It’s 9:40 on a Saturday. A parent with three kids in helmets is standing in the Guest Services line to print lift tickets they bought online two days ago. Nobody in that line is skiing.
Great Bear Ski Valley in Sioux Falls, S.D., is getting rid of that line. The city-owned hill has 178 feet of vertical and four lifts, per its Wikipedia entry. It just announced RFID ticketing that goes straight to the lift for skiing and snowboarding.
What Great Bear is actually doing
The details in the hill’s own announcement are refreshingly specific:
- Season passholders and anyone who buys a daily ticket online skip Guest Services and go straight to the lift.
- Every skier and rider needs an RFID card. The card costs $4.31 after tax, is reloadable and comes included with a 2026-27 season pass.
- Tubing stays on the old system.
Dakota News Now notes the rollout lands alongside the fall season pass sale and a Nov. 7 Welcome Winter Fest and Ski Swap. That’s smart timing: the hill launches the change while its most loyal customers are already buying.
The order matters more than the gates
What I like most here is the sequence. Two seasons ago, Great Bear put in a new point-of-sale system with an outdoor kiosk. Guests scanned a phone, printed a ticket and headed to the lift, Pigeon605 reported. This season drops the print step.
Eaglecrest in Juneau did the same thing in 2019. Its marketing manager told the Juneau Empire that an overdue POS overhaul “opened the door” to RFID gates. It put gates on two chairs and used handheld scanners on the other two.
That’s the lesson for small areas: RFID is a POS project wearing a gate costume. If your online store, pass database and ticket window don’t talk to each other, gates just move the bottleneck uphill.
The scan data is the real product
Eaglecrest’s marketing manager put the payoff plainly: “Now we’ll know exactly how many people are here.” Here’s what that data can answer if you decide the questions before the first scan:
| Question | What the scans show | Decision it drives |
|---|---|---|
| When does the hill actually fill up? | First-scan times by day and hour | Rental, lesson and lift staffing |
| Which lift is the choke point? | Scans per lift per hour | Where to put lift ops, and the case for new capacity |
| Do weekday pass buyers ski weekdays? | Visits by pass type and day of week | Next year’s pass tiers and prices |
| Do day-ticket buyers come back? | Card reloads per card | Who gets the season pass offer, and when |
That second row matters at Great Bear in particular. The hill has said its top priority is adding about 7 acres of terrain and another chairlift, per Pigeon605. A season of lift-by-lift scans is the kind of evidence that helps a fundraising pitch.
What I’d watch
Great Bear hasn’t said which vendor it chose or how many readers it installed, so I can’t tell you what the system cost. I’d also keep an eye on the $4.31 card. It’s small, but it’s one more fee on a first-timer’s receipt. I’d fold it into beginner lesson packages so the newest skier never sees it as a separate line.
None of this is flashy. It’s the kind of upgrade a family notices only because the line disappeared. If your hill went RFID this winter, what’s the first report you’d pull?
