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Chill factor opens its doors & turnstiles to the Public

Review - 21/11/2007

Well its finally here - the alps in manchester ?? Well the north's 1st indoor ski slope!!
From the outside it looks quite impressive - 1 huge kicker (i wish). If you not sure were it is in traffard? by the time you get near the barton bridge you will be in no mistake you not far off touching down on sum snow!!

GETTING IN

The car park is a little akward to get in & not the biggest car park around - but if its full you an always use the JJB soccer dome just on other side of entery to Chill.

On entry to the CFe it is flanncked by shops on either side with a large viewing window at one end. To one side of that is a large climbing wall. On the left is the ticket desks for the slope/wall/snow activitys.

On the opening day this was a little chaotic, with the computer booking system not working very well - with large Q's. You really need to be there  to be there quite 20-30mins before your booked slope time as the Q's at the moment move quite slow. This will hopefully improve over the coming weeks, espesially atbusy times!!

THE SLOPE

Once paid(booked in) you get your turnstile ticket- DO NOT LOOSE THIS !!! just like your ski pass on your hols. You need this to swipe through onto the slope & then you need this to swipe everytime you go up on the button lift. This can be a little tedious as you have to pull your glove off to fish it out of your pocket then make sure you get the bar code the right way round - everytime you use the lift!! After an hour or so the ticket gets soggy- and starts not to read- thus the turnstile wont open!! the Q gets bigger & you have to call the lift assistant over to swipe you through!!! Not a very good system & can see this will cause problems in the busy periods!!

The slope doesn't really seem any longer than X-scape (maybe a few feet longer??) It looks a bit wider & is a little steeper.

The snow is like you expect, white- slippy &cold!! In the main the coverage was good - just a few small icey patches - but i think this will be sorted out in the coming days after a few thousand boards & ski's have hit it by end of this weekend.

The lift feels better on the legs as u get dragged up on just snow - unlike CAS which is a mixture of snow & snow flex - which tends to drag & make your front leg ache !!

Was told by the slope staff that the rails & jumps will only be open on the sat nite jib - closed rest of the time (well until it all settles down ).

All in all it is a ski slope with a few teething problems that will hopefully get sorted soon. It will be a big success for the northern ski & snowboard scene.

Check out our section on prices & info on joining with snowdanger to get 30% off  allslope time & membership.

 

Published Date : 2008-03-13 15:25:28

Tags : Chill Factor e Prices 2008 Snowdanger Announcements