
Ski the Pocono Mountains
Ski The Valley
Sno Mountain
Snow Sports Deals
Snowshoe Mountain Resort
Stowe Mountain Resort
Vacation Village Resorts
Village Skis & Bikes
Willi's Ski & Snowboard Shop
Wintergreen Resort
Wisp Ski Resort
WJD Enterprises, Inc.

Gettysburg Hotel
Potomac Valley Skiers
Virtual Reality Pavilion

Ski the Valley? Back in business, free tickets, see here

im gonna try and hit the 4pm showing of the WM movie friday on the way home from work and on the way to the valley

Is there a separate admission charge for the WM movie? Or does the expo entry fee cover it?

aaron

As of yesterday I'm back to patronizing businesses in the Commonwealth of Virginia, so I'll be there. Need a new pair of Volkl AC4s but since Snowshoe made the unfortunate decision to kick Volkl from their inventory, I guess they won't have my business, so maybe someone at the Expo will

i dont think there is a separate charge for the movie.

id love to find a steal of a deal on some old Nordica demos, especially the top fuel hotrods which i thought were amazing in almost all east coast conditions, especially the way they blast through crud like a Hum-v! they are just too expensive for me tho

lol yeah cauconics

well that's just classic.

heee, those of u dont have one check at the ski expo for decoder rings he's back in town ucannot keep up even on the groomeres unless u got a decoder ring....

so cool E u got a window in ur office? be careful bout cloudskiing at work sometimes i get scared cloud skiing even on my way home from work soo distracting to drive no reliable pub transport where i'm at, prollably hard to cloud see ski if ur ride the Metro??

Crunchy,
You might stop by or call Extreme Sports near the Dulles Expo and look at their skis. Do not know if they have any demos, but their prices seem fair and reasonable.
The Colonel

scootertig,
Sorry I missed your earlier post. WELCOME TO DCSki.
Tell us a little about yourself.
The Colonel

pub transport == reliable transport to and from the pubs?

Does anyone know what the restrictions are on the lift tickets 1) given out at admission 2) given out after the Warren Miller movie?

good idea i might try to buzz by there this afternoon before I hit expo. i already told the man im leaving work a little early today. wanna catch the WM movie and claim a free lift ticket before headin' out-o-town for the weekend

the warren miller ticket vouchers are usually only good early season through like dec 23.....not sure about the other ones....

The waren miller ones are early season only. The ones at the door (at least WISP ones for the past 2 years) have been good every day of the season.

OK. Hope to make it to this tomorrow and maybe meet some of yooz guys. I'll be the skinny old dorky guy with gray moustache standing around entrance to movie before noon, or maybe around exit of movie after.

I went today:

The Wintergreen Ticket is good all season but no weekends or Holidays (Dec 22-Jan 1, Jan 19-21, Feb 16-18)

The Whitetail/Liberty/Roundtop ticket is only good until Dec 21. If you don't use it by then, you can use the voucher to get $10 off an 8 hour flex ticket midweek/non-holiday after Jan 2 (in other words, use it before 12/21).

Overall, the show left something to be desired. There were only 3 ski shops represented, no vendors, and a bunch of resorts with booths (but no great coupons or anything). The swap didn't have too much to offer but that could improve once more people show up over the weekend.

On the wintergreen mid-week lift ticket vouchers (not that I've done this before a couple years ago when I got 4 of them at a silent charity auction and there was no mention when bidding about the tickets being restricted) if you take an eraser, preferably one on the back of those erasable pens and lightly but persistently run it over the "mid-week only" on the pass, it will then be good for weekends or mid-week.

This is assuming the design hasn't changed, from my memory they were numbered approx. business card sized vouchers on non-glossy paper.

This was probably one of the dumber things I've done (I was a couple years ago), frankly I'm surprised it worked, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it because if you get caught there's really not much you can say (you didn't accidentally erase it...). So use at your own risk YMMV.