UKC

any experiences good or bad with the likes of ski famille and espirt ? we are well versed in doing it ourselves but they have some good deals .
ta

In reply to mike123:

Bump

In reply to mike123:

Been with both; both are fine with kids but don't expect luxury or cordon bleu food.

Have you looked at Le Ski? Great food and chalets with creches.

Ski Simon Butler are very good.

Ski Hame - good and small outfit. Thy have four challets in La Taniia, one of which they keep for irregular (non-weekend) travellers.

Avoid Ski Miguel.

In reply to Rigid Raider:
thanks for this, will look at your recos

In reply to mike123:

Not used any of those, Mike - have used Crystal a couple of times purely on price grounds, and they've been fairly competent. We got caught in the snow in the Alps between Christmas and New Year, and they did a perfectly adequate job of sorting it out and getting us home (36 hours late and on emergency flights), given the chaos that was going on on the roads. Quite glad we were on a package that time, it'd have been harder to sort out independently whilst wrangling tired kids.

Are you looking for childcare at all - the packages probably win there - although we've never bothered - just taken a couple of extra adults who are happy to mind children in the apartment so long as they're fully occupied by a DVD.....

In reply to mike123:

I only used Mark Warner but would recommend them. Accommodation fine, food good, staff excellent.

In reply to mike123:

Have been with Ski Famille the past 2 years, and going again with them this year. Very good and recommended.

In reply to mike123:

also worth looking at snowfocus in Chatel, and the family ski company in Ardent, both portes du Soleil.

In reply to mike123:

With access to some inside info on Ski Famille, I might give them a miss, unless local resort management has changed. Or there's been a more active higher-level management involvement.

But if you've got a bargain...

Of course, all chalet companies might be run like this, only I've never had the inside line on how inept the resort manager was at organising basics like food and linen. I have encountered such types over the years, though, so know they exist. Fortunately, it once worked in our favour, where one feckwit failed to charge our cards for the ski passes he got us...

In reply to mike123:

PS. The only company I have had consistently good service from is Ski Olympic.

In reply to mike123:

Have been with Neilson a couple of times and they were good for the money.

First time would have been a lot better if the reps (a couple) hadn't been having an on-going bust-up about him getting pissed every night, but she did a pretty good job of working around it.

Second time was great - only complaint was getting stitched up at Gatwick for excess baggage on a very dubious policy for taking my snowboard.

In reply to mike123:

Ski Amis were good, Neilson have been decent. Ice and Fire for Paradise ski area are small and it is sort your own flight.

Honestly a lot of it rides on the luck of the crew in resort. The larger players, esprit, neilson, ski world all do the same thing, though have slightly different focus (esprit being child care whilst total do the adults)

In reply to mike123:

We used Ski2 early January , first time and I would highly recommend them...not sure what areas they cover but we were in Italy.