AvalancheXpress, Pennsylvania, United States

3Alethea W 5:00 PM Mar 15, 2018

Great Experience Personal/Group Trip
I 1st visited Avalanche Express (AE) in December during winter break with my 9 year old daughter. We had such a fun time that I decided to a trip for my Girl Scout troop in January. During my 1st trip, I purchased a season pass which was a pretty ok deal considering this location is 1 hour from Baltimore. I was impressed with the fire pits and planned to do s'mores for when my troop visited. I purchased 40+ tickets for my scouts and their families. Planning for the large group was pretty easy. The staff was helpful. The day that my troop went to AE, the computer system was down so the gentleman at the counter had to manually input each name for the tickets. This was an extremely long time consuming event. I understand that the system was not anyone's fault, however a quicker back up procedure really needs to be put in place. Thankfully I am an early bird and arrived an hour earlier than my group's arrival time. My check in took every minute of that extra hour and a few minutes over. My troop arrived and everyone had an okay time snowtubing. There were lines but moved pretty quickly. The weather was almost 60 degrees so the slopes were a little slow but okay for some of my younger girls who were initially afraid. The one thing that was disappointing was the fact that the fire pit was not lit and it took a very long time to get someone to assist me with this. I told to ask anyone in a blue coat. Well there were very few blue coats near the tubing area. When I finally found someone he told me he just went on break and to ask a man in a yellow hoody at the bottom of the slope. When I did, he told me that there will be a little wait. When a young woman came to do our fire pit she had a hard time getting the fire going. My scouts really wamted to do the s'mores so we were able to at least do 1 round of s'mores before the fire went completely out. Thank goodness it was not cold because my girls would have been freezing outside with no warmth from the fire pits. For the most part my troop was there from 1-3ish. A group of scouts and parents tried out the restaurant and lodge. The food was really good and affordable, however the service completely SUCKED. Our waitress took our drink order and brought 3 out of the 4 drinnks. Then each time she walked passsed our table she would say she was getting it. When she would return, she would say she forgot. This went on for at least 25 minutes. We finally got the drink filled by an another waitress. The food was really good, so this is the only reason why we stayed. After dinner went back snowtubing for about an hour before we left. It was around 6ish around this time so the lanes were a little faster. Overall, ok experience with a few hiccups. Open to trying it again with troop next year.

3Hopefultexastraveler 5:00 PM Jan 26, 2019

Night Tubing
We went on a cold Friday night. Arrived a little after 8:30pm and stayed till closing. Kids had a good time. There were a couple of things that could be improved. The hot chocolate in the concession trailer was just luke warm. One of the workers abandoned her post at the top of the lift. This caused the lift to go into emergency shut down. My husband said the other workers said she left with her boyfriend who was also employed there. No big deal, but they did stop operating the lift. The resort should get a few propane heaters. The little camp fires do nothing in providing heat in extreme cold. Other than that. Kids had a good time. We ended up staying till closing.