NEW Flowtown trail - Falls Creek

dunndog

dunndog

Eats Squid
puffmoike said:
Post ride report:

Arrived at village with mate at 8:50am and was told shuttles sold out. The website does encourage to book before, so we took the news on the chin, and set ourselves mentally to 'earn' our rides.

First shuttle left ten minutes later with 4 bikes (I'm guessing ~24 capacity). Mate and I exchanged wry smiles, and set off. We rode to the top, down Thunderbolt & Flowtown and back up Packhorse. Took us approx 2 1/2 hours (signage at top could be improved!).

As we ate a (delicious) pie we saw another less than full shuttle leave village (with only 4 spaces empty). We rode Flowtown and back up Packhorse again, and I wasn't unhappy we had to leave to get back to our families, as my legs were feeling it after 1000m of climbing (and 1000m of descending).

As we left at about 1:45pm another shuttle left with just 2 bikes on it.

Now, I can appreciate that if somebody had bought a shuttle ticket and then found they were regularly unable to get on because the shuttle was full they'd be pissed off. So at one level you have to say kudos to Dirt Art for knocking back our $100. But… the three shuttles we saw all had spare spots (of course quite possibly some we didn't see were full). And two of them were almost empty.

Surely Dirt Art could have found a way to accommodate us. Either offered us single rides for say $10–15 when shuttle clearly far from full, or perhaps an informal B-class day ticket where we agreed to be last on each time (and miss out when full).
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Sounds a bit shit... but don't go giving the wrong company bad wraps... Dirt Art don't run shuttles..
 
Nautonier

Nautonier

Eats Squid
puffmoike said:
Post ride report:

Arrived at village with mate at 8:50am and was told shuttles sold out. The website does encourage to book before, so we took the news on the chin, and set ourselves mentally to 'earn' our rides.

First shuttle left ten minutes later with 4 bikes (I'm guessing ~24 capacity). Mate and I exchanged wry smiles, and set off. We rode to the top, down Thunderbolt & Flowtown and back up Packhorse. Took us approx 2 1/2 hours (signage at top could be improved!).

As we ate a (delicious) pie we saw another less than full shuttle leave village (with only 4 spaces empty). We rode Flowtown and back up Packhorse again, and I wasn't unhappy we had to leave to get back to our families, as my legs were feeling it after 1000m of climbing (and 1000m of descending).

As we left at about 1:45pm another shuttle left with just 2 bikes on it.

Now, I can appreciate that if somebody had bought a shuttle ticket and then found they were regularly unable to get on because the shuttle was full they'd be pissed off. So at one level you have to say kudos to Blue Dirt* for knocking back our $100. But… the three shuttles we saw all had spare spots (of course quite possibly some we didn't see were full). And two of them were almost empty.

Surely Blue Dirt could have found a way to accommodate us. Either offered us single rides for say $10–15 when shuttle clearly far from full, or perhaps an informal B-class day ticket where we agreed to be last on each time (and miss out when full).

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* originally this post inadvertently referred to the shuttle provider as Dirt Art, not Blue Dirt. Thanks to dunndog for pointing out my error. Apologies for the confusion.
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The problem is not Blue Dirt, it's the inconsiderate people (probably with season's passes) who book, pull out and then can't be arsed cancelling to free up their spaces on the shuttle. BD don't know what time people who have booked will turn up, so it's not in their interests to give away spots to other riders. But yeah, there should be some informal pay per ride deal for sure. You should email them and suggest it, citing your recent experience.
 
B

Bluedirt

Likes Dirt
Hey Puffmoike, sorry to hear you missed out on shuttles that day. Nautonier pretty much summed it up in his last post so no need to repeat it. We do try our hardest to accommodate as many people as we can and booking in advance is highly recommended. In this instance I can feel your pain when you see a half empty shuttle leaving and your left wondering why. Unfortunately at this stage we are unable to offer 1 off lifts up the hill however we will endeavour to find a solution for this in the future. Hope to see you back up there again soon.
 
P

puffmoike

Likes Dirt
Hey Bluedirt, thanks for replying.

Given you basically confirmed Nautonier's speculation it seems like this probably isn't the first time this has occurred?

Season pass holders regularly booking and then not turning up must be frustrating. But unless you're particularly conservative with your bookings it probably just wasn't one or two who didn't show up. There weren't just a few empty seats or that it was even 'half empty' – as already noted the first shuttle of the day only had four riders, and one around 1:45 had just two.

It's great that you don't take too many bookings. It would be even more frustrating to have bought a ticket, and then found the shuttles were regularly full and been forced to wait another 25 minutes. But if season pass holders are a big chunk of your business, and they're regularly not showing, then it might be worth exploring ways of trying to limit how often this happens.

And yes, next time I'll book in advance ;-)
 
Ideate

Ideate

Senior Member
puffmoike said:
.. if season pass holders are a big chunk of your business, and they're regularly not showing, then it might be worth exploring ways of trying to limit how often this happens.
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Like?

I could suggest a few ways but would cost bluedirt a bit of coin to implement.

Hey bluedirt, tell azza I'll build him a cool system for a life pass.
 
P

puffmoike

Likes Dirt
Well you don't want to piss off your best customers. But if seasons pass holders are also being knocked back occasionally — and I have no idea if that's the case — then that's already happening.

So a system that allows unlimited cancellations when at least X days notice is given, but only Y 'no shows' per season else some sort of penalty Z. (Where X, Y, Z are determined by Blue Dirt's business needs, which I have no idea about, but X leaves enough time for others to book the slack, Y is probably low, and Z is big enough to affect most people's behaviour without being excessive.)
 
Nautonier

Nautonier

Eats Squid
I rode up there on Sunday and it was running like clockwork with 2 staggered shuttles. Yeah, sometimes there were 'half-empty' shuttles coming up the hill, but it wasn't because people didn't show up, it was because the runs are so long that people take a while to get down them, have frequent stops, show up late, have long lunches etc. Sometimes the shuttles are at the bottom or the village and the riders are just elsewhere on the trails. I liked the timetable that they stuck to all day, you knew that whatever happened you wouldn't have to wait at the very bottom for any longer than 20 mins. If you were organised you wouldn't have to wait at all as they let you know exactly what their schedule is.

Only thing that that held things up was a pretty serious motorbike accident on the way up in the shuttle that we had to stop and deal with as we were first on the scene. A few of us hefted a mangled bike out of the trees while the driver called ambulances, on the mountain patrollers and generally handled the whole thing in a thoroughly professional way. The rider was OK as he had expert medical attention within 10 minutes.
 
P

puffmoike

Likes Dirt
Nautonier said:
I rode up there on Sunday and it was running like clockwork with 2 staggered shuttles. Yeah, sometimes there were 'half-empty' shuttles coming up the hill, but it wasn't because people didn't show up, it was because the runs are so long that people take a while to get down them, have frequent stops, show up late, have long lunches etc. Sometimes the shuttles are at the bottom or the village and the riders are just elsewhere on the trails. I liked the timetable that they stuck to all day, you knew that whatever happened you wouldn't have to wait at the very bottom for any longer than 20 mins. If you were organised you wouldn't have to wait at all as they let you know exactly what their schedule is.

Only thing that that held things up was a pretty serious motorbike accident on the way up in the shuttle that we had to stop and deal with as we were first on the scene. A few of us hefted a mangled bike out of the trees while the driver called ambulances, on the mountain patrollers and generally handled the whole thing in a thoroughly professional way. The rider was OK as he had expert medical attention within 10 minutes.
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Interesting. Thanks for the report.

Be interested to hear if their are times that people ever have to wait, or whether Blue Dirt only ever take a conservative number of bookings in order to ensure that even at the busiest times they're not full. Looked at in that light I suppose it shows an admirable focus on keeping paying customers happy, and not worrying about maximising the daily take.

(Doesn't mean it's not frustrating when there are 20-odd empty seats and they won't take your money though)
 
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