Bulgaria Ski discussion board

Hi

Got back from Pamps last week and we had a great time, here are some good & bad points.
Hotel Finlandia -
clean & comfortable, staff ok, Food TERRIBLE, - Christmas dinner galla wasn't arranged properly and the food took about 2 hours to come out! We had raw chicken for dinner the following night so we didnt bother eating there again! Hot water & heating all most every night but did hear others complaining of none for about 4 nights!
Ski School -
again this wasnt arranged very well, we were given out boots and handed ski's and told our instructor would look after any problems, cant understand why they didnt measure them when we were given our boots! Would have saved me about an hour as we were brought all the way to the top and then i had to go back down as the ski's my son was given were not suitable, by the time we had travelled back up the rest of the group were on there lunch, so half of the morning was wasted!
My boyfriend and I were put into a beginners group because it was my sons(9) first time, when i asked if they was a group of children i was told no, so we just had to go along, then to find many groups of children! My boyfriend left our group on the 2nd day to join a more advanced group which he really enjoyed as his instructor Chris was fantastic, My instructor (Ritchie) wasnt as good, as the week went on the class got smaller & smaller as he just seemed to do his own thing, he never lead the way and just allowed the younger kids to go ahead which resulted in my son falling and he was no were to be seen!
Ski Conditions
The first couple of days were good as it snowed christmas night and all day Stephens day so it was ok except that the runs that were open were so busy and had all kinds of skiers and boarders on them so it got really packed, it was very bad the last 2 days and there was a lot of injuries, would have liked if more runs were open as we got so bored doing the same runs day in day out.
Nightlife -
we went to Daks on Christmas night which was a good, didnt get to experience much else as couldnt stay out to late with my son, We had our presentation at the White Hart which has a great buzz and the band were brilliant.
Reps -
Panorama? Well we didnt really see them around much, they said they are at the ski school from 9 every morning i think we only seen 1 of them once!
Bulgarian Night -
this was a great night, really well organised and the food & entertainment was fantastic.
Bum Boarding is also a great thing to do if you are an adult or a child!

All in all i hope to go back again but will stay in a different hotel or apt, but only if the skiing conditions are better.

Just got back from Pamporovo on Sunday and unfortunately we had more bad experiences than good!

Bad Points:

Ski collection/fitting: We were picked up from our hotel at 9:15 by somebody from the ski school to go to collect our ski’s from Ski Centre 1 before starting Ski School. When we arrived we had to queue for at least an hour to get our Ski’s. The guy handing out the Ski’s did not bother to see if the binding were set to fit our boots so we had to find a Balkan Holidays rep to help us.

Ski school: We had previously skied before so were put into a group of around 30 people of mixed ability. The instructor took us down to the chair lift queue which was horrendous (more on this later) and when we eventually got to the top of the mountain at 12:30 he decided we should have lunch. After lunch we eventually started to Ski around 1:40. We started on the main green run which was very busy and quite icy in parts. After about 5 minutes a number of us got split up from the main group and were unable to find the instructor for the rest of the day and ended up skiing on our own. We decided to give school a second chance the next day and after speaking to Maria from the Ski school placed in a new smaller group lead by a guy called Chris. The second day was spent repeatedly going down the same green run with no tuition. At the end of the day we decided to give up ski school as a bad job. After catching up with a few other people over the next couple of days this proved to have been a wise decision.

Lift Queues: We were impressed by the chip lift passes which allow you to keep the pass in your pocket however the lift queues were horrendous and poorly organised and not always used to maximum capacity. I appreciate that it was still the New Year holiday period and it may have been busier than normal but I really feel that the lift infrastructure particularly at the bottom of the mountain is unable to cope with the number of skiers. Several people we spoke to feel that there are too many hotels in Pamporovo resulting in bottle necks on the lifts and pistes. Despite arriving at the ski centre by around 9:30 each morning it was nearly 11am before we got to the top of the mountain.

Ski Buses: On a whole very good but on our last morning which was Saturday the bus failed to turn up at all. Our hotel receptionist said they may have thought that everybody had gone home as Saturday in normally change over day.


Good Points:

The whole area is very picturesque and with better snow cover would make the skiing very enjoyable. The mountain restaurants that we tried all served up very good reasonably priced pizza and hot wine. The restaurants (Barbeque and White Hart we tried in resort we also quite good and value for money. We stayed at the Laplandia Apartments which were quite spacious and of a good standard. Although a little out of the way a shuttle bus was provided into the resort twice an evening for 3 Lev’s each way.

In summary we wont be rushing back to Bulgaria and are heading back to France next time.