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BC Family Day a record breaker at Big White Ski Resort

More than 10,000 visitors on holiday Monday kicks off busy few weeks at Big White Ski Resort
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Big White welcomed more than 10

The B.C. Family Day holiday was one of the biggest days ever for Big White Ski Resort and the busiest family day in the four years since the holiday began.

More than 10,000 visitors took in the holiday at Big White on Monday, close to the resort's all-time busiest days of 11,000 visits, usually reached during the Christmas holiday.

More than 8,500 of those visitors purchased passes to ski or snowboard on the hill, while many others took in the day and experienced other opportunities at the resort.

"We were very, very busy," said Michael Ballingall, Big White's senior vice president of marketing. "We saw a lot of people that were at the resort for the first time; a lot of families from Vancouver and a lot of families from the Okanagan Valley that came up to skate, or climb, or tube. If you came up with your kids to have a look around, it was really special."

The resort decorated itself with plenty of fun for the family, with games, bouncy castles, face painting and a fun atmosphere in the village. Overall the ski industry in the Thompson Okanagan had big days on Monday, said Ballingall.

"It was a very successful weekend with the amount of people we had in the resort and also in Sun Peaks and Silver Star and Revelstoke, they all had record days," he said.

The success of the B.C. Family Day holiday will kick off a stretch of what's expected to be great numbers at Big White as the spring skiing season approaches. This coming Monday is Alberta's Family Day holiday as well as the President's Day holiday in the US, a long weekend that has traditionally been a big weekend at Big White.

"That will bode very well for us here in the Okanagan," said Ballingall. "It's going to be very busy for us with back-to-back long weekends. We're back to seeing numbers like they were in 2002 and 2003."

Part of the fun at Big White on the weekend was an attempt to join the Guinness Book of World Records as part of a Canada-wide effort by the Canadian Ski Patrol to have the most people making snow angels at the same time. Resorts all across Canada were encouraged to take part and Big White saw 500 people take part in Telus Park last Saturday morning.

 

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